1. Designing the Constituent Process of HABITECH (Cluster Development - Tool Kit) Paolo Gurisatti Arzignano, June 15, 2015

2. Why to create a “cluster”?
Small businesses become a key player of a national economy, when they create “specialised competences” and “world class industries” (providing the nation with a recognised competitive identity)
This perspective is not easy, but possible thanks to “cluster games” involving different agents in the creation of new “market systems”

3. How to create a “cluster”?
A collective investment, on a specific set of competences and scaffolding structures, that lead to new products (attributions) and “recurrent patterns of interaction”
It’s a three levels game:
Macro (to provide rules, values and institutions)
Micro (to organise the division of labour)
Meso (to facilitate technical networking)

4. Macro (1)
Collective agents design a long term entrepreneurial perspective (toward a “local society” producing and sharing common values, frameworks and recurrent patterns of interaction)
Local government shares the “productive” citizens’ perspective and invests on public goods for cluster competitiveness (seed capital)

5. Macro (2)
Scaffolding structures reinforce local community identity (provide “cultural tools” for generative relationships and trust)
Examples in food and real estate:
Slow Food provides consumers with quality assessment and producers accreditation (values)
Green Building Council provides investors with a rating system

6. Micro
Project managers design and lead integrated teams/coalitions of SME (clustering experiences and a division of labour between prime contractors and co-makers)
Example of managerial service providing:
Performance Architecture / Made in Italy in existing building refit (IP and rules)
Crisalide / Distributed energy production (co-generation technology framework)

7. Meso
Knowledge mediators design and lead competence networks (new products or services attributions and technology frames)
Examples of technical service providing:
SOFIE / Tacit knowledge codification (R&D, IP allocation, training and technical assessment in wooden building)

9. Generative Potential
A sufficient number of participants (heterogeneity)
Long run commitment (constitution, scaffolding structures, seed capital) (directedness/permission)
A rising division of labour (between general contractors and specialised suppliers) (mutual directedness)
Macro/Micro/Meso processes (catalysers/facilitators/local development agents) (narrative construction)
Community construction (opportunity of action, enacted narrative)

10. Task force
Emergence by design is complex and long. It requires a well trained team of different skills:
Designer (catalyser with “political” expertise leading macro level storytelling)
Tiger (facilitator with technical technical expertise, trusting interface for competence networks and technology framework production)
Dynamic Evaluator (auditor, ethnographer, leading micro level storytelling, feedback producer)

11. A successful “cluster”
The case of Habitech ( may be considered a “good practice” of a successful generative design
It’s involving more than 300 agents around three families of “artefacts” (products):
Green buildings
Smart villages (grid, local operation networks)
Small plants for renewable energy production

12. A successful “process”
Incubation and feasibility study (2005)
Start-up and seed capital (Habitech and local goods for competitiveness) (2006/ 2007)
Scaffold creation (constituent project – GBC Italia – LEED) (2008)
Division of labour (team building) (2009)
Generative relationships and innovation (2010)

13. Annual Budget (‘000 Euros)
Public Private Services (HR)
(pt)

14. Last but not least…
The presence of a bottom-up “technical and entrepreneurial will” is sufficient to produce a favourable atmosphere at the “local” level (a rising constituency, aligned institutions)…
But the “political will” still represents a basic condition of a successful cluster design. Investing on clusters means “people empowerment”, not only work places creation