On March 1-2, the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance (UCA) held its traditional annual conference with representatives of science and education. This year, it was held online and gathered over 200 representatives from science, business, government, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, international organizations, and expert organizations. The conference’s main theme was the fixation and disclosure of best practices in cooperation.

Key issues of the conference

UCA has traditionally focused on recording and capturing best practices as the most popular topic among cluster communities and #1 tool for improvement. After the conference on February 7 where UCA clusters fixed up their best practices in the spheres of cluster management, internationalization and project development. The Innovation Committee of UCA conducted an inventory of best practices in the field of innovation development in literally 1 week through a survey of clusters and partners of UCA. On the eve of the conference, a review “25 best practices» and where several main issues for consideration at the conference were voiced. In particular:

•  It was not so much about fixing up or accounting of practices (there are really many of them) – as about leadership in the formation of strategic agendas by areas of activity, and which is critically lacking today. The above review particularly emphasized this issue as the main one in our joint response to the key challenges of innovative development, among which the top ones are the improvement of the country’s defense capability and the viability of all critical industries.
• The subject of consideration was not so much the examples of cooperation themselves as the disclosure of success factors in these cases and an assessment of whether they lead to rapid scaling across regions and industries.·        After all, it was about understanding the steps that lead to the necessary integration and consolidation — instead of the overwhelming fragmentation (of processes, resources, and lines of action…) that dominates everywhere today.

Considering the thesis of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance that advanced, innovative clusters can be potential candidates for the role of orchestrators of innovative ecosystems in their regions and industries, it was also interesting to look at the clusters themselves: how willing they are to support this initiative.

Presentation of practices

During the two days of the conference, about 30 speakers spoke and 24 best practices of UCA were presented in the areas of the creation of SME support Centers in their digitalization (Kyiv DIHs of Kyiv Polytechnical Institute (KPI) and Kyiv Academic University (KAU)), development of state-level policies, smart specialization and road maps of digital transformation; popularization of technologies and standards, market enlightenment; creation of innovative products and solutions (including in the Dual-Use MilTech sectors); educational programs and dual education, etc. Among the speakers were:

 Representatives of UCA clusters – Resource Center “Dual Purpose Technologies” UCA, APPAU, Kharkiv IT cluster, Podil fashion cluster, Medical equipment manufacturers cluster, Photonics cluster and “Science parks of Ukraine” cluster

·        Representatives of science and education are the Institute of Economics and Forecasting of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv Polytechnical Institute, Kharkiv Aerospace Institute, Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, Kyiv National University of Architecture and construction, Kyiv National University of Architecture and construction. The State university of Infrastructure and technologies (Kyiv), Lviv Polytechnic and Khmelnytskyi National University.

·        Representatives of the expert environment — Digital Transformation Institute, Lviv Startup School

Separately, leaders and managers from the European Cluster Alliance, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the Lviv City Hall, the Ukrainian Startup Fund, and UNIDO presented their vision and proposals.

There were really many good presentations, so it is difficult to single out something in particular. Review of all presentations for the link is also an available video of the event in 4 parts.

The main conclusions and insights

In general, the conference went very well, as evidenced by the feedback of numerous participants. The high level of speakers and organization of the event, really cool cases and practices, the participation of all key stakeholders together with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Science, constructive conversation about “what’s next” — all these are components of success.

The main conclusions and insights are as follows:

1. Given the short time needed to prepare, the first important insight is awareness of a powerful innovation ecosystem, which is increasingly looming around advanced UCA clusters. If we were able to collect 30 best practices literally in a week from 6 clusters, then you can imagine the potential of the entire UCA, which today unites almost 30 clusters in the country. For certain reasons, the practices that exist in the clusters of Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lutsk, and other cities were overlooked. The organizers invited representatives of these clusters to add their practices to the accounting file, this collection is still ongoing, and a separate analytical report will be published in the April report.
2. It looks interesting, in this aspect, of the combination of best cases and practices of advanced clusters with young clusters. Organizations such as APPAU, which has been cultivating cooperation in Industry 4.0 for years, Kharkiv IT cluster who is a leader in the IT industry, and knows how to cooperate with 100+ universities in the country. Both have dozens of cooperation practices in their baggage. Like the Podillya fashion cluster, quite young clusters fit very well into this cohort. The latter shows an unexpectedly high level of advanced practices in a small community of textile industry. Still, which are worthy of a national level — we are talking about the Training Center for personnel training in Khmelnytskyi and creating a roadmap for waste processing of light industry enterprises in the region. This is a good sign for young clusters, which shows the potential of cooperation for cluster associations of any level – you just need to be able to and want to unite.
3. A leader in the dynamics of development of regional innovative ecosystems again(like a year ago) looks like Lviv. But this time, not only the Lviv Startup School (based on the Lviv Polytechnic), but also the Lviv City Council demonstrated the already traditional (for UCA) high pace of development. Oleksa Wozniak showed excellent examples of how local authorities can support innovative development of the city through their own mechanisms of influence. such as vouchers, support for clusters, and assistance to SMEs in the military industry.
4. A great achievement of the UCA in 2023 is also the unification of Lviv and Kyiv innovative ecosystems of photonics in a single cluster “Photonics of Ukraine”. The key role in this belongs to the representatives of KPI (Olexandr Bondarenko – coordinator of the cluster initiative), KAU (Kyril Gorokhovskyi, head of the cluster), Oleksi Vozniak (deputy of the Lviv City Council). As well as our foreign ambassador of the Professionals4Ukraine program Mike Richardson from the German OptecBB cluster. The first such union took place in June 2023 at the conference in Lviv which took place at the Lviv Polytechnic and is also an example of cooperation at the national level. A joint delegation from Lviv and Kyiv is scheduled to attend the conference today “Quantum technologies and defense“, where Ukraine, represented by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, is one of the co-organizers of the conference.
5. In return, the right approach to the launch of DIHs was demonstrated by 2 Kyiv research institutions: KPI and KAU. To a certain extent, the insight is the ascertainment of the fact (by Volodymyr Nochva from KAU) of the collaboration of both structures, even though they represent the same region and city. In general, the fact that among the 16 representatives of the winners of the 1st stage of the e-DIHs competition, which took place in February, seven represent clusters of the UCA. This testifies to the culture of cooperation and innovativeness of the UCA clusters. This means that for regional universities and research institutes, it is worth more actively joining the clusters of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance. This is the key to your dynamics in your development and response to external challenges.
6. According to the organizers, a section devoted to defense technologies was the brightest part of the conference. We would like to thank Nadiya Vasilieva, Yurii Batyushchenko, Oleksi Vozniak, Kyril Horokhovskyi, and other speakers who disclosed the details of cooperation in this sector. In general, it is great that the cluster communities received Brave1 as an example – and at the conference, we clearly positioned this accelerator, the MilTech cluster, as an example of the union of the state, science, and business, and from where our call is obvious – let’s scale similar things across all critical industries.7.      As last year, UCA approaches the organization of similar events proactively we immediately plan solutions and follow-up. In this case, a preliminary analysis of compliance with best practices has already been performed-tools or mechanisms into which they are converted. In other words, we looked at practices from the point of view of their transformation into instruments of influence at the national, regional, or sectoral levels. Thus, currently, 18 tools that need scaling are fixed (see the tab “Initiatives 2024” in this file). There are obvious ones that APPAU has been promoting since 2016 – such as DIHs, industry accelerators, innoclusters, and industry road maps- and the key role in the launch belongs to the state. And less obvious ones that are already working, but for some reason are not scaling — like high-quality brokerage events at regional and industry levels, large-scale campaigns of awareness and education of SMEs in new technologies or student internships at production enterprises. The key role here belongs to the business associations themselves.

The Executive Directorate of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance has planned 3 next steps in the dissemination of best practices and the implementation of some initiatives mentioned above

·        Holding an international conference (online) on the exchange of experience with Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania — planned for April

·        Issue of an analytical report on best practices

·        Targeted communications to government and donor structures searching for support for the above initiatives.

Regarding the latter, we note that among the recorded 18 initiatives, only 2 are supported by grant programs. This conference was also held without any donor support and at the initiative of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance. So, we invite donors to cooperate and support our initiatives for better collaboration between science and businesses.

On behalf of all clusters of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance, the Board, Executive Directorate and Innovation Committee of the UCA sincerely thank all the co-organizers of the conference — the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the National Technical University “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” and Kyiv Academic University, the cluster “Science Parks of Ukraine” and the 4InnoPipe project conducted by DIH NOSC-UA, for their support and participation, and to all our distinguished speakers and an attentive audience.

Executive directorate of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance.