mClusters

'Integration of Europe's Mobile ICT Community: Networking Innovation Activities, Entrepreneurs, Clusters and Leading Stakeholders in the Mobile Information and Communication Technology Sector'

The mClusters project will be centred on local but globally connected innovation clusters in order to achieve greater benefits from Information and Communications Technology (ICT). The project brings together groups of advanced users of information society technology with experts from academia, industry and supporting institutions to foster the exchange of best practice in the creation of new applications, and to diffuse related knowledge. The project aims to create synergies among regional as well as pan-European projects through strategic matching and collaboration between investors, high-tech firms, and technology specialists at universities and public R&D centres.

This exchange of knowledge will enable the mClusters project to resolve some of the complexities of governance among stakeholders, strategic business alliances and innovative public-private partnerships. It will derive local, regional and European policy lessons, and communicate them to a variety of audiences including business enterprises and investor groups.

The overarching goal of the mClusters project is to:
Encourage co-operation among leading and developing European industry clusters within the wireless information and communications technology sector to establish a foundation for new projects, new firms, inward investment and commercialisation of existing resources. It is envisaged that this will promote regional innovation, development and growth, in line with the ambitions set out in the Lisbon Objectives.

The above goal involves 8 objectives:

• To identify and promote selected clusters across Europe.
• To use collaboration platforms to analyse each cluster, and to exchange experience and specialised knowledge between clusters.
• To create joint programmes between the clusters, in which regional expertise and competences will be exchanged in order to exploit synergies.
• To compare and analyse the knowledge and experiences of the developed and less-developed clusters to provide an understanding of success factors and weaknesses.
• To summarise policy experiences related to cluster developments and regional growth.
• To link cluster activities more closely with the evolution of other regional, national and EU initiatives, including PAXIS and Gate2Growth.
• To ensure that the organisations and procedures for collaboration that evolve in the course of the project become integrated elements of pan-European networks.
• To ensure continuing dissemination of knowledge and implementation of the strategies developed in the course of the project.

For more information please visit: http://www.europe-innova.org/index.jsp?type=page&lg=en&classificationId=5021&classificationName=mClusters&cid=5107