Europe

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.

Stockholm, Sweden. 22-23 January 2008
TCI Board of Directors was kindly invited to participate in the European Presidential Conference on Innovation and Clusters, organised by the Swedish and Slovenian governmet on 22-23 January 2008 in Stockholm, Sweden, under the Slovenian Presidency.

Within the framework of cooperation of TCI as international consultative institution in the Euro-Latin American Forum, some members of TCI had the opportunity to participate in the 2007 Forum Conference that took place on October 24-26 in Turin (Italy), where more than 250 participants from 14 countries gathered to share ideas and promote regional development in their regions.
En el marco de colaboracion de TCI como institucion consultiva internacional del Forum Euro-Latinoamericano, representantes de TCI tuvieron la oportunidad de participar en la Conferencia 2007 del Forum que tuvo lugar del 24 al 26 de Octubre en Torino-Italia y donde mas de 250 participantes de 14 paises se reunieron para compartir ideas innovadoras y fomentar el desarrollo regional en sus regiones.

The Innovation Journalism Program at Stanford University will get more Finnish fellows for next five years. Helsingin Sanomat Foundation and Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, have agreed to pay the necessary fees, travel expenses and living costs for three Finnish Innovation journalism fellows per year for six months, starting February 2008. The total sum of money invested for five years is approximately 700.000 euros.

The European Cluster Observatory - a new platform for information on and analysis of clusters, cluster organisations and cluster policies in Europe, produced by the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Stockholm School of Economics (www.sse.edu/csc), has been launched.

The EU Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potocnik, held a speech in favor of Innovation Journalism at the Stanford po Stanford regional innovation journalism conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on June 14th.

At a TCI dialogue symposium on policy renewal in San Sebastian hosted by the Basque Country, five regions of Europe with substantial experience in cluster policy met to discuss and learn from each other. The idea of this symposium already arised in the Annual Conference in Lyon in 2006 during one of the breakouts on policy renewal.

Conference in Copenhagen on December 14 - starting point for PRO INNO Europe!
PRO INNO Europe is a new initiative of Directorate General Enterprise and Industry which aims to become the focal point for innovation policy analysis, learning and development in Europe, with the view to learning from the best and contributing to the development of new and better innovation policies in Europe.

Aho group report

The European Commission - faced with the increasing challenges of globalization - set up in late 2005 a group of four high-level experts, chaired by former Prime Minister of Finland, Esko Aho, to assess the situation and make proposals to boost Europe's research and innovation performance.

December 14, 2005 marks the launch of a comprehensive cluster training program in Poland. At the kick off conference in Warsaw, TCI Executive Director Kristofer Erlandsson was one of the key note speakers.