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About Clusters

"Clusters are the building blocks of a productive, innovative economy"
Professor Michael Porter

Clustering, or collaboration for growth, could also be called "coopetition" - cooperating in order to be more competitive and successful.

Clusters are about:

• Common goals - an active local cluster includes firms and support organisations working together to achieve results that would not be possible individually
  
  
• Business networking - a key component of any high performance cluster, both between firms and between firms and their supporting infrastructure.
  
  
• Soft networks (such as local professional and trade associations) and hard networks (strategic alliances between firms) are both important
  
  
• More than lobbying - though clusters do provide an effective means of getting access to government agencies
  
  
• People communicating face to face or virtually in teams
  
  
• Collaboration built on trust, dialogue and alignment.

Our definition of "e-clustering" differs from some peoples and encompasses both a vertical market of entities (such as NZ Institute of Food Safety, NZ Juice & Beverage Association and Grocery Manufactures Association) and also a geographical grouping of entities (such as Rotorua Chamber of Commerce and Rotorua Business Development Unit)

Further Reading: About e-clusters