engleski

How to support firm competitiveness in timber industries? Clusters as policy means in four European countries.

The cluster approach has been used as a guiding framework for policy action, which, by definition, nurtures the existing strengths and growth potential of functionally interrelated and geographically co-located groups of specialized firms cross-sectorally linked by technologies, markets or value chains. The cluster approach has been used to define cluster-based policy agendas in innovation policy and traditional policy fields. The approach offers a wider view on the needs and benefits of improving coordination across policy sectors. The cluster concept has been used widely to reveal and tackle the needs to improve coordination between actions, which fall under the remit of different policy sectors. Cluster promotion policies are often delivered by discrete action singled out in particular action programmes, which are targeted on pre-selected functionally and geographically delimited groups of firms and industries. We report on the following discrete cluster promotion activities in European timber industries: the Finnish Living Cluster 'Lahden alueen asumisklusteri', the national Scottish 'Forest Industries Cluster', the Croatian North-West Timber Cluster 'Drvni klaster zapadne Hrvatske', and the Styrian Wood Cluster 'Holzcluster Steiermark'. Key findings are that cluster promotion, instead of covering all aspects of competitiveness, is being focused towards selected fields of strategic priority. Cluster strategies are clearly differentiated in this respect. Cluster promotion activities are targeted narrowly on corporate business network formation and management or more broadly on reshaping industrial districts into innovation-enabling business environments. Strategies may be mixed both to ensure immediate economic benefits to firms and to develop the cluster's innovative capacity and growth potential in the medium and long term. Clusters operate at the national or regional level. Cluster strategies are more or less purposely and formally integrated and aligned with regional development strategies. The recommendations for how to improve policy efficacy and efficiency include catalytic funding, exploiting value chain linkages for leverage effects, improved strategic alignment and replacing 'wishful thinking' by formal analysis of real cluster potentials.

forestry cluster, innovation policy, firm competitiveness

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