TCI Evaluation Symposium: Survey of Experiences

Written 26.10.2006 16:02 by Franziska Blunck Print Send article

As agreed at the conclusion of the TCI symposium on evaluation in Washington, DC on September 15th, this survey is intended to begin the process of developing best practices for measuring competitiveness and evaluating the effectiveness of competitiveness, cluster, and value-chain policy initiatives. Completed surveys will be posted on the website, www.competitiveness.org/evaluation, so that practitioners can benefit from each others' knowledge and experiences. Toward this end, please provide the most complete answers possible to the questions below.

Question 1- 7 will ask you for your Professional Background and Organization Information, question 8 - 13 will treat your experiences and the last two questions refer to relevant literature to build up this Platform on Evaluation, Thank you for helping us!

Evaluation questionaire

Your e-mail address:

1. Name:

2. Organization:

3. Phone number:

4. Areas of expertise (cluster initiative implementation, policy evaluation, market analysis, value-chain diagnostics, public-private dialogue facilitation, etc.):

5. Areas of interest (that you would like to know more about):

6. Are there specific issues related to competitiveness evaluation where you feel you have particularly strong insight or experience and you would be willing to share it with interested peers?:

7. Which (if any) issues related to competitiveness evaluation do you think can best be addressed collaboratively? Would you consider participating in a workgroup targeting this subject?:

8. Within the typology of evaluation efforts developed at the first symposium on evaluation in Barcelona last spring – see the link above – where do the assessments or evaluations that you have participated in belong?:

mapping or evaluation of naturally occurring clusters: evaluation of individual cluster initiatives: measurement of local economic impact in areas where cluster policy has been used:

Others? Remarks?:

9. What has generally been the purpose of the evaluations you have been involved in?:

a) Process evaluation: To better understand the techniques & strategies used: b) Resource effectiveness and prioritization: b1) help donor institution judge the merits of cluster policy relative to other: b2) To help prioritize between competing clusters for further investment.: b3) assess effectiveness of implementing organization or project manager: c) Attribution & policy formulation: e.g. To better understand which types of CI:

Others/general comments:

10. What type of logical or analytical framework did you use for your evaluation? (E.g.:'before - after' snapshots, compare performance to a local economy/national industry/reference cluster, etc.) Did you distinguish between outcomes and impact?:

11. Which evaluation criteria have you used? What indicators have you used to measure competitiveness? Please list and report any challenges or unique solutions you have found:

12. What methodologies did you use to collect data? At what point(s) did you do this (before beginning, at start/conclusion, number of years afterward...)? Please explain any difficulties that arose during this process, and how you overcame them:

13. How did you analyze the data? Did you use a correlation or regression analysis, or any other form of statistical analysis?:

14. Are there any publicly available documents containing evaluations of the CIs you have been involved in implementing or assessing? If so, please note title of the document and either copy and paste the URL below or send it to TCI:

15. What resources do you personally rely upon when conducting competitiveness evaluation projects – articles, papers, books, websites..? Where possible, include a level of detail typically necessary for a bibliography.: