Building Innovation Excellence of World Class: The Cluster as an Instrument of Spatial Governance in the European Union

Abstract

European spatial governance is becoming an intriguing mix of ideas from the economic, political and cultural spheres. This article asserts that, in the EU's spatial planning, the cluster is increasingly part of a hybrid spatial politics, here named the ‘cluster gaze’, based on the interplay of innovation‐oriented political rationality and spatial governance. To study this process, the article provides an empirical investigation into selected EU documentation. The investigation is based on two perspectives. First, the cluster is analysed as a mediating instrument to stimulate and rescale transnational market developments in the EU. Second, the cluster is studied as an instrument of spatial management — one that builds on a business managerial ethos and endorses a specific hierarchical spatial imaginary and a cluster evidence base to assess the productivity and efficiency of European clusters. Both of these perspectives pave the way for a European ‘politics of cluster excellence’ that is about the constant sharpening of cluster practices, continuous evaluation and ranking, and the enhancement of cluster performance to rise from the ‘European league’ towards the ‘world class’.

The role of policies and the contribution of cluster agency in the development of biotech open innovation ecosystem

“…Our research provides interesting implications for policy makers and contributes to the literature on clusters and open innovation in two ways. On the one hand, while the performance and associated positive externalities of clusters have attracted much attention among researchers at a micro-level (Artz, Kim, and Orazem, 2016;Delgado, Porter and Stern, 2014;Lechner and Leyronas, 2012;Gilbert, McDougall, and Audretsch, 2008;McCann and Folta, 2011), we focus on public cluster policy and the associated meso-perspective which has hardly been raised (Ahlqvist, 2014;Boschma and Fornahl, 2011;Garone, Maffioli, de Negri, Rodriguez and Vázquez-Baré 2015;Nishimura and Okamuro, 2011). On the other hand, open innovation has been mainly studied at the level of companies, and there is a need to assess the impact of regional dynamics (unfolding within the innovation ecosystem) in terms of providing a favorable context for technological developments, open innovation practices and sustainable growth (Chesbrough and Bogers, 2014;West and Bogers, 2014).…”

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“…The European Commission proposed the World Class Cluster concept to strengthen global competitiveness through better cluster policies, greater transnational cooperation and the integration of innovative SMEs into clusters (European Commission, 2008). Strong clusters can develop into world-class innovation and business centers, based on high-quality R&D and education systems (Europa InterCluster, 2010) with active market and technology leaders (Ahlqvist, 2014). These clusters focus on integrating with global business, fostering new technologies and creating new industries (Büscher, Schierenbeck, 2012), which contributes to the development of regions and increases the competitiveness of companies, also bringing higher returns to investors (Meier zu Köcker et al, 2010).…”