The European Observatory for Clusters and Industrial Change (#EOCIC) builds upon and brings together the work undertaken by the European Cluster Observatory and previous work of the European Service Innovation Centre, but with a stronger and wider focus on the role of industrial change.
The new Observatory will not only look at service innovation but also at key enabling technologies, digitalisation, creativity and eco-innovative, resource-efficient solutions as the key drivers of industrial change. Likewise, wider indicators for industrial and entrepreneurship performance and how these are connected among each other and with cluster development will also be part of its scope.
The aim of EOCIC is to help Europe's regions and countries in designing better and more evidence-based cluster policies and initiatives. The Observatory supports:
- Industrial modernisation;
- Entrepreneurship in emerging industries with growth potential,
- SMEs' access to clusters and internationalisation activities and
- More strategic inter-regional collaboration and investments in the implementation of smart specialisation strategies.
These tasks are implemented by the Consortium headed by Deloitte Consulting and Advisory with Maastricht University MERIT, Fraunhofer ISI, Valdinini Vicari & Associati S.r.l. (VVA), Centro Studi Industria Leggera (CSIL), Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovacao (SPI) and Strasbourg Conseil (SC).
