AEI Tèxtils, the technical textiles’ cluster of Catalonia, attended the cluster accelerator boot camp that aims to lead transformation of European Clusters towards Clusters of Change.

The boot camp training took place from the October 14^th to the 17^th in Provadis facilities in Frankfurt. The program is an initiative led by Clusters of Change, supported by Climate-KIC to promote clusters’ increased impact in sustainability and climate change.

A total of 20 representatives from European Clusters, economic development agencies, universities and other cluster-related stakeholders participated in the 4-day boot camp, under the coaching from clusters’ experts like Bianca Dragomir, EU Cluster Manager of the year 2016-2018 and Christian Rangen.

The Project Manager of AEI Tèxtils, Josep Casamada, participated as the sole Catalan cluster representative. Other participants came from Germany, Lithuania, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Slovenia, Italy and the Netherlands among others. 

Josep Casamada, Project Manager at AEI Tèxtils, giving a pitch about AEI Tèxtils cluster (Picture by: Jens Braune del Angel, Frankfurt)

On the first day, the bootcamp focused on tools and strategies to continuously challenging the cluster business model to enhance its performance with tools like reinforcing the cluster identity and value proposition along with the go-to-member strategy. 

The second day focused on how to thrive the paradigm shift of clusters from tripe helix (academia, government and industry) towards a full ecosystem integration including entrepreneurs and startups with capital and investors. Some strategic tools include results from the EU Industry 2030 roadmap.

The bootcamp continued the next day with tools and strategies for developing the stakeholder engagement strategy to move towards the Clusters of Change paradigm. Another major point to tackle from the cluster perspective is how to facilitate the acquisition of new skills in the ecosystem workforce in the current accelerated change environment. 

On the last day of the bootcamp, the different participants wrap up main conclusions and several participants pitch the learnings during this intense training including the different aspects for the near future where cluster managers have to become change managers that develop ecosystems and facilitate the navigation of their members in the VUCA world with limited resources.

Participants in the Clusters of Change Bootcamp (Picture by: Jens Braune del Angel, Frankfurt)