Susana Franco, Asier Murciego, Juan Pablo Salado, Eduardo Sisti, James Wilson
European Cluster Collaboration Platform
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the roles that clusters are playing in fostering regional resilience. In the immediate response to the pandemic, they have provided a vital collaborative bridge between business and policy makers in regions across Europe. This has helped cope with supply chain disruptions and develop new production capacities such as in the manufacturing of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Moreover, regional cluster dynamics have been amplified at EU level by leveraging the European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP) and European Cluster Alliance (ECA), for example organising matchmaking events on vaccine production and regular meetings to share strategic intelligence for example on microelectronics, raw materials or wood.
Building a robust recovery from the crisis will require sophisticated collaboration across the triple helix of business, research and government, both within and between clusters. The focus of this European Cluster Panorama report is the presence of clusters in Europe and the roles they play in fostering resilient, green and digital industrial ecosystems. It is based on comprehensive new data that can be navigated through the ECCP’s mapping tool. A key novelty is that it brings together, for the first time, statistical data on the regional clustering of economic activity in 88 standard sectors from Eurostat and 14 industrial ecosystems as indicated in the updating of EU industrial strategy, with detailed data on the presence and key characteristics of cluster organisations.
