What is the Food Cluster Initiative.

>Ghent, 2010

Food Cluster Initiative conference

How to build successfully regional clusters 

How to find support

December 8-10, 2010

Ghent - Belgium

Theme & Background

In its Europe 2020 new long term strategy, the European Commission aims to tackle the challenges of the reshaped social market economy and turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. By stimulating smart growth through innovation and knowledge building, an ‘Innovation Union’ with more competitive and innovative regions will arise. Strengthening partnerships between research, business and policy is one of the key innovation pathways to achieve this.

The EU also offers a distinctive policy instrument with its new macroregional approach in order to gather geographically-linked advanced and less advanced regions and clusters. After the successful Baltic Sea strategy, the Danube river basin will form the second macroregion to be served with a specific policy plan entitled the Danube Strategy. A communication including an action plan is due to be endorsed by the European Commission around mid-December. Next, the European Council will take the final decision on the Danube Strategy to be implemented in the years to come in June 2011.

The Food Cluster Initiative (FCI, http://www.foodclusterinitiative.eu/) is a network of regional clusters and is an intrinsic part of both policy plans, namely the Europe 2020 strategy and the macroregional approach. This network is designed to establish European clusters to enhance regional research capacity building and regional economic development with significant research and innovation impact at local level. The cooperating regions, from member states as well as associated countries, have the ambition to build the European Research Area in the food sector by defining regional strategies, investing in combined regional efforts and creating synergies between regional, national and Community-level programmes.

The FCI conference focuses on improving the links with industry in the triple helix when building regional clusters and on how to spot relevant support sources to ensure a sustainable concept. The audience will comprise relevant stakeholders from the European triple helix, among which participants from the European Commission, regional authorities, regional clusters, companies, RTD performers and also notably academics from all over Europe.

The following topics will be addressed:

• key experiences in cluster building (success stories, bottlenecks and success factors);
• the role of the different stakeholders (policy, research and industry) in building successful clusters;
• the impact of food clustering;
• funding schemes to further support the capacity building efforts of regional clusters;
• the future strategy of the Food Cluster Initiative

Furthermore, a series of interactive workshops will be organised in order to

• define future funding needs and ways to address them;
• improve cluster cooperation;
• evaluate the performance of clusters
   

The following output is expected to be delivered:

• applicable knowledge to refine and adjust your strategy in (future) cluster building;
• networking opportunities to further build up or improve the regional and joint strategies;
• the future strategy of the Food Cluster Initiative.