Clusters for European Innovation Cross-Linking
All 9 partners from 8 countries represent regions/countries, where clusters are already in place as an important instrument for regional economic development, supporting innovative collaboration within industries. Now experience shows, that new technological fields emerge in the interface between existing industries. As such the regional authorities who initially set up and developed clusters in certain sectors need also to reflect on the future strategic orientation of the cluster policy. 
Considering in particular the efforts towards a regional smart specialisation the policy makers face the challenge of identifying new technological developements and trends at an early stage with a high potential for boosting the regional economic growth. Innovation means not only creating totally new technologies, but increasingly cross-linking existing ones towards new developments. CLUSTERIX aims to enable regional authorities to identify, analyse and explore the potential of strategic future
cluster development through the exchange of experience and best practices between partners. This potential lies in the cross-linking of existing industrial fields of strength – within the region and between the regions. 
CLUSTERIX also tackles further themes of high interest for cluster policy makers like 
• funding the cluster support and its political/strategical orientation and expected impact
• pushing emerging industries through cluster development (e.g. by using public procurement)
• creating the positive framework for cross-linked cluster cooperation between the partner regions.
These issues have an innovative character since they have not been tackeld in other projects and are important in a regional landscape where clusters are now at a crossroad: quantity vs. quality, traditional industries vs. emerging industries, cooperation within the region vs. across regions.

The partnership consists of local, regional and national authorities (depending on policy level responsible in
the different states) as well as bodies governed by public law that have the mandate to design and implement cluster policy. These bodies act in the project together with their regional/national authorities, in order to ensure the project's impact at the policy level. 
The exchange of experience envisaged by CLUSTERIX takes place through study visits, staff exchange and most important through peer groups meetings, where in small&efficient groups the identified best practices are shared and analized on their relevance and feasibility for other project regions. This gained know-how is reflected "at home" in order to be able to integrate the learnings optimally in the regional implementation plan. 

The overall objective of CLUSTERIX is to increase the competitiveness of European regions and their innovation potential through the improvement and strategic re-orientation of cluster policies towards smart specialisation.