What & who is TCI?

TCI is a not-for-profit alliance of cluster practitioners. TCI's mission is to improve living standards and the local competitiveness of regions throughout the world, by fostering cluster-based development initiatives.

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The legal entity of The Competitiveness Institute is a non-profit, non-governmental organization, with a global scope, open to members from all countries.

The difficulty in finding capable facilitators for cluster development initiatives has been pointed out on numerous occasions, particularly at the First International Workshop for Cluster Practitioners organized by the World Bank in Chihuahua (Mexico) in November 1997.

The Competitiveness Institute is a non-profit organization, created by a group of economic development professionals and cluster practitioners with the principal aim of collecting and exchanging information and best practices on cluster development initiatives worldwide.

During the General Assembly in Portland a new Board of Director was elected by the members of TCI. Juanm Esteban is the new President, following Lars Eklund, who stays on the Board as Immediate Past President. Alberto Pezzi remains as TCI Secretary and Elisabeth Waelbroeck Rocha continues as TCI Treasurer. Alonso Ramos Vaca, Arthur Bayhan, Christian Ketels, Kevin Murphy, Klaus Haasis, Nigel Gwynne Evans join them as TCI Directors. Find out more about them!

Our Board of Advisors is composed by relevant personalities from the world of politics, business, and international institutions that have played an important role in the application of cluster initiatives. The members therefore dispose all of important experience in the field of clusters and can give valuable advice to our Association.

TCI is supported by a number of organizational members. These are mainly non-profit organizations, government agencies, or multilateral organizations dedicated to fostering economic development and interested in clusters, innovation systems and competitiveness issues. Here you can read who they are and what they do.

It has become increasingly apparent that the Governance of TCI has shown a number of weaknesses in terms of renewal and continuity.
In order to address this situation the Board of Director (BoD) proposes changes to the structure and conditions for the Governance of TCI. Some of these changes would affect the TCI bylaws and will therefore require approval by the General Assembly at Portland on October 12.

The Competitiveness Institute is issuing a "Call for Expression of Interest" for the organization of its 13th Global Annual Conference to be held in 2010. After 2008 in Africa and 2009 in Europe we are now looking for applicants especially coming from Asia Pacific, but also outstanding applications from the rest of the world are invited to present their expression of interest.