'The report on cluster collaboration and business support tools to facilitate entrepreneurship, crosssectoral collaboration and growth (attached) is mainly addressed to cluster managers interested in providing tailor- made and demand-oriented support services to cluster participants, mainly medium-sized companies. Industrial transformation and the development of emerging industries are key challenges for medium-sized enterprises. The nature of innovations and how they are emerging is continuously changing. Cluster organisations can play a decisive role for the development of new industrial value chains. Cluster participants can capitalise on cluster services in view of remaining competitive in emerging industries or successfully entering new global value chains. Cluster services focussing on crosssectoral issues can be of even more importance, since innovations mainly happen at the borderline of those industrial sectors. The report is also relevant for policy-makers and local stakeholders interested in seeing “their” clusters taking over a stronger role in promoting regional structural change and industrial modernisation. Gaining a better understanding of what kind of services and added values cluster organisations can provide to their clients, policy-makers can encourage cluster organisations to become more active and innovative when it comes to implementing new business services and contributing suitable framework conditions cluster organisations can operate in. The report explains why cluster services are that important for the overall success of regional cluster policies, how the best innovative services can be identified and what are key success factors for implementation. The report reveals many examples of cluster services that can be used or adopted by interested cluster organisations. Of course, these services cannot be copied and pasted on a one-to–one basis, and the report shall not be understood as a recipe book, but the process, starting with a strategy definition and ending with specific business services provided by cluster organisations, is always quite similar and can be taken over by cluster organisations.

The report pays dedicated attention to clusters operating in emerging industries where traditional cluster services alone may not be sufficient anymore. New, innovative cluster services are needed to support small and medium-sized enterprises operating in emerging industries.1 Encouraging cluster organisations to jointly create such services, especially if they are striving for excellence, is no longer sufficient. Time has changed and cluster organisations have to cope with new innovation challenges. In these days, Cluster services can be a key to succeed. The report was published in the context of the European Cluster Observatory which aims at promoting the development of more world-class clusters in Europe, notably with a view to fostering competitiveness and entrepreneurship in emerging industries and facilitating SMEs’ access to clusters and internationalisation activities through clusters.'