9th July 2015
Henar Alcalde and Usue Lorenz, from Orkestra, took part in the III Inter-Clustering Day, held on 9th July in Hendaya. The meeting sought to find potential niche opportunities for cross-border collaboration in the areas of internationalisation and innovation.
The meeting took place within the frame of the project "Promotion and Support of INTER-CLUSTER Cross-Border Collaboration" which Orkestra is promoting together with the Bihartean- Iparralde-Gipuzkoa Cross-Border Chamber, which advocates inter-cluster collaboration as an essential joint aspect of an smart diversification strategy to further competitiveness in the region.
Along these lines Orkestra's team presented its analysis of the main strengths of the Aquitaine and Basque clusters on the basis of the methodology proposed by the European Cluster Observatory. The main conclusions taken from this work, which demonstrate the complementarity and opportunity that exists in both regions, focus on the need to provide more support to small businesses in cross-border collaboration, create tools that aid this collaboration, reinforce the cluster's role as a revitalising agent that boosts actions of identification and of detection of opportunities on a business level.
Additionally, Olga Irastorza, from the Bihartean-Iparralde-Gipuzkoa Cross-Border Chamber, presented the results of the collaboration opportunites between the Aquitaine-Basque clusters, taken from the questionnaire completed by clusters from both regions.
Even though there were many messages on the existing needs for internationalisation and R+D in the companies in accordance with the results obtained, the main ones were focuses on; from the point of view of internationalisation the connection that each region has with other countries, Latin America, in the case of the Basque Country, and United States and Canada, in the case of Aquitaine, provides an opportunity for collaboration in order to explore and expand in these territories. In the case of innovation, the Basque Country is characterised as a region that gives priority to innovation in design and product, while in Aquitaine there is greater interest in service innovation. In this area, it was also concluded that the preferred partners for collaboration in the innovation process are customarily the customer and the supplier, with the University and Technological Centres less in demand, especially in Aquitaine. All of this raised interest among attendees who confirmed the need for these parties to approach the company.
The day concluded with two parallel working sessions, on internationalisation and innovation. The conclusions drawn in this session will be worked on during the IV Inter-Clustering Day, which will be held in the autumn.
