Clusters for Economic Development

We have known about clusters as a “driver” of economic development for at least twenty years. Yet, the practice of how we build clusters is only now emerging. The reason is simple: the process of building clusters is exceedingly complex, and it has taken us time to discover the simple rules needed to guide the process.

These simple rules involve a combination of tools, frameworks, skills and protocols that can be learned. To make the process understandable, we look at four dimensions:

a) Articulation.-– Data can provide powerful insights into the strengths of your economy, or it can bog you down in a sea of numbers and charts. Understanding how to use public data to identify clusters involves learning how to use the available data. But here is the big shift in the past ten years: the data are one the web and easily available. You no longer need an expensive outside consultant to define your clusters. Using smart data, you can now interact with data to gain insights and form hypotheses about what development paths could be developed.

b) Activation.– Data looks backward, so it is an imperfect guide to the future. The opportunities in cluster development come in uncovering the invisible network of relationships that offer the potential of powerful new collaborations. The challenge involves activating these networks with powerful conversations. These conversations are framed around promising opportunities that link and leverage assets in the region. The most promising conversations, we have found, can be designed at the intersection of the edges of clusters.

c) Acceleration.– Conversation is only a start. To design and build a cluster, you need to accelerate the collaborations quickly and move ideas into action. The process is highly experimental. You are testing hypotheses. This is where Strategic Doing comes in. It is a lightweight, but powerful strategic discipline that forms and tests collaborations quickly. This discipline build trust at scale. Without trust and the imperative of reciprocity that provides the foundation for trust, no meaningful collaborations are possible.

d) Assessment.– Moving toward measurable outcomes sustains the collaboration. Bringing a discipline to success metrics and using these metrics as learning tools — figuring out what works — is another key element of Strategic Doing. Assessments leads to agility, the capacity to change direction quickly, to move toward opportunity as we learn by doing. It’s running to daylight. Integrated assessment accelerates collective learning. We’ve learned that leaders in agile regions — San Diego is an excellent example — lean into data-driven assessments. In this way, they find new opportunities faster.

Source:

http://economicdevelopment.org/2015/12/the-how-of-developing-clusters/