Clusterland Upper Austria Ltd. was founded in December 2005 and manages five clusters (automotive, plastics, wood & timber construction, health technology, mechatronics) and 3 networks (human resources, design & media and environmental technologies) that were formerly hosted by the TMG - Upper Austrian Technology & Marketing Company. Clusterland is owned by TMG (61%), by the Upper Austrian Chamber of Commerce (19,5%) and by the Federation of Austrian Industries (19,5%).

Clusterland looks back at a history of 11 years of cluster management, where altogether more than 1.300 companies are embedded. The focus lies on “innovation through co-operation” and the statistics backing up this statement are impressive: 260 submitted, current and concluded cooperation projects among 1.200 companies have been initiated since the launch of the cluster initiatives. In total more than 800 events were organised, attracting more than 33.000 participants. Clusterland has a staff of 40 employees and a turnover of around 5 Mio.Euro.

In 2008 Clusterland launched a totally new activity – the Upper Austrian Cluster Academy – where 30 cluster managers and representatives of regional development agencies, ministries from 15 European countries participated to learn about the professional Upper Austrian cluster management. This activity will be continued in 2009.

Through its active participation and professional involvement in activities in the international arena (coordination of 3 Interreg IIIC projects, several FP6/FP7 projects, Leonardo da Vinci, EuropeAID) Clusterland Upper Austria managed to get an excellent international reputation. Werner Pamminger, as managing director of Clusterland Upper Austria, was among the nominees for the best cluster manager award 2008 at the Europe INNOVA Conference in Lyon 2008, where he also moderated a pre-conference workshop, the Cluster Managers Forum.

Another important aspect is that Clusterland actively supports TMG (Technology and Marketing Company of Upper Austria) in its activities of leading the PRO INNO Europe INNO Net CEE ClusterNetwork, being there Work Package leader for development and implementation of pilot project ideas. This enables already excellent relationships with cluster organisations in this region and can have a positive impact in motivating and animating the cluster organizations and managers in the Central and Eastern Europe to actively participate in the activities of the clustermanagers.eu. As a matter of fact, the idea of a “Cluster Academy” has been developed and supported by the CEE ClusterNetworks partners as well.