Europe, Middle East & Africa

Article by Arthur Bayhan, member of TCI Board of Directors
Globalisation is a reality that countries in the Middle East can no longer escape and competitiveness is the only way to benefit from globalization and not become its victim.

10-11 July 2008, University of Deusto, San Sebastian, Spain
Hosted by Orkestra-Basque Institute of Kompetitiveness and Development and the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism of the Basque Country Government, in collaboration with TCI-The Competitiveness Institute, the event will bring together a range of government experts working on the fields of competitiveness benchmarking and competitiveness policy to exchange experiences and generate ideas.

4th Competitiveness Forum
9-10 June, Tornio-Haparanda, Finland
TCI-The Competitiveness Institute, Kemi-Tornio University and Prodemic Consulting Group collaborate in this 4th Competitiveness Forum with focus on Creative Clusters and Crossborder Collaborations.

Warsaw-Poland, 22-23 April 2008
INNO-LEARNING PLATFORM - A targeted action to support trans-national policy learning and policy cooperation on Innovation.
The event is organised by the European Commission, DG ENTR, under the framework of the INNO-Learning Platform initiative, in cooperation with the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PAED), the Mazowieckie Region and the Ministry of Economy of Poland.

Clusterland OÖ GmbH
Linz, Austria. 17-19 June, 2008
How to build up and manage successfully cluster-initiatives – based on 10 years experience in Upper Austria.

Debrecen, Hungary. 24 April 2008
The main aim of the conference is to promote the advantages of intercompany cooperation within the industry. Organized by the IT Cluster of Észak-alföldi Region, the conference is entirely practical oriented, supplying the participants with real life examples of successful and unsuccessful cluster and partner initiatives.

A symposium on innovation policy
Brussels, 15-16 April 2008

Internship, Summer 2008
The Executive office of the National Competitiveness Council of Armenia is seeking global and local market researchers. Under the direct supervision of the CEO of the National Competitiveness Council of Armenia, the market researchers will carry out research and analysis of global and local markets in selected sectors, industries and clusters.

German federal government recognizes Baden-Württemberg Connected e.V. cluster initiative as the competence network with best service.
The Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) in Berlin awarded first place in its nationwide Competence Network 2008 competition to the Baden-Württemberg: Connected e.V. (bwcon) business initiative.
MFG Baden-Württemberg has organized and managed the cluster initiative for over ten years within the framework of a service agreement.

2nd International Conference on Clusters
Opatija (Croatia), 28 April 2008
The Ministry of the Economy, Labour and Entrepreneurship, under the auspices of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, organizes the Second International Conference on Clusters.
The aim of the conference is to exchange experiences on cluster development policies, networking of the already existing and establishment of new clusters in the area of South Eastern Europe.