Dear TCI friends,
One year ago, the TCI members gave us the opportunity of directing The Competitiveness Institute. It was an exciting job, sometimes difficult but most of the times very rewarding. Now it is time to present the ideas that guided our work during the year, along with some positive results. We will formally do it in our annual report to the General Assembly on 31 October 2008, during the 11th TCI Annual Global Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. But beforehand, we find it convenient to briefly mention to the whole family who receive our newsletter, the main challenges addressed, the way we are trying to get results and the values that guided our efforts.
We have tried to determine a clear value proposition for TCI, as you can see in our new logo:
TCI - The Global Practitioners Network for Competitiveness, Clusters and Innovation.
-
Global as every region in the world is considered in its specificity; learning from everyone, teaching to everyone;
- A network of
practitioners, of real people doing real things in the real world;
- A
network, a space of sharing and advanced benchmarking, a space for the general improvement, open to the richness of different intellectual approaches, a space for the spread of the existing knowledge and for drawing value out of the network;
- For
Competitiveness, Clusters and Innovation, trying to push trends, keeping up with latest ideas on the national and regional competitiveness systems.
You will see some changes in our website
www.tci-network.org, our virtual home, and also our headquarters in Barcelona moved to the 22@ Innovation District. A new look expressing the same core values as ever, that have been established in the “Statement of Values” and the “Code of Ethics” following last year proposal of the General Assembly. We have tried to improve communication both internally, to the TCI members and externally, to the global community. We represented TCI Network in several international forums and brought our influence to expert committees.
A big effort has been made to increase the membership base and their commitment to TCI. We tried to clarify and better communicate the benefits of becoming an individual/organizational member. More than 20 organizations believe in the great potential of TCI network to make true progress in the practice of cluster development, regional competitiveness and innovation support and decided to financially support TCI. Thanks to this, TCI Secretariat has been reinforced, both in terms of human resources and facilities.
This is a brief detail of the job done so far. However, there is still a lot to do and improve. The new Board after Cape Town will have to cope with new challenges and establish the same or new priorities. We will be fully satisfied if our work served to lay sound foundations for the future.
We are very much looking forward to seeing you in our Annual Global Conference, the place where we all meet once a year.
See you all in wonderful Cape Town!
TCI Directors:
Juan Manuel Esteban
Alberto Pezzi
Elisabeth Waelbroeck-Rocha
Lars Eklund
Arthur Bayhan
Nigel Gwynne-Evans
Klaus Haasis
Christian Ketels
Kevin Murphy
Alonso Ramos Vaca
