ICIA

Innovation Clusters

ICIA establishes and supports SME Innovation Clusters.

These comprise  Innovative start-ups, and Small and Medium Enterprises, as well as research and knowledge dissemination organisations and not-for-profit organisations.

Each Innovation Cluster is designed to stimulate innovative activity by promoting sharing of facilities and exchange of knowledge and expertise and by contributing effectively to knowledge transfer, networking, information dissemination and collaboration among its members.

The ICIA participate in initiatives that build a facilitating and supportive environment for SME innovation clusters, drawing on the CADIC methodology

What is a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Cluster?

Old Definition: “Geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, specialised suppliers, service providers, firms in related industries, and associated institutions in particular fields that compete and/or cooperate.” (Porter, Harvard Business Review 1998)
New Definition: “Network arrangements that, though embedded in, transcend geographical location, focus on global markets, operate as ad hoc and/or long term business networks, are ICT enabled, and are based on dynamic aggregations of capabilities of different SMEs.” (Damaskopoulos et al. Engineering Economics 2008)


Top-down versus Bottom-up Approaches to building SME clusters

Originally, following Porter’s ideas, clusters were always built top-down:

The reasons behind the current decline of the top–down:

• Regional oriented approaches which promoted structures perfectly adapted to benefit from governmental funding
• Inoperative and terribly slow to respond to market demands and firms’ innovation needs
• Overabundance of standard support ; bias towards technical solutions rather than towards addressing organisational and managerial deficits; lack of proper understanding SMEs’ cognitive and communicative routines (EU ADAPT, 1999)
• Inability to evolve from stage of co-location