BLUES

The overall objective of BLUES is to strengthen cluster excellence management and facilitate a European Strategic Cluster Partnership for Excellence between water clusters and KET (plasma, nanotechnology, and ICT) clusters to improve the competitiveness of SMEs and increase their international opportunities in the single market and beyond, through benchmarking, lifelong learning, transfer of best practices and exchanges.

BLUES consists of five mature clusters representing new emerging industries in Europe that have water sustainability and resource efficiency as a common thread. BLUES partners are committed to excellence (currently ESCA Bronze, Silver, and Gold labels) consisting of 464 entities (SMEs and Scaling-up support organisations).

BLUES partners initiated a cooperation agenda in the framework of the Cluster Excellence Programme that moves to the next stage in 2020 to promote cluster partnership. This way, BLUES will encourage excellence in cluster management towards enhancing a comprehensive strategy and support services for value-added SMEs. A key part of the proposal will be implementing the ClusterXchange pilot scheme by organising 50 exchanges between SME clusters, scale-up support organisations and clusters within blue areas and eco-industries. Accordingly, the project work plan is based on five work packages for skills upgrading and strategy building (WP1), organisation of joint activities (WP2), implementation of the pilot ClusterXchange scheme (WP3), project outreach and awareness raising (WP4) and project management (WP5).

Overall, the project represents a powerful tool for implementing the European industrial policy strategy, the results of which will be reinforced by the involvement of the partners within the S3 platform. In addition, long-term sustainability beyond BLUES will be ensured by the extension of the European Economic Interest Group led by some project partners.