Blue and Eco industries cluster exchange for induStrial modernisation

ended

Blue and Eco industries cluster exchange for induStrial modernisation (BLUES) overall objective is to strengthen cluster excellence management and facilitate a European Strategic Cluster Partnership for Excellence between water clusters and KET clusters (Plasma, nanotechnology and ICT) to enhance the SME competitiveness and increase their international opportunities in the single market and beyond, by means of benchmarking, long-life learning, best practices transfer and exchanges. BLUES is formed by five mature clusters representing new emerging industries in Europe that have water sustainability and resource efficiency as common thread. BLUES partners are committed with excellence (currently ESCA label bronze, silver and gold) formed by 464 entities (SME and Scale up organizations). BLUES partners initiated a cooperation agenda in the framework of the Cluster Excellence Programme that comes to a next stage in 2019 to further in the clusters’ partnership. Thus, BLUES will boost the promotion of cluster management excellence towards the improvement of a comprehensive strategy and added-value SME support services. A nuclear part of the proposal will be the implementation of the ClusterXchange pilot scheme by organising 50 exchanges between Cluster SME, scale up organisations and clusters within the blue and eco-industries areas. Accordingly, the project work plan is based in five work packages for skills enhancement and strategy building (WP1), organisation of joint activities (WP2), the implementation of ClusterXchange pilot scheme (WP3), the project outreach and awareness raising (WP4) and project management (WP5). Overall the project represents a powerful tool in the implementation of the European Industrial policy strategy, which results will be reinforced by the partners’ involvement within the S3 platform. Moreover, the long-term sustainability beyond BLUES will be secured by enlarging the European Economic Interest Group leaded by some of the project partners