The Commission's updated and new industrial strategy is entrepreneurial in spirit and in action. The Commission is ready to co-design and co-create solutions with industry itself, as well as with social partners and all other stakeholders. This will be supported by a new focus on industrial ecosystems, taking into account all players within a value chain.

This Communication sets out a European Green Deal for the European Union and its citizens. It resets the Commission’s commitment to tackling climate and environmental-related challenges that is this generation’s defining task. The European Green Deal is a response to these challenges. It is a new growth strategy that aims to transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic broke, it was widely acknowledged that significant parts of European industry were suffering from skills imbalances and/or concerned about them in the future. industrial
clusters have a central role to play in responding to skills challenges within specific territories, sectors and value chains. Indeed, with the rise of the skills topic to the top of the agenda of many firms, cluster organisations are experiencing increasing demands from their members to play a stronger orchestrating role to support reskilling, upskilling and talent attraction.

As “cluster” became a new buzzword, governments around the world increasingly implement cluster policies. However, a relevance gap is growing between cluster research and practice. Scholars build theories about the roles of clusters as powerful entities fostering innovation and competitiveness. Meanwhile, governments and policy-driven cluster organizations struggle to manage these highly entangled objects. This PhD thesis addresses such a relevance gap.