European clusters against the pandemic

The Alliance of the European Clusters has decided to launch an open innovation platform against the coronavirus pandemic. This is a new collaborative platform between different actors will have the strategic challenge of sharing ideas and solutions that can help different countries fight against COVID-19 with effective products, including masks and ventilators, as well as innovative health services. Europe is facing a very demanding challenge and there is an increasing sense that projects like these are important during a time of both uncertainty and complexity in which we must be all together.

 The Alliance has been developing an effective sense of confidence and sharing between all managers and researchers to construct a real capacity building process for new solutions with concrete results.  The focus on innovation and knowledge as the drivers of creating added value with an international dissemination is a unique challenge that may be a new way to have an interaction between those with the responsibility of thinking and those who are charged with producing goods and services. This will be the roadmap for the European Clusters.

The European Clusters experience is also based on native entrepreneurial culture and attitude, including science and innovation. Former European Science and Innovation Commissioner Carlos Moedas recently said in Lisbon that an effective negative attitude towards financial risk is commonplace, but that the focus should be on practices and the sharing of a positive culture. We need Europe to have a new challenge and it must be able to be a real platform for a more entrepreneurial society that s centred on new areas of knowledge and sectors of value. This will only be possible with co-creation like the Alliance of Clusters.

 In the future, the process of return and recovery must involve, in a highly collaborative way, firms and centres of competence. Governments must have a very proactive engagement in this agenda, as the Italian-American economist Mariana Mazucatto reiterated in a recent interview. This new process will be different and the talent on display must be the new competitive advantage of Europe’s re-booted economy, which will be pushed by the enablers of modernity, added value, and excellence. This must be a very clear idea that fits the biggest challenges that our society faces, including those that require new answers to different questions. The act of global participation in such a demanding society is an exercise of commitment between individual creativity and collective cooperation. This is also a challenge for the European Clusters.

It’s time to believe that the economy and society will be back.  These are, in fact, the drivers of change for  Europe, and civil society must be able to understand this new challenge and address effective answers for the different stakeholders of the system. The challenge of the European Clusters is, in a large sense, giving a new opportunity to the reinvention of the economy and society. This reinvention includes its people and institutions and the European Clusters have the challenge of being one of the key actors for this change.