Competitiveness Week

A deep understanding of clusters and cluster initiatives, and their application in economic development policies is key for any modern policymaker. The first week of the Summer School is addressed particularly to those policymakers and economists in governmental bodies, be it at supranational, national or regional levels, in charge of designing and shaping development, innovation and competitiveness policies.
This week's courses are also important for practitioners working with clusters, to understand the general policy framework where the cluster programs and actions are coming from.

The subjects of this course will be:

Competitiveness Policy Framework
Instructors: Christian Ketels and Antoni Subira
The course will lay the theoretical foundations of competitiveness, and their implications for cluster based development policies. The course will use cases to help understand the importance of locations and clusters, the policies to upgrade them in different regional, national and supranational settings (Finland, New York, Singapore, Cluster Mobilization in Mitteldeutschland, California Wine …).

Cluster Competitiveness Programmes
Instructor: Emiliano Duch
This course provides an introduction to the common pitfalls and key issues to take in to account when developing a cluster based competitiveness programme, using a real example in the United Kingdom to discuss: the prioritization of clusters, the launching of cluster initiatives, the management of cluster projects,
their monitoring and use to improve horizontal policies (export, innovation, training …) and their international impact.

Competitive Policy Monitoring and Evaluation
Instructors: Antoni Subirà, Jorgen Rosted, Alberto Pezzi, Reinhard Buscher
In the course Professor Subirá will present Foundation, Clusters and Competitiveness which will be complemented by the experiences from Denmark and Catalonia in Monitoring and Evaluating clusters, presented by Jorgen Rosted and Alberto Pezzi. Reinhard Buscher will go through the European Approach to Excellence and Fact Based Cluster Policies and the week session will close with a round table on Fact based Policies.

Program 2010