European observatory for clusters and industrial change : report on cooperation models in manufacturing clusters to pool critical and non-critical resources

In 2008, the European Commission published the communication: "Towards world-class clusters in the European Union: Implementing the broad-based innovation strategy". This document is a commonly accepted vision towards developing and promoting clusters in Europe. The document defines clusters as "a group of firms, related economic actors, and institutions that are located near each other and have reached a sufficient scale to develop specialised expertise, services, resources, suppliers and skills". In Europe, clusters are commonly represented by cluster organisations that are "legal entities that support the strengthening of collaboration, networking and learning in innovation clusters and act as innovation support providers by providing or channelling specialised and customised business support services to stimulate innovation activities, especially in SMEs". Therefore, cluster organisations have a key role in promoting cooperation and facilitating interactions between their members, as well as with organisations outside their memberships. The purpose of this report is to explore the role of cluster organisations and other SME intermediaries (business networks, technology centres, science parks) as facilitators of cooperation between firms active in the manufacturing sector. It aims to showcase selected examples of such cooperation and extract lessons learnt and conclusions from them that can be relevant for policy-making, as well as for the European cluster community.