I appreciated Madeline Smith’s remarks (may require login) at TCI 2009, wherein she outlined her thoughts on how regional clusters can become learning clusters. Clusters, she noted, are complex animals wherein you have “good companies, strong research universities and supportive policy makers, and you sort of mix them all together and magically economic growth pops out the other end.” Ultimately clusters are relationship-based entities, and they are susceptible to the pitfalls that strike most socio-economic initiatives. This includes, as Madeline noted in her talk, changes in the external environment, changing customer expectations, demands to learn to adapt and evolve, and a need for internal systems that allow for incorporation of formative feedback. One can see why it’s a challenge for clusters to achieve the Holy Grail of organizational effectiveness: status as a learning organization.

In addition to the challenges outlined by Madeline, I would argue that a necessary component to becoming a learning cluster is judicious and systematic use of strategy and evaluation. But one takeaway I have from my hallway conversations in Jyväskylä is that neither is happening as well as it should within the cluster community.

What’s keeping clusters from rushing headlong into strategy and evaluation? I’d like to leverage something that Madeline brought up in her talk. In discussing barriers to learning, Madeline talked about how “our current world view restricts our ability to learn” and that everyone brings a cognitive bias and their own cognitive frameworks to a project.

I’d like to suggest that a good deal of the variance in why clusters don’t engage in strategic planning and program evaluation is explained by the world view of cluster stakeholders, or to be more specific, the competing world views of the stakeholders.

It’s quite easy to imagine how this might be the case. The concept of strategic planning and the ideas behind program evaluation, depending on one’s disciplinary background, are defined, applied, and conducted in different ways. Thus the cognitive biases and frameworks of those from business, government, education, and the social sector tacitly and explicitly collide in ways that can lead to inaction, adherence to status quo, and lackluster results in the face of rich resources.

For instance, as Allison and Kay have noted, strategic planning is a term that is often used interchangeably with “long-range planning,” “business planning,” and “operational planning.” In the case of evaluation, its not uncommon to have the term “program evaluation” be confused with “monitoring” or “surveillance,” or “reporting,” all terms which are antonyms to the beneficial, learning-focused nature of quality program evaluation. As Mari Jose Aranguren and her colleagues noted in their presentation (may require login), there are severe difficulties in evaluating clusters due to their implicit characteristics: a mixture of tangible and intangible objectives; the complexity of determining cause-effect relationships. (By the way, I think the application of participatory evaluation frameworks, which Mari and her colleagues are doing, could have great promise in advancing program evaluation within clusters.)

I’d be curious to hear from others who are in the throes of bringing robust strategy and evaluation techniques to clusters. What has been challenging? What seems to be working?

The theme of the TCI annual global conference Oct 2009 in Jyväskylä, Finland is “Learning Clusters”. We are joining business leaders, cluster coaches, funders and researchers who will investigate ways to enhance competitiveness on a global market.  We will partner with VINNOVA, Sweden, to present insights on what’s really essential in a cluster leadership. Our workshop with VINNOVA “How to significantly shorten time-to-impact and create tangible change”, is designed to demonstrate a hands-on approach for leaders on how to establish and maintain a Learning Cluster.

VINNOVA used OpenEye’s visualization technique to uncover how a program can be designed to have the best possible impact. In the process VINNOVA discovered that any program that has a social dimension, which indeed all programs or clusters have, needs to be continuously reinvented. Why?  Because, the area in which we are working will change continuously. It will change both as a result of what we do and as a result of changes in the world around us. So, in order to stay on course we must be prepared to review our inputs and actions over and over. From our experience the message is clear – The basis of a successful design for impact is a good learning strategy.

At the TCI conference, we will talk about how strategic planning and evaluation work significantly better when they go hand in hand. Consequently, we argue that it is necessary to evaluate from DAY 1 in order to learn, revise and reinvent the strategy focusing on the factors that will influence your progress starting tomorrow.

Evaluation is becoming an increasingly important theme in cluster development. More people are becoming aware of the importance of getting early confirmation of progress rather than waiting to see if the ultimate economic goals of cluster policies, such as wage growth and number of new employees, are met. As a cluster goes through several stages in its lifecycle, from embryonic to declining, the evaluation strategy not only has to look at different factors in the different stages but also adapt to what’s unique about a cluster. There are no generic models or standard solutions that can guarantee success. The perfect cluster model is unique for each cluster.

VINNOVA realized the need to pinpoint exactly what the needs and problems are in their programming and continuously keep focus on the evolving nature of them. Being successful in a context where there is a social dimension requires continuous innovation based on what really happens. Success is deliberate change and impact is the result of a careful design. Focus on activities very often will make you see what you want to see. If you focus on what you would like to accomplish you will soon see that activities are simply “tests” that will give you insight on what works and what doesn’t work on your road to success. This is the paradigm shift that we hope to bring to the attention of the conference delegates. It’s about leaving the traditional role as an administrator of a cluster or a program behind you in order to become an impact designer.

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