Alliance Bayern Innovative: Bavaria’s Cluster Campaign
The Alliance Bayern Innovative is a new feature of the modernization strategy designed to enhance Bavaria's role as a top location for business and science. Its first pillar is the Cluster-Offensive program which aims at building state-wide networks interlinking business and scientific potential in 19 defined industry and competence clusters and thus to activate innovation and productivity in these clusters. Its second pillar is the Regional Networking Building program aimed at developing economic potentials in the Bavarian regions and at boosting cross-sectorial regional networks.
An opportunity for companies: Bavarian cluster competence
The 19 clusters already provide a substantial degree of competence in terms of:
• universal value-creation chains
• an environment consisting of major user sectors
• efficiency and application-orientation in research
• availability of highly qualified staff
The Bavarian Cluster Offensive takes up these competences and promotes the formation of networks among participating companies as well as between companies and research establishments as a basis for developing new products and production processes and for positioning companies in growth markets. For each Bavarian Cluster platforms are created that bring together companies, research establishments and universities, permit intensive cooperation and hence release innovative potential.
Controlled synergy: cluster management
The main tasks of the cooperation platforms are to establish and maintain a contact network of companies, research establishments, associations, investors, support institutions, consultants and other players in the cluster in question. In order to ensure that the cooperation platforms can function successfully, the cluster spokesmen and the cluster management specifically build structures for contact and communication between industry and science as the motors driving the cluster process and encouraging innovative projects.
The relevant cluster management assists in the organization of events, promotes the creation of thematic profiles and the development of potential. It also highlights new fields of application and projects, the implementation of which is then left to the discretion and responsibility of the cluster companies.
With Bavaria at the spearhead: innovation policy combined with corporate zeal
Since the 1960s, the Bavarian State Government has consistently developed its research infrastructure. With 112 universities, 17 Universities of Applied Sciences, 11 Max Planck Institutes, nine Institutes of the Fraunhofer Society and three major research establishments, Bavaria now has an excellent research landscape to offer. Over the last decade, the State Government has substantially improved the innovative strength of major sectors and forward-looking fields of technology with its "Bavaria's Future Offensive" program designed to make Bavaria fit for the future and for its "High-Tech Initiative" program. Through the development of a comprehensive range of support tools for research and development projects, Bavaria has become one of the most attractive and efficient technology locations in Europe:
• With an investment share of approx. 15 percent of the State budget, Bavaria invests more than any of the other non-city States of the former Federal Republic.
• Close to three percent of the gross domestic product is invested in research and technology in Bavaria. This places Bavaria well above the German average and gives it a top ranking within Europe.
• More than one quarter (about 28.3 percent) of all patents applied for in Germany came from Bavaria in 2005 – more than from any other German state. With 110 patent applications per 100,000 inhabitants, Bavaria by far surpasses the average German value (59).