How can we build an Innovation Supercluster? What does it take to build a global Innovation Supercluster? What are the key elements to building a successful Supercluster?
Questions like these are being asked by government leaders, national innovation agencies and national transformation leaders from Singapore to Zagreb, Sao Paolo to Johannesburg, and Dubai to Shenzhen.
Leading innovation ecosystems around the world such as California, Shanghai, Beijing, and London, continue to pull in capital, talent, corporates and breed the next generation of high-growth, high-value scale-ups, unicorns, decacorns and hectocorns.
As we continue to race into the knowledge-driven economy, with industry 4.0, digital business models, lean startups, large scale industry shifts; local and national leaders take note.
“How can we compete globally? How do we create more high-impact tech jobs? How do we create and keep tech scale-ups in our local economies?” are frequent questions discussed at roundtables and conferences.
The best leaders shift that conversation. Instead, they ask and act on strategic questions like, “How can we attract the very best startups and scale-ups to our region? How can we combine our old legacy industries, with new technologies at scale? How can we enable and support unprecedented collaboration at scale? How can we accelerate innovation across research, corporates, startup and beyond?”
Increasingly, the answer to those questions is to build strong innovation clusters, in many places – build global Innovation Superclusters.
Over the past few years, we have had the privilege to work with government leaders in Asia and Europe to design, build and implement Innovation Superclusters. We have seen the impact possible, and believe we will see a sharp rise in the number of Superclusters around the world.
What are Innovation Superclusters?
Business clusters, or agglomeration economies, are natural phenomenon in many regions and economic activities. Clusters have been recognized in management literature since the 1890’s (tracing back to the earliest days of human organized economic activities) as a group of suppliers, customers and partners.
In most parts of the world, clusters are understood as geographical clusters, often around a specific industry or field. Media, high tech, life sciences, med-tech, space travel, maritime, finance, seafood, energy; these all have strong geographical clusters that have evolved and matured naturally over time.
Today, we are learning to build, shape and design far more impactful clusters. We see new clusters rapidly emerging, often built around the “industries of the future”, helping regions, nations and national leaders navigate economic shifts and prepare for new economic growth in future growth industries.
Since the early 2000’s, the term Supercluster has been evolving, shaping ambitious political and industrial thinking in Asia, Americas and Europe.
Having personally worked with Supercluster development projects in Europe and Asia, we deeply believe in the power of Innovation Superclusters to accelerate industry shifts and help race a region, a country or an industry into the future.
Yet, we recognize the work, complexity and massive amount of stakeholders to engage in order to successfully scale a Supercluster. Looking into the future, we hope to continue to advance our own understanding of global clusters, continue our research activities, evolve our toolkit for future Superclusters and help build a generation of new engines of innovation around the world.
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Download the full report here to explore what Innovation Superclusters are, how they are formed, and how countries can get started building one.
If you want to get a taste of the digital strategy simulation Supercluster!, RSVP here to join the 2-hour Supercluster! Digital Discovery Session on 2nd September (11:00 – 13:30 CEST).
If you want to become a certified Supercluster! expert, sign up here for the Digital Simulation Facilitator Certification (DSFC) – a 100% online training and certification program for the world’s leading innovation cluster simulation. Once certified, you can use the digital strategy simulation with your clients, cluster, hub, ecosystem, national innovation agencies, or your business school students.