European Commission launches the Cluster Excellence Programme

The Cluster Excellence Programme launched by the European Commission supports the Foundation's Cluster Excellence Management training 

The Call for Proposals is open until October 29th, 2014.

The overall objective of this Call for Proposals is to pursue European efforts in strengthening Cluster Excellence Management. The aim is to provide more professional business services to European SMEs through clusters, and therefore contribute to the development of more world-class clusters across the EU.

This Call for Proposals is the first action in the framework of the Cluster Excellence Programme to be supported under COSME, and is aimed at promoting cluster excellence across the EU for the benefit of European SMEs involved in clusters. The present action will assist cluster organizations, business networks and their managers in providing high quality services to SMEs in different areas, including access to foreign markets.

The European Foundation for Cluster Excellence's various training programmes were particularly designed to address the requirements of this call. The interested cluster organizations and business networks should be engaged in strategic, industry-driven collaboration (or should be planning to work together) along a common value chain, or in a transnational project in any manufacturing or service sector. They should be facing common economic challenges and should be willing to:

• Improve their management practices as well as their market/competitive advances or value-chain analytical capacities.
• Provide top-quality services to their SMEs.  Especially that of integrating creativity into their business, facilitating SMEs internationalization, better exploiting and diffusing Key Enabling Technologies (KETs), assisting SMEs on IPRs protection and further addressing resource-efficiency issues with their cluster.

Eligible costs include: participation in the trainings for a maximum of two persons from each project partner, including their travel costs.

For further details please visit the European Commission's page featuring full description of the Cluster Excellence Programme.

Call for Expression of Interest - March 2014

Training in Field-Project Tutoring for the Foundation's Register of Tutors

In order to expand its Register of Trained Tutors, the Foundation is launching a new call for Expression of Interest.

The 6-month long Cluster Excellence Train-the-Trainers programme, which the Foundation delivers as its flagship training, consists not only in training sessions taught by certified instructors, but also in a practical part where participants must carry-on a field-project based on a real cluster from their own region. Tutors of the Foundation exert the role of giving tutorial support and personalized coaching to the teams, using the ECEI methodology. The successful candidates will be trained for that purpose.

Prospective participants interested in becoming a Foundation's Tutor must first successfully complete the tutoring training. They would then be qualified to be included in the Foundation’s Register of Tutors. The Foundation may select, as needed, one or several tutors for the delivery of the Train-the-Trainers programme.

The 3-day tutoring training will take place in Barcelona, April 28-30 2014. 

Candidates who are interested in the tutor training and having their name included in the Register are invited to submit an application in accordance with the guidelines set out below. 

The minimum criteria for selection as a Foundation Tutor

The candidates should fulfill the following requirements:

1. MBA or PhD equivalent.
2. A minimum of 2 years of experience in clusters, strategy or senior management.
3. Having participated in a Train-the-Trainers programme of the Foundation or experience in participating at least in 2 field projects of Competitiveness Reinforcement Initiatives (as explained in Annex 1 of the document).
4. Excellent verbal and written fluency in English as the training will be delivered in English – Ideally a graduate degree from an English speaking university or level C2 in Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is required.

Applications

Suitably qualified candidates are invited to send their covering letter and a current CV (no more than 2 pages as only the first two pages will be read) together with any supporting documents in MS Word or PDF format, electronically to the following address: info@clusterexcellence.org.

The subject field of the email must be marked “ROT – Register of Foundation Tutors”. In their covering letter candidates must clearly highlight how they meet the requirements set out in section 4 of the application process document.

Deadline for Application

Complete application packs must arrive in the Foundation’s inbox by Wednesday 16 April 2014, 17:00 (CET).

You may find complete information on the application process clicking on the link.

Train-the-Professors Third Week

Third week of the Train-the-Professors programme successfully completed

Between the 28th and 30th of January, Brussels hosted the third week of the Train-the-Professors programme, a programme devoted to the training and inclusion of new instructors in the Foundation’s register.

The short training, addressed to advanced instructors in cluster development, was set-up to expand the number of certified instructors in line with the growth of the Foundation's operations and its number of courses imparted. Among other modules, future professors of the Foundation went through the Change Management module, an essential module belonging to the third phase of the overall programme. 

After successful completion of the training, instructors will be requested to deliver specific case-based programme modules related to their field of expertise. Most of the classes analyzed how to teach using the case–based teaching methodology. They were delivered either by the authors of the cases, the case protagonists, or by professors having extensive experience in their delivery.

The training revolved around cases such as the Textile Industry in Mexico, the Catalan Leather Case or the IT in Estonia. Instruction of the programme will continue along February with the fourth training week, also held in the European capital.