IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bxr/bxrceb/y2005v48i3p321-335.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

La politique de soutien aux clusters dans une région en restructuration, évaluation de trois années d'expérimentation en Région wallonne

Author

Listed:
  • Vincent Lepage

Abstract

Heavy industrial region still continuing its redeployment, Wallonia (Belgium) has initiated and support the creation and the development of clusters since 2001. Facing the lack of leading sectors or enterprises, the approach adopted is resolutely bottom-up :the initiative of a cluster’s creation must come from the enterprises themselves (mainly SME’s) wishing to collaborate in a network targeting at one (or more) market(s). Five years of experimentation later, there is in Wallonia 10 clusters involving 647 enterprises and 143 support organisations (R&D centres, universities, training centres). We can list 59 current partnerships amongst firms (R&D, development of a product, joint commercial moves, ) involving 222 enterprises and research centres. Some companies has been created (EIG, spin-off, ) as a result from these clusters. After a first stage of development, the walloon clusters launched in 2001/2003 extend their action to international field. After a brief overview of the main theories related to the cluster concept, the paper is exploring the first results (qualitative and quantitative) of the experimental phase of this clustering policy implemented by the Walloon Region, a.o. on the basis of the MERIT (University of Maastricht, NL) external evaluation written in March 2004. The conclusions and recommendations of this study have largely inspired the redaction of a regional Decree concerning the support and the development of the Walloon clusters (to be adopted by the regional Parliament at the end of 2006).

Suggested Citation

  • Vincent Lepage, 2005. "La politique de soutien aux clusters dans une région en restructuration, évaluation de trois années d'expérimentation en Région wallonne," Brussels Economic Review, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles, vol. 48(3), pages 321-335.
  • Handle: RePEc:bxr:bxrceb:y:2005:v:48:i:3:p:321-335
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/12011/1/ber-0335.pdf
    File Function: ber-0335
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    réseaux d'entreprises; clusters; Wallonie; évaluation; firms networks; clusters; Wallonia; evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L52 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Industrial Policy; Sectoral Planning Methods
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • R38 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bxr:bxrceb:y:2005:v:48:i:3:p:321-335. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dulbebe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.