It plans to sponsor apprentices and links between firms and universities, and to encourage business clusters with global, not just national, suppliers.
Entrepreneurs across Europe have realised that they need to embrace the networking skills that typify America's successes in Silicon Valley and other high-tech business clusters.
Howard Stevenson, a professor at Harvard Business School, says that many clusters die because their founders, or their founders' children, reinvest their fortunes elsewhere.
As a result, the industry growth clusters (aviation, specialized business services, life sciences, innovative manufacturing, and supply chain and logistics) have been gaining traction in our metro area.
By depending on a single industry, clusters have also left regions vulnerable to shifts in business power.
Michael Porter (see article), a professor at Harvard Business School, has looked recently at this seemingly paradoxical revival of industrial clusters.
There is limited experience in policy toward clusters, which sit in between policies aimed at the general business environment and policies targeted at creating incentives for individual firms.
Indeed, Emma Marcegaglia, president of Confindustria, Italy's main business lobby, says that more than 90 of Italy's 104 officially recognised clusters, the bedrock of the country's industry, are in difficulty.
But if you do your research, carefully analyze the results, find strengths, identify hurdles and seize upon opportunities, building clusters will aid job creation, re-purpose idle assets, and spark business opportunities that are less susceptible to off-shoring.
At the same time, the strongest growth clusters in those regions that stick to the basics: relatively low taxes, pro-business regulations and continued infrastructure investment.
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