Days of clusters 2016

The Balkan and Black Sea Conference “Days of Clusters” conference is a leading cluster event in the Southeast Europe. The 7th “Days of Clusters 2016: Creating Cluster-Based Economic Development for a Sustainable Region” triggered the synergy among the scientists, the policy-makers and the private-sector practitioners, on national and regional levels. Mission of the this years conference was to strengthen cross cluster collaboration between countries in the Balkan and Black Sea Region with aim to maximize the cluster concept capitalization in their economies. URBAN INNO was presented as Best Practice on how (urban) innovation projects can contribute to strengthen competitiveness of European regions.

The conference contributed to:

• Socially balanced economic development and employment creation in the BBS region.
• Enabling business environment for SME development based on collaboration between public sector, academia, financial organizations, media and business community.
• Establishment of the public-private dialogue for advocating for the needs of SMEs.
• Exchange of knowledge and experiences in the cluster based economic development in developed countries, countries in transition and developing countries.
• Transnational cross clusters networking.
• Efficient approach to EU and other development funds.

URBAN INNO was presented as Best Practice on how (urban) innovation projects can contribute to strengthen competitiveness of European regions.

Clusters and business networks have the potential to be assemblies of partners and stakeholders with common goals, who should be supporting each other by sharing knowledge and expertise with their peers, giving added-value to not only to their own business, but also to the region as a whole. The basis for this is: Trust. A simple word with a huge importance!

CyberForum – a regional IT & high-tech quadruple helix cluster located in Karlsruhe (Germany) – is taken as a best practice. In CyberForum cluster managers play an important role as neutral and trust-building intermediators for the innovation ecosystem, bringing together relevant stakeholders and supporting innovation processes particularly at SMEs. To do so, CyberForum has implemented several projects on European and national level, all focusing on boosting the innovation potential and competitiveness of the Technology Region Karlsruhe and its partnering regions.

One of these projects is Urban Inno; it´s addressing the challenge to make Central Europe more innovative and competitive by maximizing the innovation potential of smaller and medium sized urban ecosystems. To achieve this goal, Urban Inno builds on lessons learned and experience of former projects, particularly on participatory methodologies for achieving Open Innovation, and is utilizing clusters as drivers for innovation, enhancing the linkage and cooperation of actors.

Read more about the conference at: http://daniklastera.clusterhouse.rs/