Web-Journal of the CADIC Cluster Facilitation WorkShop
The CADIC Cluster Facilitation workshop was held at LSE Bankside House on April 5th, 2011, in order to train the cluster facilitation teams from the CADIC core countries, founded in cluster work performed within the first half of phase I of the CADIC project. This web journal of the illustrates the initiation and specification efforts, in CADIC SME Clusters, of Cluster Relation Managers (CM), supported by Cluster Facilitators (CF) and RTD Country Coaches (CC).
Background to the Cluster Facilitation Workshop
During the first phase of the CADIC project, these roles and responsibilities have to be trained well in order to get everybody acquainted with their specific tasks and responsibilities. Due to the high importance of the SMEs ability and skills to initiate and run the cluster actively, especially the CMs in the catalyst SMEs need to be involved in the process of cluster initiation and specification closely together with the cluster facilitation team. The best way to train the CMs has been identified as in-service during the process of initiation/specification of their own cluster.
During the first half of the first project phase (until Dec 2010), workshops and meetings took place to initiate the clusters in the core countries, to specify goals and support requirements for the upcoming months. During the work with the Cluster Facilitation Teams, the CMs have received an in-service training, gaining substantial benefits from this close collaboration. The in-service training of the CMs has continued since then throughout the second half of CADIC phase 1
The centralised Cluster Facilitation workshop at LSE Bankside House involved the active participation of all Cluster Facilitation Teams except Greece, following up on these activities and bringing all country teams together at one place.
Aims of the Cluster Facilitation Workshop
– Giving the core country teams the chance for mutual exchange and knowledge flows not just between the members of specific country teams but also in between country teams.
– Summarising the past activities and the learning from the first project months and outlining the general direction as well as specific next steps for the country clusters
– Providing the Facilitation Teams with first ideas and draft versions of the planned CADIC tools & services, present possible benefits and solutions for cluster initiation and work in order to create a common understanding of the benefits, challenges and requirements for the CADIC tools & services.
– Presentation of a first draft of the CADIC Framework to SMEs and SME-AGs in order to inform them about the CADIC approach and related methodologies and receive feedback from the pilot users.
– Initiation of a dialogue between RTD country coaches as well as between catalyst SMEs in order to create awareness of challenges, problems and solutions in other CADIC core countries.
– Enabling the cluster facilitation teams to act as a team representing CADIC partners (RTD performers and SME Associations and Groupings) providing consultation to the SME based on their expertise and based on the SME’s requirements and support needs.
– Gaining understanding and commitment of the cluster facilitation teams about how to find, document and assess
pathways to value
Workshop process and results
During the workshop, a range of facilitation methodologies were applied, supported by an expert facilitation team from the London Multimedia Lab at the LSE, moderated by Bill Mayon-White. All presentations and report-outs given in the plenary sessions at the workshop were scribed. Scribing is a process whereby an expert scribe captures on a white board in real time, viewable by all participants, the gist of the discussions and issues raised in cartoon form, as an aide-memoire about what actually took place in the session.
This web journal gives an overview of the topics discussed in the workshop sessions, together with videos of the presentations and discussions and a first impression of results generated during the presentations and country team sessions. In addition, the scribing results for each session oafre presented on the web journal page for that session and PowerPoint files of the presentations may be downloaded from the relevant pages in the web journal.
the individual pages in the web journal can be accessed from the pull-down menu bar or by clicking on the names of the individual sessions in the sidebar.
