Business Clusters is a geographic concentration of interconnected businesses, suppliers and associated institutions in a particular field and includes all sectors and organizations that contribute to the existence of its economic assets. Business Clusters include a wide range of actors from complementary product manufacturers to distributors and customers. Business Clusters often gather around universities, standardization bodies, think tanks, vocational training institutions and public and private enterprises which provide technical support. Therefore business Clusters is an economic phenomenon that exists independently from any intervention, organization or project. Clusters road map is a stractegic guide identifying the relevant activities and/or activity groups, in another words Clusters actions, to determine the vision and strategy of Clusters initiatives. Clustering practices have been successfully pursued and have yielded effective results in many countries from Western, Eastern and Central Europe to United States of America; from People’s Republic of China to Japan.
It is not legal obligation but inter-institutional trust and colloboration that hold Clusters together. Clustering practices are of great importance for economic development because of the fact that companies in a Clusters perform more effectively and creatively than those which operate singlehandedly. Clustering facilitates business networks and corporations between a number of suppliers, customers, competitors, universities, research centers and other actors within a particular geographic location and accordingly contributes to increase the performances of companies.
Development of Clustering Policies Project (DCP) has contributed a lot to raise awareness on Clustering, to develop a common language and led to preparation of pilot Clustering road maps. In line with its principle of sustainability adopted for each activity, the Ministry of Economy further develops these road maps by conducting higher levels of activities. The experience with Clustering has also been enjoyed by the Government Policies for Export Subsidies. In this respect, a support mechanism has been formed to ensure support for our institutions on every level of internationalization by the projects of cooperating institutions.
The objective of the support mechanism is to provide assistance for the industrial and / or commercial institutions or the companies providing software Service to meet their expenditures on education and counseling Service for strengthening their competitiveness in international market and to meet the expenditures of the cooperating institutions for the projects approved by the Ministry of Economy. The cooperating institutions to prepare projects for their member companies are as follows:
Turkish Exporters Assembly, Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey, Foreign Economic Relations Board, Exporters Associations, Provincial Chambers of Commerce and / or Industry, Organized Industrial Sites, Industrial Sites, technology incubators, Sectoral Manufacturers’ Associations, Sectoral Foreign Trade Companies and the associations, unions and cooperation of the producers.
Cluster is a result of a project funded by the initiative of named UR-GE. UR-GE Project (Supporting The Development Of International Competitiveness) is a sectoral cluster project for developing export capacities of Turkish manufacturer companies. The companies gathered by the Exporter Association, by the sectoral associations and federations that they a member of, participate in activities approved by Ministry of Trade, to improve their knowledge of competitiveness.