Cluster evaluation Working group 2021

Capturing Cluster Against-Covid Contribution to Contemplate New Competitive Courses

This last year has been unusual to say the least and impressively clusters have time and again stepped forward to show how deep sector knowledge, territorial credibility and collaborative working can solve complex innovation challenges. As well as addressing immediate crisis issues, the learning from operating in new collaborative ways has also informed strategies for longer term change.

TCI has showcased some great “war stories” from across the membership. However, too often we don’t use our evaluation capability to systemically evidence the impact of our role. Increasingly that impact generates not only economic value at cluster and regional levels, but also contributes to the innovation required to meet societal challenges such as green transition.

From an evaluation methodology point of view this moves the thinking from linear, cause effect approaches, to more reflective, developmental evaluation, where a better understanding of how things have changed, allows a reshaping of strategies to respond to those changes, affecting both the results and the process.

Building on last year’s working group meeting looking at the wider value of clusters, this year’s workshop will explore how we have captured and evidenced the value and ripple effects of our pandemic response interventions. Key questions will be:

• What have you done in your cluster or cluster programme to capture the value you have generated to

              Members

              Funders and Stakeholders

              Regions

              Internationally

• What evaluation approaches and processes have you used?
  
  
• How have you communicated and shared this information?
  
  
• How has this informed longer term transformational strategies?
  
  
• How has this impacted on the perception of the value of clusters?

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