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EU Cluster Conference 2022: A recap of activities

Written by EURADA's ECCP team

 

Last Monday 26 October, the 8th edition of the European Cluster Conference 2022 took place in the amazing city of Prague in the Czech Republic. The conference offered a space for the cluster community to discuss cluster-related policy developments at EU, national and regional levels and provided a unique opportunity for the cluster community to meet again physically. The EURADA secretariat, as a partner of the European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP), organised one of the most successful EU Matchmaking editions as a side event of the conference. This article highlights a general overview of the event, a review of the project’s relevancy and an update of the upcoming events not to be missed.

 

Context

The European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP) is a dynamic online community assisting cluster organisations across Europe and beyond to connect, communicate and collaborate. The advanced and innovative platform provides daily news, opportunities and collaboration for industrial clusters across Europe, disseminating and showcasing the influence of European clusters in pioneering industries and expanding markets throughout the world.

The goal of this platform is to become the EU online hub for cluster stakeholders (cluster organisations, policymakers and other related stakeholders from the cluster ecosystem) and the reference one-stop-shop for stakeholders in third countries aiming to set up partnerships with European counterparts.Among the multiple services offered, EURADA is coordinating a few interesting programmes the platform provides, such as the protagonists of this week, the “Matchmaking event”, “Clusters meet Regions”, and “ClusterXchange”.

The Matchmaking

We welcomed Autumn with the latest Matchmaking event arranged in Prague. EURADA’s team organised this matchmaking event within the European Cluster Conference and offered a dedicated framework to find potential business partners.  The event gathered clusters, companies, business networks and scaling-up support organisations, and investors from the EU (and non-EU COSME), countries of the European Economic Area (EEA) and countries of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) looking for future project partners, collaboration agreements, or specific products or services.

The participants signed up and created a business profile on the B2Match platform describing what they offer to potential partners, and whom they want to meet. Before the event, they set up different matchmaking sessions, according to their interests and needs of business opportunities. On the 8th of September 2022, a Preparatory webinarwas heldwith registered participants to provide contextual background and an overview of how to approach the matchmaking session. 

During the morning, the conference hallways and booths were empty, while the Matchmaking room was full. Participants spent four busy and fruitful hours for the event which finished with more than satisfactory results. The event has outstripped the expected number of participants and meetings with a few months ahead of work to do to carry out the agreed and possible partnerships. Concretely, 197 attendees in the representation of 26 countries, resulting in more than 500 meetings in a few hours.

What comes next?

Matchmaking events:

Stay tuned by regularly checking the Matchmaking Events section in the ECCP Platform!

Clusters meet regions

After the closing of the latest expression of interest on 15 September to host a transnational workshop in the light of the Clusters meet regions initiative, the selected applicants were contacted with the good news. In the coming days, kick-off meetings will be held with the selected applicants to jump-start the organisation of the events. It is with great pride that we would like to announce that EURADA Croatian members led bySIMORA have been selected to host a Clusters meet Regionsevent in combination with Agorada+.

Save the dates for the upcoming “Clusters meet Regions”:

  • Katowice, Poland - 8-9 November 2022
  • Zagreb, Croatia - 28 November 2022
  • Barcelona, Spain - 15 - 16 December 2022

ClusterXchange

The new simplified ClusterXchange IT Tool is finally out! This new platform removes lengthy bureaucracy taken on by the Visiting and Host Organisations since the new IT Tool is only accessible to the exchanges’ organisers, the Partnerships. The ClusterXchange Support Office hopes that this release will encourage the participation of more organisations. In order to ensure that all Partnership administrators know how the new IT Tool works and answer their questions, a CXC IT Tool Training will take place on 6 October 2022 at 10:00 CET. If you are interested in participating in this training, contact the Support Office at: clusterxchange(at)clustercollaboration.eu.

Additionally, a new series introduced in the ECCP September Newsletter titled “Meet the 2020 Partnerships” will showcase a weekly short video introducing one newcomer 2020 Partnership. Don’t miss it!