The document discusses how cluster managers and institutions can shift from responding to industry needs to anticipating new opportunities by strengthening a cluster's evolutionary potential. It recommends using tools from complexity thinking like product space mapping and narrative capturing to identify weak signals of emerging trends. This allows clusters to promote exploration, decentralized decision-making, and resilience to accelerate innovation and change. The speaker's company is developing search and discovery portfolios that apply these complexity-informed instruments to continuous scanning and sense-making to strengthen a cluster's innovative capacity.

1. Strengthening the evolutionary potential
of clusters: Shifting from responding to
anticipating what is next possible
Shawn Cunningham
Parallel Session 3.5: Tools and Methodologies for Effective Cluster Management and Cluster Performance Improvement

2. Strengthening the evolutionary
potential of clusters: Shifting
from responding to anticipating
what is next possible
Dr. Shawn Cunningham
sc@mesopartner.com
www.mesopartner.com

3. www.mesopartner.com 3
Institutions can use uncertainty to
accelerate change & innovation in
clusters
Meso institutions and cluster managers must shift from
“responding to needs of industry” to “anticipating what is possible
from where we are” –
strengthen evolutionary potential of the system from here
Mesopartner is developing “search and discovery” a portfolio of
instruments to enable combination, exploration and institutional
adjustment based on complexity thinking and cognitive science

4. www.mesopartner.com 4
Two examples of using complexity
thinking in clusters
1. Non-consensus based decision making, for instance
using Product Space and the Observatory for
Economic Complexity tools or other instruments to
identify emergent clusters, priorities for collaboration,
search and discovery
2. Use narrative capturing of decisions made in cluster
to identify weak signals and emerging trends.
Tracking of decentralized decisions and perceptions of
agents in a complex adaptive system

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Three key shifts in attention
 Strengthen resilience through actively promoting
different approaches and explorations into possibilities
 Shift from projects (linear planning, hierarchical decision
making) to exploration (dynamic collaboration,
decentralized decision making), from milestones to
emergence
 Go to the roots, to the coal face. In complex adaptive
systems, agents make decentralized decisions. These
decisions are important signals about change

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Non-consensus based decision
making: Using Product Space to find
potential opportunities
 Network map shows the probability that a pair of products is
co-exported using international trade data
 MIT and Harvard use different interfaces to the same
dataset
 Many products group naturally into highly connected
communities revealing how similar products are
 Products in these dense communities probably depend on
similar technological capabilities or market conditions
 The Product Space & "open forest" really useful for focusing
cluster support

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Product space: RSA 2013
 Variable RCA CID Product Space MIT Prod Space

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Open forest: Feasible products
Machinery & transport
 Calculates how far it is to
alternative products and
how complex these
products are
 Log scale, meaning 1
point = 100% change
 The ideal location on this
plane is the upper-left
quadrant: goods that are
close and have high
strategic value
All Feasible
Machines feasible

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Sensemaker – useful for detecting
weak signals and emergent trends
 Sensemaker ™ developed by Cognitive Edge to capture
narratives and to allow storytellers to self interpret stories
to add meaning, thus experts to do interpret stories
 Used in diverse applications, reveals decentralized
decisions made by people
 “Signifiers” used to allow self interpretation and give
meaning to their own stories – removes bias of experts
 Allows for continuous scanning over different organizations
and within organizations
 Management manages “in the now” and tries to increase
the evolutionary potential of the system “more stories like
these” and “fewer stories like those”

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Benefits of a complexity perspective
for institutions scanning for new
emergent clusters
 Entrepreneurs are like “sugar ants” that are good at finding viable
sweet spots
 The cost of figuring out what others know about technology,
knowledge and markets are high (ants leave chemical tracks)
 Ask: What can institutions do to enhance the ability of more
enterprises to experiment with new knowledge, ideas, market
opportunities, combinations?

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Turning well known innovation tools
into continous scanning tools
 Mesopartner developing narrative detection and interpretation
tools to use on the Sensemaker ™ platform for:
– Innovation systems promotion, Technology and Innovation
management, R & D management and organizational
culture
– Regional and local economic development
– Supporting organizational development of development
organizations
 “Systemic Insight” framework allows organisations and
clusters to explore innovation potential in a continuous
process of search and discovery, learning and adjustment

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Conclusion
Meso institutions and cluster managers must shift
from “responding to needs of industry” to
“anticipating what is possible from here” –
strengthen evolutionary potential of the
system from where it is now
Instruments from complexity thinking can help
strengthen innovation and creativity in
clusters

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Thank you for your attention
Dr Shawn Cunningham
Mesopartner
sc@mesopartner.com
www.mesopartner.com & www.systemic-insight.com