Chapter (Chinese) Intelligence Economique Nationale – Etude comparative sur les Pratiques en France et en Chine, 2011, Shanghai, ISBN 978676208610175-5

Poles of Competitiveness in Europe and in France

Henri Dou, Director of Atelis (ESCEM), Professor Emeritus University Paul Cézanne

douhenri@yahoo.fr http://www.ciworldwide.org http://www.atelis.org

China access http://s244543015.onlinehome.fr/ciworldwide/

Abstract: The presentation of the poles of competitiveness in Europe and in France cannot be done through a simple analysis of the reports and various orientations given to the poles of competitiveness (clusters) in different states. To do so to start from Eastern Germany, Eastern Poland and Italian mezzogiorno1 is a good starting point, because it underlines most of the “nega development” items from which we can analyze the development of the successful European clusters. The clusters development in Europe is not a new “story” since it takes its roots before the second world war, throwing the base of the regional environmental context enabling the various actors of the European Regions to develop a successful industrial policy. It is a mere fact that the second world war, in spite of the geopolitical disruption introduced at the end of the conflict did not change the global industrial capacity of some regions because they have deeply rooted in the mind of people that their development is linked to technology and industry through regional collaboration. The fall of the Soviet Union, and the globalization, that is to say and increase competitiveness coming from everywhere and involving a level of competition yet not know in the western world, accelerated the today development of the clusters. It either comforted the old skills and networks or it created new ones in the regions where the classical industries disappeared or declined sharply because of the crisis, or for the region which did not get in the past an industrial development and have the will to create “from scratch” new ones. This is the goal of the work which is presented, to give a vision of the clusters or “poles of competitiveness” not only through the today critical analysis of their results, but to try to understand what are the “engines” which may start the conditions through which new industrial opportunities will be developed. After the analysis of the “nega development” context, we will move to the concept of innovation and how the clusters accelerate its application. It is not possible in this context to examine all the European clusters, this is why significant experiences will be described and commented. The case of the French cluster policy will be also compared to various other initiatives to pullout the best lessons to learn. The time constant as well as the political incentive play an important role in this development, this is why various comparisons will be done between the European zone and the

1 Leone Ugo, Development, The “Mezzogiorno” and Southern AttitudeUniversity of Naples, “Federico II”, Italy, available from http://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/bitstream/10077/857/1/e4leone.pdf

Asian area. The global conclusion will try to set up some guidelines which can be applied in various regions of the world.

Introduction

Since the work of Alan Porter2 the development of clusters3 has been considered in most part of the world as the best way to promote innovation and to increase the competitiveness of a nations and of course of regions. During the eighties various Dutch researchers4 promoted the concept of the Triple Helix, which is in fact the conditions to develop a synergy between the policy makers, the industry and the research sector. This synergy being achieved in what is call the new PPP (Public – Private- Partnerships). Although the cluster’s concept is not new5, the focus on research and analysis about their development is rather new. In fact this is the globalization and the strong competitiveness among nations which created an incentive in this direction. Various programs and commitments pushed in this direction such as the Palmisano report6 in the United States, the JL Beffa7 report in France, Canadian Creativity and Innovation in the next new millennium8, The Commonwealth Government’s Commitment to Innovation (Australia)9, the French Governmental policy of cluster development10. Many works and evaluations have been done about the clusters development, but we believe that to put the cluster development “in perspective” in the conventional way to look at them is only one part of the approach. A most global view of the clusters and their interaction with their environment can be seen if we move our study not only to the analysis and presentation of the clusters and moreover the ones which succeed! A better understanding can be pullout from them if we also examine the cause of failure of the development as one of the starting point of this study. To be relevant with the global

2 Michael Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, (new introduction), New York, The Free Press 19983 We will use in this paper the term cluster which is generally accepted. In France this term is replaced by Poles of Competitiveness4 Leydesdorff L.et Etzkowitz H., The Triple Helix as a Model for Innovation Studies, (Conference Report), Science & Public Policy Vol. 25(3),pp.195-203,1998see also Industry & Higher Education 12, pp.197-258, 1998http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/th2/ihe98.htm5 In this study we will make a distinction between two types of clusters: the clusters which have a governance and a roadmap and those which came out from local initiative and which gather people and institutions willing to “move ahead” but without a formal structuration.6 Tamada Shumpeter, Analysis of the Palmisano Report, RIETI (Japan)http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/columns/a01_0158.html7 Beffa JL., Pour une nouvelle politique industrielle de la Francehttp://www.districts-industriels.com/letter_spl/spl_v_seize/newsletter_en.htm8 Canadian Creativity and Innovation in the next new millenniumhttp://www.innovationstrategy.gc.ca/gol/innovation/site.nsf/fr/in05177.html9 Commonwealth of Australia, Backing Australia’s Ability: The Commonwealth Government’s Commitment to Innovation, http://www.backingaus.innovation.gov.au/10 Dou Henri, French poles of Competitiveness - Forces and Weaknesses Competitive Intelligence, Summer 2007, Shanghai, China ci_magazine@libnet.sh.cn, pp.2-5, 2007

competition, we did not take the analysis of the development failure in some developing countries, but we took the work published in the Triple Mezzogiorno by Jean-Marie Rousseau: the NEGA development11.

2 - The NEGA Development

From all the help12 bring by the European Community in various regions of Europe various lessons about the brakes preventing the development can be learnt. The analysis has been done by Jean-Marie Rousseau and three main points must be underlined. Underlining these points will help to understand and analyze the success or failure of some clusters13.

Negligence of the regional public authorities towards their duty of “internalizing a regional strategy”, reluctance to try out “drawing board” theories in the real world and hesitation between taking a direct hand and defining and launching a regional development policy and leaving it to outside consultants, preferred to bring in external skills;

Evading the responsibility of recognizing and encouraging “smart and interactive connections” , by failing to bridge the chronic misunderstanding between the academic world and the business sector, by regarding the process of cooperating with and listening to the public as a threat or painful duty rather than as a synergistic resource;

Grudging in attitude towards “knowledge development” and, in this connection, towards irrigating the field of SMESs”, by under-investing in human capital and concentrating solely on physical infrastructure and by refusing to translate scientific results from universities and research centers into economic successes;

Anomie as, according to the sociologist Emile Durkheim’s principle14, a result across the whole community, whereby the people and the whole regions neither share any value nor an project and where any initiatives are nipped in the bud, fully left passively waiting for something spectators only, eternally aid-dependent.

The analysis of this 3 main categories underlined above will light the clusters development experience and explain why in some regions in spite of several efforts, the development lag behind or worse cannot be started. From this analysis it is also interesting to see that most of the “mezzogiorno” regions are surrounded by 11 The Triple Mezzogiorno ? Southern Italy – Eastern Germany, Eastern Poland. Regioanla Development Forum REDEFO, Ministry of regional Development, Editors Antoni Kuklinski, Emilia Malak-Petlika, Piotr Zuber, 2010 ISBN 978-83-7610-170-5

12 This the Objective 1 which is concerned.13 Most of these recommendations provide from EURADA, Can Regions make Difference ? The competitiveness of public and semi-pubic business-related services and their contribution to the performance of European Enterprises, Roundtable of Regional Economic Development, October 2004

14 He is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Durkheim

prosperous ones. Then the tendency will be to take as an example these regions and to imitate their policy. If the imitation (see for instance the incremental innovation) is sometimes useful for the development of new products, it should not be the case to initiate a regional policy to increase the competitiveness. In this case the local stakeholders should be directly involved to create a synergetic resource instead of preferring to bring into the region external skills.

3 – Innovation and the knowledge creation

A-InnovationThere are numerous definitions of innovation and very often misleading. We believe that the understanding of the basic principles of innovation is particularly important when we are dealing with a competitiveness policy and with new Public and Private Partnerships.The innovation can be considered as “the production, diffusion and translation of technical knowledge into (commercially viable) new products and new production methods”15 A view which perfectly second this above point of view is the one coming from the work initiated by the European Community and presented by VINNOVA16. The innovation is conducted in two steps:

The first one is the development of competences, skills and knowledge into the research laboratories with the financial assistance of the Federal or Regional governments

The second is to create from these competences, skills and knowledge different products and services with the help of the industry to create new markets and export.

The second process is at least as far important as the first one. This is the ROI (Return of Investment) of the “tax paying people” which by the intermediary of the Federal or Regional Governments financed the research investment (in people and infrastructure). The passage to the products and services involve the industry and the synergy between research and industry. This model suggests evidently the development of adequate Public and Private Partnerships. In many countries and more specifically Latin countries (and also countries colonized in the XIX and XX century) the second step is not well understood, and most of the people believe that the financial participation of the state institutions are acquired “for granted” and that research is disconnected from the reality. The necessity to “see” innovation as a two strongly dependent steps is seconded by the point of view of Elias Zerhouni17, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

15 McDougall J. , Innovation Canada – Linking Canada’s Community Innovation Centres , Alberta Research Council, 2003 © Alberta Research Council (revised 2005)

16 Erikson P., Director General VINNOVA, Centro Formativo Privinciale, Guiseppe Zanardelli, Azienda speciale de la provincia de Brescia, Interreg III C Brics-workshop - Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems Aalborg 13th Feb 200617 Presented in December 2006 during the congress organized by the American Society of Hematology. Cited in

in the USA: “The success of American scientific research depends on the existing implicit partnership between academic research, the government and industry. The research institutions have the responsibility to develop the scientific capital. The Government finances the best teams by a transparent system of selection. Industry holds the critical role to develop robust products intended for the public. This strategy is the key of American competitiveness and must be maintained. ”But, innovation is not a straightforward process and various interactions between different types of knowledge are necessary. It is not clear today which model must be taken, but it is clear that most of the services of an enterprise must be involved in the innovation process. An analysis of the interactions between different types of knowledge has been done by Franz Todtling and al, and they show clearly that the business sector, the science sector, and policy actors are involved in this process.18 Another interesting analysis of the different types of knowledge has been done in the Nordic clusters19. In this study two forms of knowledge were studies: the analytical and the synthetic knowledge and concluded that for industrial firms it is necessary to build up locally knowledge structures and high skilled workers. The interaction between research and industry should also be increased to facilitate innovation.

B – The creation of knowledgeThis definition of innovation indicates that we are today in the knowledge age, and that the processes to create knowledge are more and more important. The creation of Knowledge is so important that the global way to create knowledge if of prior importance specially within the governance of the clusters. Knowledge is not found, that is to say that knowledge is not a cumulated amount of bibliographic references, books, reports, dissertations, etc. Knowledge must be created. The process to create knowledge is developed in two steps:

The search of the relevant information according the vision (which is political) of the development. This step involves the knowledge of the information sources and sometimes the use of tools to create an elaborated information. Of course primary and secondary information sources will be concerned.

The second steps involve the creation of knowledge20 from the above information. That means the necessity to discuss, evaluate, integrate in a SWOT analysis all the meanings of the above information. This can be done always with good experts and if workflow technology (such as collaborative platform) is involved this is not an end in itself.

The creation of knowledge is a mix form human skill and workflow technology, and this is particularly important when the analysis of the cluster functioning will be done.

What model the the French public research, Les Echos, wednesday January 10th 2007, Alain Perez18 Todtling Franz, Lehner Patrick, Kaufmann Alexander, Do different types of innovation rely on specific kinds of knowledge interactions?, Technovation 29 (2009) 59–7119 Bjørn T. Asheima Lars Coenen, Knowledge bases and regional innovation systems: Comparing Nordic clusters20 Dou Henri and Dou Jean-Marie Jr, The processes of building knowledge. - The case of smes and distance learning, ISDM Information Science for Decision Making, n°17 Juin 2004 article n°174 http://isdm.univ-tln.fr/articles/num_archives.htm

From the above considerations it is important to outline several aspects of the Knowledge building:

the necessity to have a vision, a strategy the access of the right information (mix between primary and secondary

information sources) do not focus too much on the information management and handling, this is

necessary but not the ultimate goal privilege the collaboration between experts to understand the meaning of the

above information, specially by favoring the use of SWOT analysis if necessary use various tools to analyze and map the information give to the decision makers reports and recommendations develop a cyclic system to permanently evaluate the position of the clusters

and its objective

This series of steps are in fact the transposition of the cycle of intelligence into the governance system of a cluster.

4 – Building up a cluster

To build up a cluster with some chances of success it is important to well understand the implication of the “NEGA development” steps, to avoid dramatic mistakes. It is also important to understand that a cluster is not a science park, neither and industrial zone, neither an incubator or a training ground. This is a place where stakeholders having the same scientific, technical and commercial goals will join together to create a global knowledge and to benefit of the synergy of their different competences and skills. The Triple Helix partnerships must be of course part of the cluster as well as some financial facilities offered (after an evaluation of the various collaborative projects of the cluster) by the Federal of Regional Governments. Of course, depending of the size of the clusters, the type of industries the kind of stakeholders, the clusters will be different and not reproducible. Generally the clusters will correspond to a partnership between large companies, SMEs and research laboratories seconded by the Regional and Federal Governmental institutions.The rules to develop a cluster are well known they have been presented either in Europe21 or in Asian countries such as in Thailand22 for instance. We are now going to present the most important steps of a cluster’s creation extracted from the Thailand Competitive Initiative (TCI):

Screening stage – the team discussed and agreed on some selection criteria,- Geographical concentration- Leadership

21 Bourgogne P., StratinC, projet Européen . The StratinC project, European Community (Intelligence and Innovative Cluster), http://www.competitivite.gouv.fr/spip.php?article25 Conseil régional de Lorraine ,Place Gabriel Hocquard, BP 81004 57036 Metz Cedex 1 - France le 24, 10, 200822 Thailand Competitiveness Initiative, Kenan Institute Asia and J.E. Austin Associates, TCI : Thailand Competitiveness Initiative, A program funded by USAID, Kenan Institute Asia, Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, 2nd Floor, Zone D, Room 201/2, 60 New Ratchadapisek Road,, Klongtoey, Bangkok 10110

- Readiness (commitment and cost sharing)- Impact to overall economic/social- Consistent with national agenda

2. Changing mind-set – after a few gathering and discuss with leaders and key stake holders to be assured of their receptivity, a competitiveness consultant shall seek MOU in order to continue project.(3-4 months)

3. Diagnosis and strategy – TCI help the cluster prepare activities plan that fit to

their needs, provide analytical tools and train them to apply such tools as seem appropriated.(4-5 months)

- Diamond- SWOT- Benchmarking- GAP- Value chain- Market assessment,- Etc.

4. Actions and evaluation – the cluster should be able to operate by them self and depend on their own resources. Related government has agencies must be linked hence pave way to the policies changes. (after 10 –12 months)

To these 4 steps we will add some more coming from our experience in this domain. Often, one of the goal of a cluster is to help SMEs to growth and to reach a threshold which will enable them to better understand their environment and to understand that collaboration (even co-opetition23) are necessary to move from a simple subcontracting position to a self engagement in national and international markets. To succeed in this goal, an educational step is necessary. It is almost essential to develop short sessions for the decision makers (with their engagement to participate) to transfer to them the basic of the Competitive Intelligence, its methods and its tools. In this area the development of Information systems either for economic and technical data is often difficult in SMEs. By using in this session a “bricolage approach”24 we may hopefully favor the development of such systems. We will develop this point later with the example of the cluster’s animation. Another important point to underline is the necessity to have a real Governance of the cluster, I mean a Governance with a real decision power.

Another set of rules have been established from the work sponsored by the European Community (StratinC project)25:

This mapping process will include exploratory interviews with chambers of commerce, university research and innovation centers, and so on. Whilst the policy focus may, in the EU, be on SMEs, it is also important to extend mapping to 23 Adam M Brandenburger, Barry J. Nalebuff, Co-opetition, editor Currency Doubleday, NY, 199824 Ferneley Elaine, Bell Frances, Using bricolage to integrate business and information technology innovation in SMEs, Technovation 26 (2006) 232–24125 Strategic Intelligence and Innovative Clusters (STRAINC), A regional policy blue print Highlighting the rule of strategic intelligence in cluster policy, InterregIIIC, European Community, available from http://www.e-innovation.org/stratinc/files/A+Regional+Policy+Blueprint+(STRATINC).pdf

encompass the whole economy, including large firms. Porter suggested the following mapping procedure:

first, start with a large firm or a concentration of like firms and then scan upstream and downstream in the vertical chain of firms and institutions.

second, scan horizontally to identify industries that pass through common channels.

third, identify links with technology providers, skills and training, business information providers, finance, infrastructure and so on. Public bodies, such as regulatory or education authorities can also be considered important inputs where their activities are clearly significant to the cluster. The cluster professional should also bear in mind that there are different forms of cluster. Clusters also have lifecycles meaning their dynamics and policy needs evolve over time.

Suggested getting started action steps:

Conduct detailed (but not exhaustive) cluster focused needs analysist detailed (but not exhaustive) cluster focused needs analysis.This can be done by a local university business school, or consultancy and should further map the cluster (what relevant R+D capabilities exist in regional HE institutions for example), investigate economic opportunities and challenges in detail, discuss findings and make clear recommendations (with financial implications) for policy action. This work should preferably be co-financed by both private sector actors or their representative associations and public authorities. Allow 6-9 months for this.

Public authorities will need to organize discussion regarding needs analysis findings and policy recommendations - at the highest level possible - recall here our above comments concerning coordination between central and regional government.

This a little more detailed, but basically the approach is the same and it gives an European point of view about the cluster’s development. The development of indicators can be different from one region to another, from a country to another one. In fact, indicators must be developed specially to be able to allocate some funds with the best ROI.: To increase the efficiency of the funding, the European community has developed the CODESNET (COllaborative DEmand & Supply NETwork)26 project. This project is mainly focused on SMEs, present in clusters or networks and it must give a new idea upon the organization of the data relevant to these networks or clusters.

5 – The conditions of success

Not all regions are the same and this is also true for industries. It is clear that when policy makers begin to think to cluster industries, they must bear in mind that not all industries are able to give way to successful networks or clusters. A study conducted in this area shows that this is the industries with divisible production process, which

26 Villa Agostino, Analysing industrial district performances: A structured approach, Annual Reviews in Control 31 (2007) 107–118

include different competencies and are the most innovative on very moving markets, are the most adequate for clustering27. We will now list and comment several points which inside a cluster governance are in our opinion the most important:

The vision and the foresight. Many different methods28 can be used to try to have a clear view of the future29, this aspect if very important because it will subtend the strategy of the cluster, and this is according to this strategic vision of its development that the different steps of the intelligence cycle will be organized, not only specifically inside de enterprises member of the cluster, but for the cluster as a whole. For instance in the Italians districts were some of them are not so efficient than before due to the lack of link with the research laboratories, a foresight exercise can be part of a solution to create an incentive among the stakeholders. This point of view id seconded by the work of Riccardo Vecchiato30 who carried out in the districts of Como and Lecco an exercise to face the new challenges rising from the venue of new competitors and new technologies. The main points of this exercise was to focus on: “transferring existing technologies from other sectors and developing radical innovations, that is completely new advanced technologies”. In our opinion and specially for the cluster which encompass a large number of SMEs, this step is fundamental because the SMEs very often have not the potential to have a long range planning and clear view of their future. Often they are contractors or sub-contractors of large firms and their own strategy is not well developed.

Information. This is one of the keys. We are speaking here not of the information which is internal to the different stakeholders of the cluster, but of the information which must be disseminated to the members to build up the base from which a common knowledge will be developed. In this case a good definition of information will be as follows: “The integrated use of operations security, military deception, psychological operations, electronic warfare, and physical destruction, mutually supported by intelligence, to deny information to, influence, degrade, or destroy adversary command and control capabilities while protecting friendly command and control capabilities against such actions.”31 Even if this definition is a little bit

27 Steinle Claus, Schiele Holger, When do industries cluster? A proposal on how to assess an industry’s propensity to concentrate at a single region or nation, Research Policy 31 (2002) 849–85828 Technological Futures Analysis Methods Working Group, Technology futures analysis: toward integration of the field & new methods, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 71/3 (2004).29 Jerome C Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, State of the Future at the millennium, The United Nations university, The Millenium project ISBN 0-9657362-6-1, See also the 2001 version ISBN 0-9657362-8-8 and the 2003 version ISBN --30 Claudio Roveda, Riccardo Vecchiato, Foresight and innovation in the context of industrial clusters:The case of some Italian districts, Technological Forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 817–83331 McCrohan Kevin F, Competitive Intelligence: Preparing for the Information War, Long Range Planning, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 586 to 593,1998

old, we can replace the different words by economic information, scientific information, technical information, customers, competitors.

The role of the Federal or Regional Governments is important because it may push the enterprises to change and become more competitive. As an example the description of this role given about the Malaysian clusters is interesting32. The next figure shows as an example the general items in the Porter’s Diamond Model and the role of the government. In Europe most of the time the people prefer to use the SWOT analysis becomes it forces the members of the cluster as well as the governmental institutions to analyze closely the internal forces and weaknesses as well as the external opportunities and threats. This point of view is important since the goal in Europe is to increase the size of the SMEs and push the innovation to create exported products and services.

Figure 1: The Porter’s Diamond Model

“The Role of Government in the Diamond ModelThe role of government in the Diamond Model of Porter is to act as a catalyst and challenger; it is to encourage, or even push companies to raise their aspirations and move to higher levels of competitive performance. Government can and should encourage companies to raise their performance, to stimulate early demand for advanced products, to focus on specialized factor creation and to stimulate local rivalry by limiting direct cooperation and enforcing anti-trust regulations.”

32 Thailand Competitiveness Initiative Accelerating Economic Recovery in AsiaUS Government Funded Program through the US Agency for International Development (USAID)Final report. Cooperative Agreement #442-A-00-99-00072-00 ANE to Kenan Foundation Asia

The role of the Governance. The first objective of the poles of competitiveness has been to facilitate various Public and Private Partnerships and through them to involve SMEs in the innovation process with as a goal to develop larger SMEs able to sustain the international competition33. The lack of SMEs between 250 – 500 people is in France very important and is a problem in the area of export. From the two former studies and from many others and also from my own point of view, it seems clear that the various stakeholders of a pole have different objectives, for instance career through research and academic papers for the researchers, generic technologies for the large companies, small projects of short time life for the SMEs.The structure of the poles of competitiveness is them important because the proportions of the various entities present in the poles must be weighted with care. The need of a strong governance is important since it is the unique body able to arbitrate, and generate various projects by creating the conditions of a dialogue among the participants.

One main problem which is not really solved in the poles of competitiveness is the relationship between small and large companies and between small companies and research laboratories. This is a point which is extremely important since it is directly related to the exchange of information. It is clear that if a confident climate is not present within the pole, les information exchange will be weak or only concern by generalities. Then the conditions to develop innovation will not be fulfilled.

One of the way to induce a good information exchange and to start the process of value creation through this exchange, is to feed into some systems (for instance platform to create knowledge or to exchange and comment information) present in the pole various information of a strategic nature directed linked to the competences of the stakeholders or to the ongoing projects of the pole. But, generally if the system is only feed by the enterprises or even laboratories present in the pole, there will be a great difficulty to have on the platform of exchange the real strategic information, since mostly by a natural process, the most important information will not be openly given by the participants.

It is then necessary because we are not inside a company, but inside an entity heterogeneous by nature, to “invent” a process which will catalyze the discussion and the information exchange process. There are many ways available. Some of them will try to develop meetings at various intervals, but if you do not have something to discuss (and some data or ideas to prepare the

33 “because the finality of the poles of competitiveness, is not to have a pole in a corner of France but in 10 years or 20 years to have many poles to replace the companies working individually by companies working into various networks to face their competitors”. Alain Juillet 2008 (former HRIE Haut Responsable pour l’Intelligence Economique in France)

discussion) this is not in one or two hours that new ideas and projects will appear. This is why very often people consider after a while that the meeting process is “wasted time.” Another position often seconded by the consultants is to say that if we can succeed to make the people formulate their information needs, it will be easy to develop a discussion and to animate various groups. This is in fact true when you are in a unique company. When you have various people present, to admit that there are various points that they do not know is often difficult. This is only after a large period of time and when the people will know them quite well that this approach may be developed.

We think that there is a process which can “work” if it is correctly conducted. This is the development inside the pole of a Unit of Competitive Intelligence able to “animate” the cluster. We are going to develop this idea in the following paragraphs.

The animation of the clusterIt is necessary to animate a cluster to favor the exchange between the participants and to create a confident environment which will favor a good background for a fair information exchange. The process of animation has been underlined in various European countries and we will take as an example the Belgium one in the Wallonia34 region. The work done in this area by the Agency Economic Stimulation indicates that the stimulation process is necessary to facilitate the penetration of the concept of Competitive Intelligence within the cluster’s enterprises and to create a political will to develop in the region a coherent methodology. The public concerned is: the enterprises, the clusters, the private actors and the students. The tools used are widely Internet related: production and diffusion of knowledge on strategic information (www.intelligencestrategique.be), a quiz available through Internet, a center of virtual resources (www.ase-is.be). It is interesting to see also he way that the SWOT analysis is used:

Forces Concept not well developed Network of validated experts Formation of trainer Development and validation of

a methodology Voluntarist policy of the

government

Opportunity Blind spot effect Succeed of the pilot operation Will to underline the role of

the animation Prominent role of ASE

Weaknesses Threats34 Bovy Robert, L’Intelligence Stratégique en Wallonie, Franco Chinese Seminar, Paris May 10-12th 2010. Available on http://www.ciworldwide.org or http://s244543015.onlinehome.fr/ciworldwide/ (China access)For more information consult also http://www.intelligencestrategique.be and www.as-e.be

Not well develop concept. Distrust and suspicion

No academic offer No offer near the regional

institutions Few specialized consultants Few enterprises with case

success

Risk of the double or quits Risk in offer Necessity to use not well

confirmed competences

In France the National Program of Economic Intelligence targeted the same goal : to introduce at different levels of the French Society the concepts, methods and tools of the Competitive Intelligence35. This program was initiated after a report ordered by the Prime Minister (Mr. Raffarin ) and was followed by the creation of the position of “Senior consultant of Economic Intelligence” near the prime minister. The person in charge (Mr Alain Juillet) was called for this task by the President of the French Republic (Mr Jacques Chirac). Today Mr Alain Juillet is no more in charge (retirement) and he has been replace by Mr Buquen, surrounded by a correspondent of Competitive Intelligence in each of the French Minister. This program is still operating. Two years after the beginning of the program a call for the development of “poles of competitiveness” was done by the Ministry of Finance and Industry, to create a regional incentive able to regroup the stakeholders of various economic and industrial areas together. It is interesting to see that if the program of dissemination of Competitive Intelligence was launch “top down”, the poles of competitiveness is a “down bottom” initiative. We will see in the next paragraph some important point about the French poles of Competitiveness.

The necessity to animate the clusters has been also emphasized by Jean-Marie Rousseau36 in his analysis of the Chengdu cluster. If the stakeholders are represented according the figure 2, it is necessary to have a perfect inter-connection of the actors present in the different circles. Even if the connections work well within the three first circles the SMEs and micro- enterprises have some difficulties to enter in this network. The result is a global loss of skills and them a brake for the territory development.

35 See for more information http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_%C3%A9conomique 36 Rousseau Jean-Marie, Mission Pole CHENGDU, Ambassade de France en Chine, Service pour la science et la technologie, Stratégie Régionale d’Innovation et de Valorisation des Territoires en Chine, February 22d 2010 to 14th March 2010

Figure 2: Involvement of the Cluster Stakeholders

6 – The French poles of Competitiveness

A recent document from the Boston Consulting Group and CMI37 analyzed the various French poles of Competitiveness. Almost during the same time a report was issued to the French Parliament38 upon the perspective of development of the French poles of competitiveness. From these two reports a clear consensus appears: the poles of competitiveness are rather young and some adjustments must be done. But, globally they can be considered as a success and the experience must continue. It is clear also that the recommendations indicated that the label of “pole of competitiveness” should be given with great care since not all the whereabouts of the ongoing experiment are known.

The role of Competitive Intelligence in the poles. Thank to the role of pioneers, the Competitive Intelligence if not practiced by everybody is at least well know in France. Basically what Competitive Intelligence taught to us (among other things):

Information (the right information) is necessary to understand our environment and if it is used correctly, to create an actionable knowledge

37 BCG CMI Evaluation des pôles de Compétitivité, Synthèse du rapport d’évaluation, 18 Juin 2008

38 RAPPORT D’INFORMATIONDÉPOSÉ 2009en application de l’article 145 du RèglementPAR LA COMMISSION DES FINANCES, DE L’ÉCONOMIE GÉNÉRALE ET DU CONTRÔLE BUDGÉTAIREen conclusion des travaux de la Mission d’évaluation et de contrôle (MEC) sur les perspectives des pôles de compétitivitéRAPPORT D’INFORMATION

This knowledge is then used to facilitate the decision making process of the company

We have now, to shift this concept from a unique company to an heterogeneous group. How to do it? We believe that each poles of competitiveness should have a competitive intelligence unit, more of less independent of the stakeholders and hierarchically situated near the governance board. This Competitive Intelligence Unit should have as a main role to select the information which appeared to be strategic according the projects of the pole and the competences of the stakeholders. The question is then who will select the information? This is often the problem:

Not all the poles of competitiveness have a Competitive Intelligence Unit, and very often this Unit did not get the financial support to search the right informationTo save some money, the people which are in charge of the Unit have not the capability to set up among the members of the pole the process which will induce the people to use this information and to start some discussions about it. This is the first step of the knowledge creation.Often also, because of a lack of knowledge or because of a lack of financial support the Competitive intelligence Unit cannot educate some of the stakeholders to start in the pole the same CI organization than the organization present in a unique company.

How to overcome some of these difficulties From our experience we believe that there are a few considerations and actions which will help in this difficult context. The information typology is important:

Formal information (secondary information sources) which is of the documentary type. This information is often difficult to understand because very specialized specially for the SMEs

Informal information (primary information sources) this is the information which is obtained from people and networks of people.

and of course for the two former cases the information may be internal to the company (here to the stakeholders of the pole) or external to the company (external to the pole)

The amount of information is growing all the time, and most of the members of the pole, have their own information system. It is important if we want to maintain the attractiveness of the system to be able to give an information attractive enough. We may inside the information which can be given make a distinction between the information of a catalog type that the people may consult and use independently from each other and the dynamic information which must be created. This is for instance the list of the competences of the members of the poles and also the list of the laboratories or experts outside the pole. But, the modern tools of information allow us to create from the available

information (from the internet or other sources) an elaborated information which will appeal to the imagination of the people and then which will begin to open the way to innovation. Among these information the patent information and the APA (Automatic Patent Analysis) is one of the most important39.

The structure of the Competitive Intelligence Unit is also important. If we refer for instance to the Helios platform developed by the SEB40 company, we can see that the Competitive Intelligence Unit may act in several ways:

to gather information coming from various observers and make it available to the others (this is the role of the education of a selected number of people, which in the case of the pole may report on various subjects useful for the pole and not critical for their company)

to be able to create a new information and make it available to the usersto be able to respond to various questions “on demand” when some of

the members of the pole search for and information and do not find it.

From the above considerations it is clear that information processing management and handling has a key role in the Competitive Intelligence Unit, and that this Unit, if it is well associated with the governance may create the conditions which will enable the pole to be more creative and more efficient.

7 – Inter-cluster’s policy and development of world-class clusters

Today, with the crisis and the increase of the competition the same goal wished for the SMEs (that is to say to increase their size and their potential), extends to the clusters themselves. It gives rise to the inter-clusters European framework and to the necessity to facilitate the emergence of world-class clusters41.

World class clusters42. The development of the globalization is a strong incentive for the creation of “super clusters” that is to say clusters which will open widely in their strategy the notion of space, competition and new markets. To do so, it is necessary to increase the knowledge creation inside the cluster, and to develop products and services able to be sold in various countries. The concept of world class cluster is unfortunately in opposition with the notion of

39H Dou, V Leveillé, S Manullang, JM Dou Jr, Patent Analysis for Competitive Technical Intelligence and Innovative Thinking, DSJ Data Science Journal, Vol. 4 (2005) pp.209-23640 Henri Dou, Competitive Technical Intelligence. Methods and tools, application to innovation, SMEs, poles of competitiveness, research institutions and large companies. Symposoium International Competitive Technical Intelligence, Beijing, 17-18 Septembre 200841 White book « L’émergence de clusters européens de classe mondiale » 2010. This document is distributed by Europa Interclusters. Europa Interclusters is an independent non profit association of European cluster organization . Europa intercluster Avenue des Arts, 12 Bte 7, 1210 Brussels Regioninfo@intercluster.eu http://www.europaintercluster.eu 42 The concept is not new, see for instance : Lynda C MacDermott, Nolan Brawley, WilliamW. Waite, World Class Teams, Working Accroos Borders, 2002, John Wiley and sons, Inc,

region and equilibrium in the national space. In fact this policy if necessary to avoid large discrepancies between the various regions of a country, conducts to label clusters of various sizes, quality and internal resources. Nevertheless to face the extraordinary today competition it is necessary to second, create or promote super-clusters able to play a significant role on the international scene. That means that the efficiency of a cluster should move “bottom top” to reach this degree of efficiency, but the dilemma is that often the Federal government policy which goes ‘top down” create some sort of confusion and worse competition. An example of this situation is given in France by the National “poles of competitiveness” policy and by the development of regional initiative such as the PIRDES43 for instance. Another point which must be underlined is that if everybody speak of the “knowledge age” the competences and skills which are necessary are most of the time not located in the same space (as a regional point of view). This situation calls for a new organization and this is why in Europe the notion of intercluster emerges.

The Interclusters organization. What is true for European States is true also for Europe itself. The 27 European states induces 27 independent cluster policy with their own rules of financing, organization, etc. This situation leads to a large loss of facilities and worse to a lack or administrative structure to promote the intercluster collaborations, necessary to move to international markets. The role of clusters as a promotion of development and innovation in developing countries should be a strong motivation to implement or create a European policy which will consider innovation not only on a regional and national point of view but to a European one44. In the same way the value chain of knowledge becomes more and more specialized and the world class industries must either collaborate of enter into co-opetion agreements which are not space limited. In Europe for instance the French and German “poles of competitiveness” are working more closely with the incentive of the two governments.45 The development of the BRIC46 is an example of this tendency47. To think in terms of “development without frontier” will privilege the clusters with a strong and powerful governance able to develop a strategy aiming to the future and to a new model of development.

43 Pôles Régionaux d’Innovation et de Développement Economique Solidaire more information is available through : http://www.regionpaca.fr/index.php?id=311544 See reference 36 for more information45 La coopération franco-allemande entre Pôles de compétitivité français et "kompetenznetze" allemands, service pour la science et la technologie de l’Ambassade de France en Allemagne http://www.science-allemangne.fr see also http://www.science-allemagne.fr/cooperations/poles_et_kompetenznetze/ 46 Brasil, Russia, India, China47 Eric Hershbergerg, Kaoru Nabeshima, Shadid Yusuf, Opening the Ivory Tower to Business: University–Industry Linkages and the Development of Knowledge-Intensive Clusters in Asian Cities

An innovation with multiple facets. We saw in the part of this presentation dealing with innovation, that innovation is the creation of new products and services able to be exported on international markets. The creation of these products and services being done from the competences, skills and knowledge developed in research laboratories and centers. But, as we saw above, the value chain of knowledge becomes more and more fragmented. Interdisciplinary is the main attitude and often this is by the transposition of the knowledge from one discipline to another that innovation happens. This situation will privilege two directions:

To favor in universities and research administrations an interdisciplinary attitude, not only for the institution, but also for the carrier of the researchers themselves,

To increase the role of a good governance into the clusters. In France we believe that the development of Competitive Intelligence Unit in each clusters, with a strong coordination with the governance could be part of the solution.

Do not forget also, even if a world wide strategy is developed in the cluster, that SMEs and small industries are also present. To take care of their knowledge could also be one of the ways to use a dispersed knowledge able to increase the value chain of the cluster. The analysis of the value chain of a cluster, using for instance the SWOT analysis is a good tool to pin point the forces and weaknesses and then to induce an endogenous development or to develop new collaborations to create a new dynamic. The “magic triangle”48 indicates that the interactions between research, innovation, enterprise with the help of soft technologies49 must be well balanced to create the success conditions.

Conclusion

The development of a European policy of innovation through the development of a global European cluster policy is underway. But, many impediments are still coming ahead. The variety of national policies and rules prevent the collaboration between clusters of different countries. The international competition among the European countries is also a brake which will slow down the collaboration. The division between Northern Europe and Southern Europe is not only a geographical difference but also a strong difference in mental models. It will be necessary to develop at the European

48 Henri Dou, Sri Damayanty Manullang, Jean-Marie Dou Jr, The Magic Triangle - How to develop and apply competitive intelligence in Developing countriesISDM Information Science for Decision Making, n°22, 2005, http://isdm.univ-tln.fr/PDF/isdm22/isdm22_dou.pdf 49 Zhouying Jin, Soft Technology -The Essential of Innovation, “Futures Research Quarterly” 2002 U.S.

level a unique policy of clusters development, with the same rules and a global strategy. We believe that due to the crisis and the necessity to spare European resources that a European policy for a unified European development is underway even if this situation offend some national European governments.

Of course, if the industrial development is developed in various European countries and if it is successful this will increase widely the possibility European collaboration. In this paper a set of examples, behaviors and rules have been presented. Mistakes must be avoided and the “nega development” principles should be analyzed by most of the countries. To know its weaknesses is always a good start, but, in Europe it must be part of a European Governance, that is to say to the creation of a European Government which supra nationalities power.