15 November 2016
Tractitioners and academics met in Brainport Eindhoven Region (The Netherlands) for the 19th TCI Global Conference that was held from 8-10 November to reflect, discuss and learn on a broad spectrum of experiences and challenges in clusters affronted worldwide from policy makers to businesses in a global scenario of rapid changes.
Considering its wide audience, made up of practitioners, cluster managers, businesses, policy makers and academia, the Conference was organized around 3 Days of productive learning exchange experience set up of Touring, Summit and Working Days. The Touring Day brought the participants to various locations giving a grasp of successful cluster experience in the Netherlands (from High Tech, Agrifood, Food Innovation via Biobased, Smart Mobility, Cleantech to Sports and Tech Tour). The second Summit Day was made up of panels, presentations and dialogs nurturing the complexity of clusters, their policies and territorial development from world-class speakers. The third day was devoted to bringing to practice the reflections of the previous day through two tracks integrating more than 30 large and small sessions in different set-ups. A first one - rather more practical & general - focused on Cities and Competitiveness, Modern Cluster Policy, Managing Learning Networks and Food Clusters; and a second one - academic - addressing Cluster Governance, Collaborative Learning and Cluster Evaluation.
James Wilson, Senior Researcher at Orkestra and member of the TCI’s Board of Directors moderated the Scientist forum on Smart Specialisation and Clusters. This Forum was chaired by the panel of world-wide experts Dominique Foray (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Ron Boschma (Lund University) and Christian Ketels (Harvard Business School) rounded with the thought on complementarity across the concepts. James Wilson has further moderated and co-participated in the sessions on Cluster Evaluation within the Academic Track.
Meanwhile, Orkestra researcher Anastasiia Konstantynova joined the academic session on Cluster Governance, where in the panel with international experts she presented the first findings on bridging cluster policies and Smart Specialization Strategies, which build on European INTERREG Project CLUSTERS3 “Leveraging Cluster Policies for Successful Implementation of RIS3”
