Harnessing Open Innovation for high performance innovation clusters

The ambitions of our sister site the Canada Cloud Business Plan is to implement what Cisco call a ‘Next Generation Cluster‘ (NGC).

This refers to an ‘upgraded’ version of Michael Porter’s theorem of the role clusters play in local economic development.

The role of an NGC is defined in the CATA business plan ‘Innovation Nation‘, a suggested blueprint for improving the innovation capacities of Canada.

In this document they call out for more industry cluster development, and make the critical point:

“CATA believes that market-oriented collaborations models should be evaluated and measures should be taken to incent more companies in Canada to act as anchor companies and to encourage more SME companies to cluster around large anchor ones with good reach into the global markets.”

Absolutely this is a great idea. Consider an organization like Salesforce.com who operate in Canada, employing hundreds of people, who are a global firm and most importantly who provide a ‘product distribution’ platform for exactly this purpose. Ie. local Canadian Salesforce.com developers can create module add-ins that are then sold globally through the Salesforce.com Apps Store.

Similarly another startup I can currently helping, Data Gardens, provides technology within the VMware industry, adding value to their ecosystem in the same way and that could be helped to expand internationally the same way too.

As the Radian6 acquisition highlights this ‘acceleration pathway’ can even lead to a final exit for the startup, generating over $300 million new inward investment to the province in this case, so this a strategy capable of substantial levels of this investment attraction.

By further combining these foundations with support programs using the latest techniques like ‘Open Innovation‘, economic development teams can better help entreprenreurs identify and exploit these niche opportunities, creating ‘high performance innovation clusters’.