Europe, Middle East & Africa

There is a call for proposal ongoing about evaluating the German "Spitzencluster Wettbewerb" organized by the BMBF - the selection of up to 15 clusters among applying clusters in Germany to receive for financial support of up to €600m. The first round of candidates have just entered the final selection process.

This international study grew from the TCI 2007 Annual Conference in Portland-USA, and shows the benefit of cluster practitioners getting together, agreeing to work together and moving knowledge of clusters forward.

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

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.