Sharing experiences and practices across transnational regions

Objectives of questionnaire

Facilitation of transfer of knowledge, ideas, good practice and examples (WP1)

Sharing and dissemination of good practice (WP2)

Sharing marketing & promotion techniques (WP3)

Evidence of research and transnational working

3 themes

Benchmarking Cluster organisation and development Cluster promotion and marketing

Method

See document

BenchmarkingImpact of clusters for rural economy

Cluster working is important: Existance of

Strategic documents Data collection

BenchmarkingImpact of clusters for rural economy

Data collection All regions have one or

more systems One partner: 5 different

systems Quality is rather low

Possibilities for improvement (data collection)

BenchmarkingTypology of cluster groups

40 cluster groups in total Between 2 and 10 clusters per region Cluster working is a rather young

phenomenon 700 entrepreneurs are member of a cluster 23 of the 40 groups = a result of Collabor8 4 of the 8 partners started with clusters within

Collabor8

BenchmarkingTypology of cluster groups

0,00

50,00

100,00

150,00

200,00

250,00

300,00

350,00

Cultura

l

Creat

ive

Country

side

Recreat

ion

Hospita

lity

Loca

l Foo

d

Other

*

BenchmarkingTypology of cluster groups Collabor8 clusters (new clusters):

0,00% 20,00% 40,00% 60,00% 80,00% 100,00%

120,00%

1

Other*

Local Food

Hospitality

Recreation

Countryside

Creative

Cultural

Country sector is newSucces of ‘local food’ sector in clusters is decreasing

BenchmarkingTypology of cluster groups Theme or locality based:

22

14

2

Locality-based

Theme-based

Mixture of both

BenchmarkingStandards & awardsQuality and eco-labelling: About 50% of the entrepreneurs have a

standard or award

Cluster organisation & developmentOrganisation

13

8

12

Organisation of clusters: numbers of clusters

Bottom-up

Top-down

Mixture of both

Cluster organisation & developmentResults

Motivation of entrepreneurs to participate: Sharing experiences, knowledge, practices Sharing ideas on ‘sence of place’ Influence, lobbying strenght Reducing costs, increasing income Networking Increasing visitors in the region

Cluster organisation & developmentMonitoring

Monitoring of cluster-working is basic or absent

Only Merthyr Tydfil is working on qualitative issues

Monitoring economical value is totally absent

Some regions request good examples

Cluster organisation & developmentDifficulties

Trust in organising government Trust in the other entrepreneurs Time available of entrepreneurs Talking vs. direct action

Cluster organisation & developmentHow does it work?

A good Code of Practice is not yet very established Code of Practice

3

1317

Established

Under development

None

Cluster organisation & developmentHow does it work?Capacity of self-management: Involvement of official organisations is

important Capacity of self - management

14%

44%

42% Entirely self-managed

Partly self-managed

Requiring active support

Problem: trust in government is rather low

Cluster promotion & marketingStrategic organisation

Availability of a central policy: Strategic documents: only 3 regions have one,

3 under development Strategic support on attraction of visitors:

most of the regions have it, but only 43% is considered to be sufficient

Only 3 regions give/have strategic support on cluster promotion

Cluster promotion & marketingIn practice

Promotion & marketing of the region is important (vs. poor strategic organisation)

Adoption of a brand is less common (5 of 8) Use of the brand is connected to the use of

‘sence of place’

Cluster promotion & marketingMarket segmentation/new technologies

6 of 8 regions consider market segmentation important

6 of 8 regions use new technologies

ConclusionsMethodology: 3 questionnaires: interesting to see how

Collabor8 evolves

ConclusionsCluster-working: Working with clusters is important, but young Impact of Collabor8 on cluster-working is high:

23 of 40 clusters Availability of quality- and eco-awards is low, but

under development Hospitality is the most prolific sector, followed by

Local food and Recreation. Importance of Local food is decreasing

ConclusionsResults and difficulties of cluster working: Lack of good monitoring Lack of quantitative or qualitative figures Lack of confidence between entrepreneurs and

government Collabor8-partners are all governmental Only 14% of clusters = self managed

Thanks to: Sirka Lüdtke, Ghent University, for elaborating

the template Jan Van den Berghe, SPK, for handling the data

and making the report Andrew & Claire Gray, ERA 21, for feed-back You, for giving the data