Europe

23-24th February 2010, Dortmund, Germany
Over 50 delegates are expected to attend the conference on the potential for cooperation between business incubation environments and clusters, organized under Europe Innova initiative and to be held in Dortmund the 23-24 February 2010.

Deadline for registration: 15 February 2010, San Sebastian, Spain

Orkestra-Basque Institute for Competitiveness will offer a course Microeconomics of Competitiveness (MOC), designed by Harvard to improve the global competitiveness of firms and territories. The course focuses into the company’s and its enviroment’s micro-economic factors to help participating representatives of companies and institutions understanding and transforming the competitiveness of their organizations and territory.

21 January 2010, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
A workshop on “Cluster policy, recent experiences and challenges for the future” organized by Fundación Caixa Galicia will take place on 21 January 2010 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in which TCI President Alberto Pezzi has been invited to present TCI Network.

Article by Örjan Sölvell, Member of TCI Board of Advisors
The European Cluster Observatory aims to be a hub for clusters and cluster organisations providing analysis and facilitating collaboration. The Observatory website will consists of two parts: a knowledge platform primarily aimed at policy makers and government officials, and a collaboration platform aimed primarily aimed at cluster organisation managers and their members.

The TCI member Brandenburg Economic Development Board GmbH (ZAB) is the main contact point for all issues relating to business settlements, innovative medium-sized companies and technology-oriented start-up firms. ZAB is Brandenburg's central contact for inquiries concerning innovation and (external) business promotion as well as energy, technology transfer and cluster management.

Orkestra-Basque Institute of Competitiveness (University of Deusto) invites applicants for the position of junior researcher to work in the department of regional development and innovation systems. The post is based in San Sebastian, Spain, at Orkestra’s offices on the University of Deusto campus.

14-15 December 2009, Berlin, Germany
Within the TACTICS initiative, a workshop on "Promoting cluster excellence - measuring and benchmarking cluster“ was held in Berlin, Germany, the 14-15 December 2009. Numerours cluster experts gather together to discuss on cluster related key issues such as cluster excellence, benchmarking and quality criteria for cluster organisations, measuring the performance of clusters and channelling research and innovation funding through clusters.

Article by Christian Ketels, TCI Secretary General
When TCI was launched a decade ago, clusters were still a relatively new concept for economic development professionals. At the time, one of the main goals of TCI was thus to inform policy makers of the potential this approach had, to encourage more cluster efforts to be launched. Since then, the environment has dramatically changed. In Europe and many parts of North America there is hardly a region that does not have some sort of cluster effort. And the idea is catching on elsewhere, from Latin America to Asia to Africa. But support is, of course, not unilateral. And it turns out that looking at how criticism has changed over time can actually tell us quite a bit on how we can improve further improve the quality of cluster efforts.

In the 12th TCI Annual Global Conference Jyväskylä 2009, the Cluster-Oriented Regional Information System – CORIS was presented by Nicole Litzel from Institute for Employment Research, Germany. CORIS is a methodology to identify and analyze regional clusters that was developed in 2000 at the University of Regensburg, Germany. It consists of a web-based instrument to provide a picture of industrial networks. It shows up regional supply chains using intelligent location maps with detailed firm-specific data sheets. It makes structured cluster-relevant information and best-practice examples accessible for all interested parties.

3-4 December 2009, Brussels, Belgium
TCI organizational member Europa InterCluster is organizing InterCluster’09, which will be the meeting point for European cluster leaders during two days in Brussels. This year InterCluster will be an interactive and productive event, made up of 2 "World cafés" where all participants will have the opportunity to work on two major topics: the emergence of World-Class European clusters and the excellence of clusters.