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ECLAC promotes productive development through cluster initiatives and other territorial productive articulation initiatives with a new innovative platform

28 December 2023|Briefing note

To strengthen cluster and territorial productive articulation initiatives operating in the region, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) launched the Platform for cluster and other territorial productive articulation initiatives.

The new platform seeks to create a regional network to support these initiatives, offering them visibility, training for professionals in these areas, knowledge generation and dissemination, technical support for policy and policy instruments design and implementation, match-making activities, and regional integration projects.

These initiatives are presented as collaborative efforts between the public and private sectors, academia, and civil society to promote the upgrading and diversification of Latin America and the Caribbean economies.

Why does ECLAC emphasize cluster initiatives and other territorial productive articulation initiatives?

ECLAC understands these initiatives as an effective way to organize productive development efforts in Latin American and Caribbean countries, considering their different territories’ potential, both in terms of production and institutional capacities. 

These initiatives prioritize lines of action that address the bottlenecks or obstacles that limit productivity growth in the region. 

In addition, these initiatives generally respond to a logic of experimentalist governance that allows for the improvement of collective action through a permanent review of interventions and results achieved, and the adjustment of common work agendas.

What do we understand by cluster initiatives and other initiatives of territorial productive articulation?

The productive articulation initiatives used can be multiple and varied. However, in general, they share the following characteristics:

•    The core of the initiative is a collective and strategic plan or action aimed at promoting productive development and, more generally, at improving business sector performance.
•    They define and manage their common strategies and collective action plans based on participatory mechanisms and institutional arrangements that provide for multi-actor coordination bodies.
•    There is sectoral and territorial proximity among the actors involved.

To capture the diversity of methods adopted to implement the partnership approach to the different regional realities, ECLAC has proposed the following classification:

•    Cluster initiatives: strategic agendas promoted by companies, governments and support institutions to improve the productivity of the value chains associated with an economic agglomeration.
•    Initiatives to promote production chains: collective efforts to improve all the stakeholders that make up the production chains in question, generally aimed at developing cross-cutting actions, such as regulations, standards, training programs, etc.
•   Local productive initiatives: collective plans developed by actors in specific communities, aimed at developing local companies and institutions, valuing and enhancing their territorial specificities.
•   Initiatives to promote business networks: associative schemes that bring together groups of companies to do business collaboratively.
•   Initiatives for the development of supply relationships: initiatives aimed at strengthening the link between a client company (generally large) and supplier companies (generally SMEs).

How to support the development of cluster initiatives and other productive articulation initiatives?

The platform launched on December 12 and you can join its network! Register your productive and territorial articulation initiative here

All those interested in receiving information on the activities promoted by the members of this virtual community can also register on the platform.