Regional Cluster’s development

Abstract

The European Commission aims to ensure coherence between environmental, climate, energy and industrial policy to create optimal business environments for sustainable growth and innovations, in a way that enhances the competitiveness of European industry, while moving towards a more resource efficient, circular economy. Sustainability needs to be mainstreamed into all areas of industrial policy to help European businesses to unlock first mover advantage and gain a competitive edge. The Dorothy project is inspired by the contents of the “Flagship Initiative for a resource-efficient Europe under the Europe 2020 strategy”. The Dorothy Project is targeted to develop the potential of innovation and research in the four Regions composing the Consortium in the field of Urban Logistics, which represent the specific application topic of the proposal, and is one of the main focuses of attention of the Flagship Initiative. The industrial environnent is the main actor on the research and innovation regional driven Clusters The Dorothy project has achieved the result of setting up three Regional Innovation Clusters in: Valencia – Spain, Lisbon – Portugal and Craiova – Romania, under the mentoring action of the already existing Tuscany Cluster in Firenze. They operate in the field of Urban Logistics. This achievement must be made durable in time and the cooperation among the Dorothy Clusters must be ensured over the time after the end of the project. For this reason, among the other activities carried out by the project, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) have been defined and signed among the four Clusters in form of a multilateral and mutual agreement among them. This paper explain the contents and the importance in the JAP – Joint Action Plan, of the thematic area 3 about regional clusters development, the target of the overall Thematic Area, why has been chosen as a Thematic Area, shortly remind the actions that are contained in the Thematic Area. The action fields and related actions are organized under 6 areas:1. Innovative ICT solutions to support advanced UL regulation schemes2. Open data architectures to support urban logistics3. Proximity delivery areas4. Cooperation agreement among the Dorothy Clusters5. Reverse logistics6. Cooperation with other existing Clusters and networks.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2016.4262