Found at: http://www.competitiveness.org/article/articleprint/818/-1/84

TCI and Oregon hosted world's first Symposium on linking Clustering and Sustainability

As a precursor to TCI's Annual Global Competitiveness Conference in Portland (October 8-12, 2007), the world's first Symposium on Clusters and Sustainable Economic Development was hosted in Portland by TCI and the State of Oregon on May 3-4, 2007. The Symposium offered a unique chance to interact and network before the Annual Conference, and aimed to address important issues when it comes to linking clustering and sustainability.

Sustainability is an increasingly important issue that needs to be discussed among people in the clustering field in order to approach the potential role of clusters as an important brick in sustainable regional development. This Symposium on Clusters and Sustainable Economic Development has been an opportunity to examine the relation between clustering and sustainability, exchange ideas and find new areas for collaboration before the Portland Conference.

What came out in the symposium was that there are already many existing activities in the field of sustainability, but that often they are not coordinated or do even know about their existance or concrete nature. The participants decided to build on what already exists as for example the Oregon Business Plan and Innovation Council with a focus on creating quality jobs using sustainability as a platform to accomplish the plans. There was a general agreement that a move from talking and recognizing to action was necessary and to create initiatives not institutions.

One of the groups focused on how to create a Bioregional Capital Market and how to accelerate investment into green industries (green exchange), seeing capital as part of the solution instead as a problem. The traditional model of ROI cannot be valid any more and needs re-definition. A first step could be the usage of carbon equivalent markets.


Another group analyzed the information systems and communication behind (collaboratory-um) to create better connections and proactive partnership building e.g. talking about green infrastructure. To market green sustainability behaviour must be changed and this can be done best by storytelling and messaging. Oregon has a lot of ideas in a toolkit but does not use them (salons, wikis, kids teach, youtubes, vignettes...)

One of the discussion area was the use of already existing technology tools for collaboration like building a Wikipage for enforcing clusters or for the conference.

Brilliant Cluster Information was the lemma for another the groups with the economic prosperity goals of growing the sustainable technology clusters (as providers for other industries and clusters), promote sustainability as underlying systems to increase competitive advantages and value the structure already existing in Portland, positioning the region. A framework will be needed and clarity for the needs in collaboration.

Integrating Sustainability into Oregon's economic strategy

The participants realized that the TCI conference could be a tool to improve what is already good in Portland, showing their assets, getting feedback and learn how things are done in other countries. Therefore we must stress out the global aspect of sustainability and look for global best practices. One of the groups focused especially on the TCI conference in October and how to build a global learning platform, sharing expertise, empowering champions, promoting the cascadian values, collaborating, being innovative and above all have a lot of fun!

For more information on the outcomes of this symposium contact Glenn Montgomery