North Middle Sweden including Värmland Region is identified as a region that risks falling into the "middle-income trap" or even low-income trap as it has difficulty finding innovation capital and talent, including highly educated women. By not recognising women as a strategic resource, companies are endangered in developing and maintaining their competitiveness. The business community has a relatively one-sided industry structure and needs to develop the industry breadth to become more resilient, as well as increase the region's export maturity to take a larger place in international markets.

The policy objective 1 of the OP is a More Competitive and Smarter Europe and the specific objective addressed in DEBUTING is 1.3 “Improve the growth and competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises”.

Adjustment is required to match the environmental and climate goals but also to be able to meet the region's social challenges. The development needs to take place in broad collaboration between civil society, the public sector and the business community in order to deal with these challenges. The OP identifies clusters as one of the most intermediaries to work with the SMEs. In particular the business promotion system i.e. via clusters needs to be developed based on the needs of new skills where women are at the forefront . This cannot be done without looking at gender equality and inclusiveness as drivers for growth and competitiveness for stronger and more resilient SMEs in Värmland.

Lapland, Finland, lives out its natural resources and natural conditions. Therefore societal sustainable development is a key issue in the survival in the Arctic conditions. In Lapland, the future business investments will, in one way or another, be based on the sustainable utilisation of natural resources and conditions, and on increasing the value added.

Arctic smartness clusters have been identified as key drivers for growth. Enhancement of gender equality and inclusion supports their employment promotion.

Environmental, social and Economic sustainability have been a selection criteria for the strategic priorities in Lapland S4, but no special attention has been paid paid on gender equality nor inclusion, even as part of social sustainability. With contribution of the DEBUTING project’s capacity building among policy authorities and relevant stakeholders, the S4 is expected to be improved by having also criteria related to improving SME competitiveness by addressing their social sustainability in their organisation culture concerning gender equality and inclusiveness. 

North-West Regional Operational Programme (ROP) of the North-West region of Romania, addresses the Policy Objective 1.A Smarter Europe, aiming for

• investments in SMEs growth  
• supporting collaboration of SMEs within clusters
• SMEs integration into interregional, international and cross border value chains 
• improving the business support structures and promotion of entrepreneurship.

DEBUTING project addresses ROP Specific Objective (iii) - Increase sustainable growth and competitiveness of the SMEs and creating new jobs, including through productive investments by:

1. Increasing SMEs competitiveness through innovative equipment and technologies, by: purchase of equipment and investment in construction infrastructure for production and services; investments in new technologies, such as IoT, innovative production systems, or to improve medical and tourism services; purchase of intangible assets such as patents, licences or technical solutions; marketing and internationalisation costs for promotion of the regional products and services.
2. Supporting the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem, boosting specific entrepreneurship models and facilitation entrepreneurship models, creation of local/ regional value chains, business support structures, through: establishment and development of business support structures such as business incubators, accelerators and industrial parks; support for business support structures to develop specific services and management of direct grants to the supported SMEs, to ensure sustainability and resilience.

The Programme Clusters and Platforms Lower Austria is one of the public interventions that contribute to the implementation of the Lower Austrian Economic Strategy 2025. It provides support for cluster management, i.e. the facilitation of networking and initiating collaborative research, development and innovation projects.

The implementing body of the program is the Lower Austrian Business Agency ecoplus. Based on comprehensive cluster potential analyses carried out by external experts, the decision of the regional government to support a cluster initiative and a multiannual funding contract between the regional government and ecoplus, ecoplus manages the Lower Austrian cluster initiatives as an “umbrella” cluster organisation, currently in the areas of green building, food, plastics and mechatronics.

The Regional Smart Specialisation Strategy 2021-2027 of Emilia-Romagna (S3), Italy, takes into account the new global challenges highlighted by the objectives of the Cohesion Policy 21-27 and the 2030 Agenda. It crosses structural funds and regional programming tools. 

The approach of the new strategy is transversal, based on priorities related to challenges rather than supply chains as previously. The well-being of people and communities, the fight against social, economic, cultural, ethnic, territorial and gender inequalities have been introduced also as drivers of competitiveness. Thematic area 15 “Inclusion and social cohesion: education, work, territories” favours diversity management, reconciliation of life and work times and equality at work. Gender equality approach is quite new for the regional ecosystem actors, especially for businesses.

Our goal is to improve S3 by involving CLUST-ERs, to inspire and accompany them in the adoption of new measures and actions for raising awareness towards their members, especially SMEs. Italian legislation (Law 5/11/2021, n.162) provides that public and private companies employing up to 50 employees draw up a report every 2 years on the situation of male/female personnel, allowing also fiscal benefits. Therefore specific actions to make this opportunity concrete are needed.

The Navarra Smart Specialization Strategy for Sustainability was adopted in 2021 for Navarre region, Spain. The objective is to transition to a sustainable and inclusive growth model making Navarra a reference region in the sustainable and digital economy committed to the territory and people. The strategy shall promote economic growth, environmental protection, and social and territorial cohesion.

Six priorities are identified based on the economic, science and technological potential of the region:

• green energy industry
• electric and connected mobility
• healthy and sustainable food
• personalized medicine
• sustainable tourism, and
• audio-visual industry.

The green and digital transition are transversal to the thematic priorities. Clusters are involved in the strategy implementation, as the key intermediary bodies to connect with the main companies of the region.

The thematic priorities feed on competitiveness factors developed specifically through different plans of the regional government, that focus on the needs of the business sector. The factors are people and talent, business development, competitive environment, R+D+I, and internationalization.

Since 2007, Equality Plans have been mandatory for companies over 250 employees, and since 2020, over 50 employees. Navarra has helped smaller companies giving grants for the design of equality plans and funding the deployment of some of the actions to help with implementation.

The innovation strategy for Baden-Württemberg, Germany, has defined 7  key economic development fields for the future:

1. digitization
2. artificial intelligence
3. Industry 4.0
4. sustainable mobility
5. the healthcare industry
6. resource efficiency and the energy transition and
7. sustainable bioeconomy.

To ensure national and international economic competitiveness, especially Baden-Württemberg's innovation dynamism has to be sustainably strengthened. Based on a critical review of the current situation, the innovation strategy identifies future growth fields on which the region is focusing.

Through further strategic specialization, the consistent expansion of the research infrastructure and technology transfer, as well as by opening up new topics in research and development, SMEs in particular have to be more closely integrated into the innovation process to stay competitive on long term. In search for cooperative solutions, networking activities in the form of clusters, competence networks and technology platforms have therefore gained in importance in recent years. Promoting and professionalizing cluster initiatives and networks is an important component of Baden-Württemberg's SME and innovation policy.

The cluster policy of the Pomorskie Voivodeship, Poland, is outlined in the Regional Strategic Programme 2030, focusing in

• economy
• labour market
• tourist offer and
• leisure time

In the current perspective, funds for clusters are planned in the operational programme European Funds for Pomerania "More competitive and intelligent Pomerania". The scope of activities carried out will include, among others:

• increasing R&D activity of entities from the smart specialisations areas (including professionalization of cluster management),
• support for entering into international consortia of entities operating within clusters,
• support for the potential of seed and regional clusters, and
• support for the development of modern services clusters for industrial transformation.

Despite the high activity of regional authorities aimed at strengthening regional innovation, the Pomeranian potential in comparison to regions in Western Europe remains still low, although it is high in relation to other Polish regions. The emphasis on strengthening the participation of women in business will help to increase innovation in the region and its position on the international level.

The Smart Specialisation Strategy in Grand Est (2021-2027), France, could be defined as a 3D-Matrix. The first dimension gathers three main activity domains: Industry, Health, and Bioeconomy, which gathers a critical mass of regional stakeholders. The second one is the industrial, digital, and energetic-environmental-social transitions  these domains are facing. The third dimension is composed of transversal issues that cope within the two first dimensions: social innovation, responsible innovation, relocation companies, and development of local supply chains.

The implementation of the smart specialization strategy (S3) and especially for issues related to transformations (digital, industry, green) will be coordinated by regional networks of competencies named GET (Grand Est Transformation). The objective of a GET is to be “a one-stop shop” to accelerate the transformation of SMEs and territories. Grand Est Transformation will cover classical support actions (innovation projects, setting up of training) but also transversal activities related to ethics and inclusion (digital of trust).

Each GET will be plugged with the main stakeholders on the topic as for example, the companies (SMEs, Micaps,etc.), the clusters (competitiveness clusters, classical clusters) and the other stakeholders of the regional innovation ecosystems. Questions of gender, inclusion, and ethics are included as one the domains of activity of GET as it is the case for the first one set-up, GET DIGITAL.

The Socio-Economic Development Strategy of the Municipality of Ungheni, Moldova (SEDS UN) aims to transform Ungheni city into a modern, dynamic, and appealing regional leader, featuring a sustainable economy, balanced infrastructure, and inclusive services for all citizens and residents.

One of the four strategic development directions focuses on local economic growth by attracting investments and fostering entrepreneurship, particularly that of women, aligned with the region's unique characteristics.

The main objective of the  Hungarian Cluster 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.

A wide range of financial and non-financial tools have been developed on the following pillars:

• Strengthening the culture of cooperation between SMEs
• Making business cooperation more attractive
• And creating the appropriate policy and regulatory environment for co-innovation.

Although the main goal of the strategy focuses on economic performance, and the pillars have been defined by the characteristics of different types of clusters, the strategy contains a diverse pool of tools to support the predefined KPIs. Some of the KPIs focus more on specific challenges like green transition and digitalization. As the equality of both men and women and social inclusion in different ways are a widely spread challenge all-across the EU, we are having high hopes on including and addressing this issue in the cluster strategy.