Cluster

The term “cluster” was coined by Porter in his study on the competitive advantage of nations, in which he considered that the grouping of companies and their corresponding specialisation in certain productive activities contributed favourably to competitive advantage. According to the author himself:

A cluster is a group of companies and support institutions concentrated in a territory which compete in the same business and which share common characteristics and complementarities

Clusters improve the competitive advantage of companies in three fundamental aspects:

• They increase their productivity.
• They increase their capacity to innovate.
• They reduce their costs.

All thanks to the possibility of sharing resources, capacities, experiences and knowledge.

When several companies create a cluster, they may have different objectives, but they must always identify at least one common objective in one of these branches: Business or R&D.

Business objectives:

• Having or wanting common targets. Thanks to the grouping of companies they can increase the probability of sale and decrease the competition in the market.
• To access common markets, mainly international or difficult to access. By joining forces, companies can access markets more quickly or that would be unfeasible if they entered individually.
• Sharing promotional activities and costs.
• Reduce costs, thanks to the possibility of sharing resources, skills and knowledge.
• Increase sales. Thanks to the union, they can cover larger projects and access some that would otherwise not be possible.

R&D&I objectives:

• To share resources (knowledge, time, money, people, instruments…) and optimise them in order to develop products and services that would not be feasible with their individual capacities alone.
• Sharing knowledge and experience.
• To act jointly before administrators, clients or other stakeholders, with the purpose of applying for grants, or other types of resources and facilitators.