Cluster policies and programmes are born as an effort to boost the competitiveness of a given territory. In the lifespan of a policy, it usually goes through different stages, its prominence fluctuates in the political agenda and ultimately it evolves.
Cluster policies have been present in Catalonia, Lower Austria and Denmark for a long time, and although the partners have known each other for more than a decade and meet regularly in cluster fora, there are not many opportunities to have a profound discussion on the respective experiences.
Thus, the CLIP project was conceived to have an organised and structured dialogue on cluster policy to share experiences, challenge the status quo to revamp policies that were born more than twenty years ago.
Like any other policy, cluster policy is made up of different components, it is complex and multifaceted. Given the project settings, a timeframe of 12 months and a very lean budget, the work required focus.
Therefore, it was decided to focus the attention on a limited number of elements that were common to all three partners.
Specifically, the three joint and specific challenges to be addressed during the lifespan of CLIP were:
1 - The pertinence of evolving from a single-level cluster programme towards a multilevel approach.
2 - Improving the governance model both from a cluster perspective and from the system.
3 - Exploring the role and relationship of cluster policy with other policies: reaching its full potential as the intersection of several policies.
The Design Options Paper (DOP) does not claim to be a comprehensive document on cluster policies, programmes and the challenges faced by the three partners but a limited selection of those challenges that feel more salient at the moment of writing.