Enterprise 2025 Renewed, is Ireland’s national enterprise policy, implemented by the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment. Its goal is to build resilience in the face of global challenges.

National Government’s ambition is towards long term sustainable growth, by achieving the following:

• at least 2.3 million people in employment;
• unemployment rate of <5.5% while improving participation rates, and reducing regional disparity;
• a 6-8% growth rate in indigenous exports to reach €26 billion, with < geographic & market diversification;
• Ireland as a Global Innovation Leader with 2.5% of GNP invested in RD&I;
• expenditure in the Irish economy of €29 billion by agency supported enterprises;
• rank in the top 5 most competitive small countries internationally, with an environment that supports entrepreneurship, scaling of Irish owned enterprises and is attractive for FDI.

These targets have been impacted severely by the following: Brexit, policy shifts by the US on trade and investment; international corporate tax changes; disruptive technologies; Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war.

To tackle the changing external environment national government are seeking to harness the distinctive characteristics of our FDI and indigenous enterprise mix, through the development of a National Cluster Policy within the Enterprise Strategy to align supports for sectoral skills & educational needs, internationalisation, and research, development and innovation.

The main objective of the Catalonia Cluster Programme (CCP) 2021 to 2026 is to foster the Catalan economic competitiveness, structure the intervention of the Generalitat de Catalunya in the field of cluster policy and to contribute to the streamlining of the existing cluster map in Catalonia.

The Programme was first launched in 2013 and has a duration of three years. It is an open, voluntary programme aimed at promoting world-class clusters. It provides access to use the programme label, visibility through ACCIÓ’s communication channels, a set of capacity building activities and personalised support as well as access to funding.

Phase 1 of the CCP covers the period 2021-2023 and provides services to 25 clusters that gather 2,300 companies and other actors with an aggregate turnover of over €69,000 million.

In a fast changing and increasingly complex world clusters act more and more as motors of change. Cluster policies and programmes need to capture new trends and translate them to cluster organisations so that they can act as a springboard for their members. In 2017, Catalonia started to work with the concept of shared value, a holistic approach considering sustainability from three different perspectives: economic, environmental and social. Since, Catalonia has developed an original methodology to drive clusters and their members towards a business model generating not only economic value but also social and environmental.

The Metropolitan Strategic Plan (MSP), established by Law 56/2014, is the policy and planning instrument for the social, economic and environmental development of the metropolitan territory, it defines the general, sectorial and transversal development aims for the whole metropolitan area and it identifies the priorities for intervention, the resources necessary for their pursuit, the time-frame and method of their implementation, in compliance with the principles of environmental sustainability. The MCT plays the fundamental role of adopting and annually updating the three-year strategic plan of the metropolitan territory.

The MSP 2021-2023 of the MCT presents a vision of Turin as an “augmented metropolis”. In particular, the aim of the new Plan is to put in place actions and interventions aimed at overcoming the social, economic and territorial marginalities in the metropolitan area, through the support to the digitalisation, innovation and competitiveness of the production system, with particular attention to micro and small enterprises.

The selected policy instrument is Strategy 1.3 “Stimulate innovation in the system of SMEs and micro-enterprises”: promoting "industry 4.0" actions complementary to national and regional ones, aimed in particular at micro-enterprises and SMEs by directing development towards aggregations and cooperation. It is part of the first axis of the MSP, which aims at augmenting the competitiveness, productivity and innovation of the territory.

The Hungarian Cluster Strategy is under development at the time of the submission of the application of the project, however we are expecting that in Q3 2022 it will be approved at higher level. The main objective of the strategy is improving the culture of collaboration among Hungarian clusters and as a result of collaborative economic development, the domestic cluster ecosystem will be at the forefront of Europe, and the international competitiveness of domestic businesses and economic actors will increase. This vision has several aspects on different areas. Strengthening the culture of motivation and cooperation, making business cooperation attractive and promoting innovation cooperation with the support of creating the appropriate policy and regulatory environment are the pillars in which we have developed the wide range of financial and non-financial tools. The main goal of the strategy remains focusing on the economic performance, and the pillars have been defined by the characteristics of different types of clusters. Thus high level of digitalization (and also implementing solutions of the green economy) are key criteria in our future measurement system. As the level of usage of both digital and green solutions are defined as KPIs in the strategy, a diverse pool of tools are to support the predefined KPIs on specific challenges. We are eager to learn on further good practices to boost this transformation and develop out monitoring methods through clusters.

The objective: to provoke a structural change in SMEs through high-quality, innovative and target group-oriented offers and to support companies in growing and adopting new technologies through 1) Acquisition of new technologies for production and services 2) raising awareness of the importance to implement new green and digital aspects 3) investments for new businesses or structure-improving business relocations. There shall be some significant improvements in the quality of operational services, embedded in innovative approaches.

In 2008, a National Cluster Platform was established at the initiative of the Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs.
Austria has numerous high-performing clusters and networks in technological and economic fields of strength that enhance the national and international competitiveness of their cluster companies, especially SMEs, through innovation and cooperation.
Within the framework of the National Cluster Platform, current cluster-relevant trends, technologies and location topics are addressed and joint projects are initiated. The federal activities are intended to support the measures in the states and strive to have a complementary effect.

Austria is quite recently governed by the green party, together with the conservative party. Several strategies (e.g. a national strategy for circular economy) are now referring to the importance of enhancing the green transition, in combination with the digital transition.

Strategic objective A. Increase the innovation performance of firms
Specific objective A.3 Improve the functioning of innovation ecosystems at national and regional level
Instruments and type of activities.
Strategic objective B. Enhance the twin green and digital transition


The policy instrument includes cooperation at a quadruple helix level, and the potential to develop supports for the Czech Clusters by using the National innovation platforms to help with the green and digital transformation. This can lead to increased positive effects for the economy (high value added, better innovation performance of the country).

The Smart Specialisation Strategy of Ruhr Metropolis adresses the 53 municipalities of the region Ruhr, home to 5.1 million inhabitants. The Strategy is governed by Business Metropole Ruhr GmbH.

The RIS3 approach in Ruhr aims to support the prioritisation of economic activities of the region and thus generate sustainable economic development. The following six areas for economic activities
activities have been defined as fields of specialisation: (1) IT services - cyber security & AI; (2) Green technology, hydrogen & circular economy; (3) Intelligent Logistics; (4) New Industry; (5) Health and (6) Urban Transformation & Smart City.

For Duisburg the high prices of energy and co-2-consumption highlight the need to convert the regions leading industries (e.g. largest steel location in Europe and the largest inland port in the world) to co-2 neutral energy sources. The RIS3 strategy recommends that Duisburg brings together research institutions, entrepreneurs and investors, to initiate collaborations to increase the spirit of innovation and drive developments in Greentech, Hydrogen and New Industry towards the commercialisation of innovative added value. The clustering approach of Accelerate GDT will support this transformation, and collaboiration between the partners required to make this transition and provide mechanisms for implementing the Ruhr RIS3 strategy (locally in Duisberg and further across the region).