The Danish cluster and innovation network landscape is in transition and a new Act on Business Promotion was passed in December 2018 establishing a Board for Business Promotion. The board is now managing authority for all public funding in the business promotion system as well as for ERDF-funding.
The board has developed a strategy for decentralized business promotion where they have identified 10 business and technology areas to be the strongest and most promissing business areas for DK (strongholds) + 2 emerging strongholds based on indicators such as dynamics and scalability, global macro trends and new technologies, research and knowledge environment. The strategy also constitutes a strategy-framework for the Danish Smart Specialization-strategy.
In each area, there can only be one publicly funded cluster effort in the future and the future cluster organizations will have a broad scope to unite activities within the innovation network programme (knowledgesharing) with more business promotion oriented activities and activities with a regional perspective. The Danish Agency for Institutions and Educational Grants (DAIEG) is working closely together with the staff of the Board for Business Promotion and The Ministry for Industry, Business and Financial Affairs to develop the framework for a common funding scheme with a joint call and possibly common administration guidelines.
