Participating in an innovation cluster: an opportunity for the company

Innovation clusters are booming, as they are strongly encouraged by public authorities. They are structures, generally associative, that bring together all the players in a value chain in an existing or future market. These innovation clusters are :

• ecosystems conducive to competitiveness and the development of business opportunities;

• places for brainstorming and pooling members' resources and potential;

• places to meet, listen and share market knowledge and skills.

The aim of some innovation clusters is to develop and support product, service or organizational innovations to create value for their members and, more broadly, for an industrial sector.

This fact sheet is aimed at players, and particularly entrepreneurs, who have not yet decided to join one of these structures. It will help you identify the benefits, risks and costs of participating in the development of cluster activities. It presents the main objectives and service functions that these structures make available to you on a collective and personalized basis, to accelerate the transformation of a good idea into a prototype, and then into a successful commercial product launch.