21.4.2010: 1st Darmstadt TCI Cluster Conference (Germany), 15th/16th April 2010
“Success and benefits of clusters and their measurability”
At Darmstadt Conference Center on 15th and 16th of April Hessenmetall Cluster-Initiative, the Chair of Cluster & Value Chain Management at Darmstadt University of Technology and MFG Baden-Württemberg organized the 1st Darmstadt TCI Cluster Conference in Germany. The conference topic was “Success and benefits of clusters and their measurability”. The conference attracted more than 50 scientists, politicians, entrepreneurs and cluster-managers.
The starting point of the conference was the assumption that clusters create benefits. Discussions and speeches focused on the question how to create benefits in Clusters, for whom and how to measure and document the benefits of clusters. As there is no single definition of clusters, but several quite different concepts in place which are all called “cluster”, there are different crucial success factors. The most important types of clusters are the following: clusters, which aim at supporting the member companies to provide supernormal rents, and clusters, which aim at promoting the region clusters, are located in. There are large clusters, which have a high international visibility because of awards, and smaller clusters with a regional visibility. All of the cluster-types entail different success factors.
However, all clusters face similar challenges: most clusters receive a certain funding by local authorities or a government. These subsidies are restricted to a certain period – between 3 and 6 years. After this funding period the cluster is required to finance itself by its participants. Thus, every cluster-management shall use the funding period to develop a sustainable business model – one characteristic for this is that the cluster-management provides services to the members which help the individual company to gain a competitive advantage. Consequently one key to successful clusters is the ability of cluster-managers to anticipate wishes and needs of their client companies. In order to document the benefits of their work, cluster-managers shall use some sort of measurement tool to make the benefits visible for the cluster members. Some of the latest tools have been demonstrated at the conference in Darmstadt.
Nevertheless the funding period is quite necessary to start up a cluster from the scratch as in the beginning the cluster-management has to create an environment of trust which is necessary basis for the work. All of the participants agreed to the findings that cluster-management has to focus on cluster benefits for its focal companies from the very beginning.
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