MISSION

The 6th TCI Global Conference will focus on the development of methodologies and policies for building Innovative Clusters and Innovation Systems. Building Innovative Clusters is the new challenge and a natural extension of clustering.

A Conference for the Professional Community
The TCI Global Conference brings together senior people from different professional environments who in various ways are involved in innovative clusters and innovation systems.

• People from business, universities and government will see presentations of ways to build mutual trust.
• Cluster facilitators will be shown how to improve their inter-organisational collaboration methods for upgrading business networks and clusters.
• Policy makers at various levels will exchange best-practice experience for the design and implementation of policy initiatives.
• Innovative clusters can tap into networks of expertise
• Clustering consultants can meet with prospective clients

From Clusters to Innovative Clusters
The cluster approach is now a well-established tool for the analysis of industry dynamics and is a basis for policy initiatives to foster growth and economic development.

Not all clusters are innovative. Some of them are clusters only in the sense of the co-location of firms in a specific industry, giving cost saving and productivity benefits to their members, but with very limited collaboration.

It has been suggested that an innovative cluster must have some additional qualities related to "how and who" rather than to "why and what":

• co-opetition to produce the virtuous spiral of innovation-imitation-innovation.
• close collaboration between business, academia and government.
• proper governance for increasing co-ordination among partners with complementary competences.
• trust across the various organisational cultures

These properties are important for the analysis of successful regional innovation systems. They give focus to the intangible assets of a cluster, of the communicationals skills and leadership within the "Triple Helix", the close-knit collaboration between business, universities and government that creates a responsiveness to innovation and valuable opportunities.

Conference Form and Objectives of the Conference
Each session of the conference will be a combination of a keynote speech, a moderated roundtable and focussed workshops. The objectives of the conference are:

• to synthesize the state of the art for cluster development and cluster policy initiatives
• to highlight some key aspects of the leadership and management of innovative clusters.
• to enable a selection of potential innovative clusters to participate in peer-to-peer knowledge exchange with participants and experts gathered at the conference.