Home » TCI Network » About TCI

10th Anniversary of TCI founding

Article by Alberto Pezzi, TCI Secretary

Here we are. Even if for some of us it seems it happened yesterday, last week TCI has celebrated its tenth anniversary.
That first conference, organized in Barcelona by something more than an informal group of cluster practitioners (already from all five continents and gathering some of the probably most knowledgeable people on a still young cluster theory), took place on 3-5 November 1998 and it could be considered TCI foundation.

Ten years later, when we can easily find an event related with clusters almost every week somewhere and while cluster approach is firmly consolidated as a mainstream policy in many regions around the world, it is difficult to imagine the importance and the peculiarity of that meeting and the huge amount of resources, tacit knowledge and what we can call “powerful networking” that was put together in that days in Barcelona.

Important progress has been made since then and maybe many TCI members don’t need to know about “Nuts and Bolts of Cluster Development” (the theme of that first conference) any more, but TCI ideas, concepts and objectives are still, and even more, valid today.

TCI was conceived as a network of cluster practitioners and a great part of its value proposition today is still linked to this origin and to its members. The idea of bringing together people with different backgrounds and affiliations working on the same field (and on the field) to discuss and to share knowledge on how to improve the competitiveness of their regions, was really a powerful one. TCI is composed by real people bringing their experience and aiming to learn from other people dealing with similar problems in another corner of the world. This great variety of opinions, social and economic backgrounds is certainly the richness of our network and the value of inclusiveness and diversity has been and will continue to be one of TCI most valuable assets.

Last TCI annual conference in Cape Town, has shown the validity and current value of TCI mission aimed “to improve living standards and local competitiveness of regions across the world by enhancing cluster-based competitiveness and development initiatives”. Regional initiatives centered in Africa or Latin America and their bottom-up and knowledge sharing approach are the evidence that TCI could represent a useful and respected tool for policy makers worldwide. The way ahead and the challenges that the world economy is facing today are showing once more the importance of the real economy and the need of combining company strategies with a competitive business environment that are the basis of cluster-based development approach.

Thanking all TCI members and all the people that make that happen would take too long. I will make therefore a special mention only to the “founding members” who took the lead and decided to coagulate a good idea into an organization bringing something more that goodwill to that meeting in 1998.

Alberto Pezzi
TCI Secretary
apezzi @ tci-network.org

Note: Alberto Pezzi was the first employee and first General Manager of TCI-The Competitiveness Institute when it was established in 1998. Since 2003 he is Secretary General and member of the Board of Directors.
Alberto Pezzi is head of competitiveness analysis and foresight at the Observatory for Industrial Foresight (OPI) of the Catalan Government.