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The cluster tours of this year's conference in Lyon have already taken shape. We have selected among the existing clusters and pole de competitivité some of the most interesting experiences for you. We hope you will be able to make your choice.

Competitiveness can be defined:

Scottish Enterprise's new Network Strategy was launched in January 1999. It was created through a wide-ranging consultation process, involving all parts of the network, along with hundreds of partners in the public, private and voluntary sectors. At the heart of the new strategy lay some new thinking in economic development - the "clusters approach".

On 22 March 2006 21 stakeholders representing business, knowledge institutions and government met at University of Ghana Business School to discuss new potentials and possibilities for increasing the competitiveness of, and value added production in, Ghanaian industries and businesses.

Under the theme "Stimulating Competitiveness for Sustainable Economic Development", the third regional conference in Africa will take place in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania on September 3-7, 2006. Please note that the venue has changed and the conference will be in the Kunduchi Beach Hotel and Resort in Dar es Salaam. The Opening eremony will be on September 03 (Sunday) at 17 Hours.

Wellington

The theme for the conference being held in Wellington over 23/24 May was "Driving Local Competitiveness". The conference offered to international participants the opportunity to meet with a wide range of New Zealand cluster development practitioners. 'TCI Oceania' had been formally launched during the conference. Within the next month we will prepare a TCI-O chapter on the website, offering more information on the region and possibilities for networking.

Islamabad did host a TCI Regional Conference on Competitiveness and Economic Growth for Asia on May 15 - 16, 2006: Benchmarking Pakistan's Global Competitiveness.

Aho group report

The European Commission - faced with the increasing challenges of globalization - set up in late 2005 a group of four high-level experts, chaired by former Prime Minister of Finland, Esko Aho, to assess the situation and make proposals to boost Europe's research and innovation performance.

The third conference on Innovation Journalism is taking place at Stanford University (California) on April 5-7, 2006. The opening speaker is Vint Cerf, Father of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist of Google. The event is organized by David Nordfors, Innovation Journalism Program Leader at Stanford and also Commissioner of TCI for Innovation Journalism.

This report has been written by one of the participants to the conference, Frank Waeltring.