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The National Productivity and Competitiveness Council which has been spearheading the clustering concept in Mauritius welcomed government's incentives to transform the Mauritian Textile Industry through the promotion of a network of SMEs. To attain the competitiveness and flexibility of smaller manufacturers while maintaining the advantages of economies of scale, it is hoped that anchor firms will form that will be able to maintain financial stability and subcontract demands to the array of SMEs.

Michael Porter addressed 'oneLondon' recently, on how to provide practical solutions for deprived areas in the UK's capital. OneLondon is an organization dedicated to innovation and inclusion. It is formed by members from both private and public sectors of business.

The EU has been researching ways to alleviate problems within the Northern European Trade Axis (NETA), running through six countries: Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Poland.

Saskatoon's technology cluster is one of the bigger agricultural and food biotechnology clusters in the world. It has more than 20 years of history within the province of Saskatchewan, with a reputation for introducing "world firsts" into the market establishing itself as Canada's centre for plant and animal genome science.

The Cluster Initiative Greenbook was presented at the TCI conference in Gothenburg. Among other things, it presents the outcome of a survey of more than 250 cluster initiatives across the world.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra, Australia, special guest Dr. Peter Brain gave a lucid and insightful overview of the importance of tacit knowledge for the success of economies at the regional level.

150 cluster practitioners from 24 countries, among them many TCI-members, participated in the European Seminar on Cluster Policy held on 10 June in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Papers and presentations from the seminar can now be downloaded from the seminar's website.

Ernst & Young has ranked the Swiss biotech industry as one of the top in Europe on product development, turnover and market capitalization. This success can largely be attributed to biotech clusters developed in the Basel, Geneva, and Zurich areas. The Zurich MedNet is comprised of more than 400 companies, universities, institutes, foundations, hospitals and labs making it the single largest medical/biotech cluster in continental Europe.

The Maine Science and Technology Foundation recently published an article detailing the similarities (and more recent differences) between Maine and Finland, and concluding that Maine should follow Finland's model for success. The article details how Maine and Finland share similar economic histories (based on rich natural resources and manufacturing), climates, and attitudes.

In 1995, the Le Maroc Competitif was launched in Morocco to develop a cluster-based approach for economic growth. In cooperation with the World Bank and an agreement with the European Union, Morocco identified four potential clusters to drive the economy: textiles and apparel, sea products, tourism, and electronic and information technology.