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Clusters as drivers of regional development – Silesia

Client

European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency

Year

2022

Partner

IMP³ROVE, European Clusters Alliance, InPulse Partners SRL, Agrifood Lithuania, Eurada, IN-TRACTO, LOW, VDI/VDE


There are 22 cluster organisations in the Polish Śląskie Voivodeship (Silesia), of which 11 have registered on the European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP). This makes Silesia one of the regions in Poland with the most cluster organisations.

Future engine of innovation

Silesia is traditionally an industrial region where most people work in mining. However, in recent years, the economy has diversified and the services sector is growing.

In the EU’s Regional Innovation Scoreboard of 2021, Silesia is classified as an “Emerging Innovator.” In terms of the number of people employed in knowledge-intensive areas, the region is above the national average.

In its Smart Specialisation Strategy 2021–2027, Silesia has focused on the following five areas: energy, health/medicine, sustainable economy, information and communication technologies, and emerging industries such as the creative industries and mobility.

Our mission

The aim of the ECCP, an initiative of the European Union, is to strengthen the European economy through cooperation. The ECCP helps cluster organisations in Europe and beyond to network, communicate, and collaborate.

As part of the consortium led by IMP³ROVE, Prognos is driving forward the development of the platform into a single point of contact for cluster organisations in Europe. Among other things, we are responsible for producing input papers for regional workshops. In November 2022, the third “Clusters meet Regions” event took place in Katowice, for the occasion of which we wrote this input paper.

Our approach

The input paper for the event “Cluster as driving forces for regional development and growth – taking Silesia as an example,” first describes the economic structure of the region. In the second chapter, the cluster organisations in Silesia are presented and their significance for regional economic development is highlighted. The third chapter deals with cross-border cooperation between clusters and their networking within the EU. The final chapter discusses the region’s smart specialisation strategies for the periods 2014–2020 and 2021–2027.

Links and downloads

Read the investigation (PDF, clustercollaboration.eu)

Project team: Dr Jan-Philipp Kramer, Marie-Kristin Komendzinski, Lennart Galdiga, Maximilian Welford, Fabian Schmidt

Last update: 27.03.2023

Do you have questions?

Your contact at Prognos

Dr Jan-Philipp Kramer

Vice Director, Head of EU Services

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Lennart Galdiga

Consultant

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Prognos is one of the oldest economic research centres in Europe. Founded at the University of Basel, Prognos experts have been conducting research for a wide range of clients from the public and private sectors since 1959 – politically independent, scientifically sound.

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