Funding Structure of Clusters in Post-Communist and Developed Countries

The paper compares the funding structure of European clusters. It uses a hand-collected questionnaire survey (n = 185) to examine the budget structure of European clusters. The objective is to identify the differences between clusters in post-communist and developed countries, as well as between clusters located in countries with higher and lower levels of innovation performance. The results show that clusters in (i) post-communist countries and (ii) countries with lower levels of innovation performance have a much higher share of EU structural funds and community programmes in their budgets than clusters in (iii) developed countries and (iv) countries with higher levels of innovation performance. The latter two groups of countries exhibit a predominantly higher share of funding from national, regional and local subsidies and grants. These are sources to which other European clusters frequently do not have sufficient access. Moreover, the results indicate that there is no relationship between cluster budgets and their sectoral classification. Implications for the Central European audience: The issue of clusters, cluster policies and their support and financing has been topical since the 1990s, especially in Western and Northern Europe and North America, as well as in developed Asian countries. In Central Europe, the penetration of clusters as an effective instrument of regional but also innovation policy has been slower, although there are also considerable differences in the implementation and support of cluster policies among Central European countries, with the most problematic situation among the V4 countries being in Slovakia. Through a self-administered questionnaire survey, in which responses from V4 clusters are among the most represented, we compare the structure of European cluster budgets, highlighting the differences in cluster funding between the different country groups.