Governance, Policies and Legal Conditions for Access to Market through Extended and Dynamic Clustering of SMEs

Tuesday, June 17, 2008, Hotel Golf Flora, 16:00 - 17:30

Chair:
Takis Damaskopoulos, Executive Director
European Institute of Interdisciplinary Research (EIIR), France

Panelists:
The EFFORT Rationale and Achievements
Giuseppe Cardoni, General Manager
Umbria Innovazione, Italy
Takis Damaskopoulos, Executive Director
European Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, France
Ramon O’Callaghan, Professor
University of Tilburg, The Netherlands
Lefteris Leondaridis, Managing Director
NetSmart S.A. Athens, Greece
Andrea Nicolai, Director
T6, Roma, Italy

Policymakers and Policy Implementation Stakeholders: National Experiences
Takis Damaskopoulos, Executive Director
European Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, France
Panayiotis Koutsikos, President
KETA (Centre for Innovation and Development), Attica region, Athens, Greece
Policymakers and Policy implementation Stakeholders from other countries - to be confirmed

Panel outline

The focus of discussion in this panel will be on the different drivers that enable dynamic and extended clustering of SMEs in order to improve their ability to market.

The panelists will present the findings of a European project, EFFORT that is currently in progress in this area. To prosper in a rapidly changing global economy, the next generation of clustering should be dynamic and extended. A dynamic business or cluster is able to “integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competencies to address rapidly changing environments”, while “extended” refers to cooperation across regional or international boundaries. The EFFORT project is aimed at studying the governance, sustainability and constituency drivers of dynamic cross-border and cross-regional clusters of SMEs to improve their ability to access the global market, facilitating collaborative production of products and services, as well as responding to procurement contracts of public or private organisations. EFFORT is investigating the factors and governance structures that underpin high economic and business performance in innovation ecosystems. Key issues have to do with regulation/policy, legal framework, governance mechanisms and technological conditions that can function as the enablers or barriers including their relation to the vision of the innovation ecosystem.

EFFORT consists of 11 organizations from 8 countries. EFFORT’s hypothesis is that market access will be improved through a double process of "extended" and "dynamic" clustering. The "extended" clustering implies aggregating capabilities of clustered SMEs at different level overcoming the geographical boundaries and operational limitations of traditional clusters. The "dynamic" clustering implies adaptability in configuring "virtual" clusters to respond to specific market opportunities. The fundamental challenge is how to facilitate dynamic external clustering, and to build capacity across clusters and networks of SMEs. This challenge involves building 'internal' capabilities enhancing the organizational, knowledge and technological capacity of SMEs, and building 'external' capacity in the environments in which SMEs and their clusters operate. The key issues have to do with regulation/policy, legal framework, governance mechanisms and technological conditions that can function as the enabling framework for completing the Internal Market and to complement the vision of the innovation ecosystem objective. EFFORT brings a multidisciplinary perspective on the current status and future possibilities of cross-border and cross-regional "dynamic and extended SME clustering" based on the notion of building SME cross-cluster capacity by selecting complementary partners out of SME networks that extend beyond the boundaries of a traditional cluster.