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2CE132P1 - CNCB

3.2.2 National cluster management concept

for Hungary

Work

Package WP3 Cluster management

Action 3.2.2

Author PP03

Version Date Status final

2CE132P1 Output Public

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Document Approval Chronology

Document Revision / Approval

Version Date Status Date Status


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Index

1. Introduction............................................................................. 4

2. Outputs from online survey and interviews ........................................ 4

2.1 General outputs....................................................................... 4

2.2 Online survey.......................................................................... 7

2.3 Interview..............................................................................11

3. Conclusions ............................................................................13


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1. Introduction

This document summarizes the outputs from the survey conducted within the CNCB project.

The survey took place from April till June 2011 and it consisted of two parts. The data in

the first part were gathered via online questionnaire survey that was followed by the second

part of the survey – in depth interviews. This document focuses on the WP3-Cluster

management part of the survey and, specifically, on the results from the clusters from

Hungary that served as a source for the National cluster management concept.

2. Outputs from online survey and interviews

2.1 General outputs

In the first part of the survey, the total of 96 clusters took part in, from which 25 (26%) was

from Hungary. Concrete clusters are listed in the table below. The rate of return in

Hungary was 62,5% as from 40 addressed clusters in total, only 25 responded.


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No. Name of the cluster City

1 South-Transdanubian Cultural Industry Cluster Pécs

2 Information Management Innovation Cluster Pécs

3 Pannon Wood and Furniture Cluster Zalaegerszeg

4 Hungarian Medical Cluster Budapest

45 Professio Metal Industry and Vocational Cluster Győr

6 Omnipack First Hungarian Cluster of packaging technology

Budapest

7 CTRIC Székesfehérvár

8 Pannon Renewable Energy Cluster Körmend

9 CLUSTHERM Debrecen

10 3P Cluster for Plastics, Packaging, Printing Industry Kecskemét

11 Dél-Dunántúli Energetikai Klaszter Pécs

12 Észak-magyarországi Informatikai Klaszter Miskolc

13 South-Transdanubian Environment Industry Cluster Pécs

14 Pécsi Kesztyűs klaszter Pécs

15 South Transdanubia Castle Tourism Cluster Pecs

16 Mobility and Multimedia Cluster Budapest

17 DDEK Pécs

18 Cluster for Energy Efficiency in Buildings in South-Transdanubian Region (Dél-dunántúli Épületgépészeti Energiahatékonysági Klaszter)

Pécs

19 AV Industry Cluster Pécs Pécs

20 Hód Industrial Cluster Szeged

21 Special Pecs Cluster of organizations for the people living with disability

Pécs

22 Digital Culture Innovation Cluster Pécs

23 Ecotourism Cluster of South-Dunántúl Patca

24 Biotechnology Innovation Base Pécs

25 Software Industry Pole Cluster Szeged

From these 25 clusters, 4 were addressed in the second part of the survey by the personal

interviews.

The focus of these clusters was quite wide. Many of the respondents (20%) were from the

areas not listed in the survey. There were clusters from areas of wood and furniture, metal

industry, plastics, packaging and printing and production of leather products. The

technological/industrial areas were represented by ICT industries & services (20%) and by

biotech pharma & cosmetics (8%). It seems that the green industry with intelligent energy

(20%) and environment (4%) also has a huge role in Hungary. Besides these, Creative

industry (12%), healthcare (8%) and tourism (8%) were frequent.


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The size of Hungarian clusters is quite small. 56% were in the category “less than 25

members” and 32% were in the category “26-50 members”. Among Hungarian respondent

clusters there were no clusters with more than 250 members. The smallest clusters (less

than 25 members) had also the major representation in the European context (44 clusters in

total) but we could also find 13 clusters with more than 101 members and even 3 clusters

with more than 250 members.

Also the average age (about 4,5 years) of Hungarian clusters was not so high. The earliest

year of the establishment was in 2001 and the latest in 2011. The oldest cluster in the

survey is located in Italy and it was established in 1978.

The means of funding are very important for cluster development. In Hungary the clusters

are mainly financed by membership fees (39%) and EU subsidies (33%). National and regional

subsidies are together the third important financing instrument (20%), and other

instruments (8%). play only the minor role.


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2.2 Online survey

Cluster management education is in these days one of the top discussed issues. Also cluster

managers in Hungary are in general aware of the fact that further qualification of

managers and staff is extremely important and they are willing to do certain actions in this

matter. In respect to this, 12 respondents (48%) indicated that they are currently interested

in training, 11 respondents (44%) indicated that they will probably be interested in the

future and only 2 respondents (8%) indicated that they are not interested at all. These

results show quite strong interest on CMs in Hungary in further education. Also we can see

the same pattern in other partner countries, where 57% were for education, 37% for

education in the future and even 6% for no education.

As cluster managers are highly concerned with further education, it is very important to

specify in which fields they are interested. The top five fields they identified were (in this

order) management of innovation, management of knowledge, marketing and PR,

project management and team management. When we compare these results with the

overall desires in other countries, the fields as management of innovation, strategic

planning, internationalization, project management and marketing and PR were stated as

the most important (in this order) and we can see the intersections. Management of

innovation has with no doubts the top priority. However, cluster managers in Hungary

incline to the more traditional fields of education like project or team management, in

contrary to cluster managers in the rest of the Europe who are interested more in the

strategic planning or internationalization. This finding underlines the fact that most of the


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Hungarian clusters, considering also their average age (4,5 years) are not as mature as their

counterparts in other countries, which sees the needs of education in the bigger

perspective.

Communicative skills

Language skills Computational skills Marketing and PR

Mean 3,81 3,33 3,14 4,24

Event organization

Micro – and macro economics

Industry, technological issues

Project management Team management

Mean 3,25 2,95 3,67 4,20 4,19

Management of knowledge

Customer relationship management (CRM)

Management of innovation

Management of environment

Strategic planning

Mean 4,27 3,71 4,32 3,40 4,00

Financial planning

Performance evaluation and optimization

Internationalization EU/national policies and subsidies

Stakeholder relations

Mean 3,76 3,60 4,05 3,43 3,50 (Rate the importance by 1-very low, 2-low, 3-medium, 4-high, 5-very high)

From the answers, we can also identify fields that are not interesting at all for the cluster

managers. These may be micro and macroeconomics, computational skills and event

organisation.

The content of the future educational courses is considerably important, but also on the

other hand the form of the courses cannot be ignored. That is the reason why we also ask

our respondents the question “What is important to you in the training?”. The suggested

answers were in many cases the opposites; in order to determinate the most preferred

option.

• When deciding between the education in national vs. international level the

Hungarian cluster managers preferred the national environment. (When comparing

this statement with other countries the results were opposite. Education on

international level was more preferred as in Hungary the national one, even though

language skills were not mentioned as very important, so the foreign languages do

not represent a barrier for Hungarian cluster managers. A reason for that is probably

the higher educational level of Hungarian cluster managers.)

• When deciding between teachers from practice vs. academic the obvious supremacy

were for practical teachers. (The results in other countries were the same. We can

see a really strong emphasis on practical teachers or experts.)


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• Modular education program was also not very important for Hungarian cluster

managers (3,10 on a five rate scale), not as much as in other countries where the

mean was 3,45.

• When deciding between internal education vs. distance learning, Hungarian cluster

managers preferred the internal education (on the spot). (There is also a difference

again with the same portion when comparing results from Hungary with the other

countries where the distance learning form prevails.)

• Education on the basis of case studies and good practice examples is obviously the

major aspect of successful course in Hungary as well as in other countries.

• And the last aspect of accredited education was for Hungarian cluster managers not

as important (mean was only 2,70) as in other countries (where the mean was 3,21).

Education in national level

Education in international level

Practical teachers (cluster experts)

University, academic, teachers

Mean 3,80 3,09 4,67 2,40

Modular education program

Inetrnal education E-education Case studies and good practise examples

Accredited education

Mean 3,10 3,20 2,80 4,25 2,70

(Rate the importance by 1-very low, 2-low, 3-medium, 4-high, 5-very high)

To conclude, the successful training course in Hungary should be based on national level,

with practical experts, rather performed on the spot and filled with lots of case studies and

good practice examples. If the future educational institution can meet these requirements,

it will surely provide a successful training.

Another two crucial aspects of the educational courses are time and costs. According to

this, we asked cluster managers if they already have some budget for education. In

Hungary 48% of the respondents have no budget at all, 52% of the respondents has a budget

of 1000 € maximum per year and none of the respondent clusters has a budget over 1000 €

per year. For the details see the graph below.


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In overall evaluation from other countries there were also about 41% of respondents that

stated the absence of special budget for training, 38% has a budget of maximum 1000 € per

year and 15% has a budget of maximum 2000 € per year. There is also a 7% of respondents

that has even bigger budget than 2000 € for education. When we compare these shares we

can see that Hungarian clusters cannot afford to spend much money on education.

Therefore it is even more important, to have case studies and good practices in the training

course instead of providing theoretical knowledge.

Our last goal was to understand the past good and bad experiences in cluster management

education. Successful courses can be used like good practice; on the other hand,

unsuccessful courses can refer to problems that have to be definitely avoided. Only 12

cluster managers (48%) had some previous experience in training. The passed courses were

focused mainly on cluster management training, innovation management and strategy

planning. None of the respondent cluster managers attended a business administration or

financial management training. These courses were in every case performed on the spot.

The length of the courses varied from the longest with 80 hours to the shortest with 5 hours,

as well as the number of trainees involved in the course varied from 2 to 30. The courses

were provided by national training institutes, local/cluster training institutes, consultant

firms and with the highest rate by other institutions (probably with the help of the cluster’s

own experts).


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The attendees of these courses were mostly satisfied. The missing point of the courses were

proven results of best practices, and the lack of time, to learn more about several topics.

2.3 Interview

The following interviews were focused on gathering detailed information and opinions in the

previous areas. The principle was to get more qualitative information that can be later

transferred to some concrete outputs. The cluster managers that were so kind to assist with

the interview regarding cluster management qualification were from the Hungarian clusters

listed below:

• Biotechnology Innovation Base Cluster

• South Transdanubian Energy Cluster

• South Transdanubian Cultural Industry Cluster

• South Transdanubian AV Industry Cluster

One of the main parts of the interview was dedicated to the understanding of the

personality of a cluster manager and his/her needs. Thus firstly we focused on cluster

manager profile. Cluster managers in Hungary have generally a university degree. Most of

the cluster managers have studied economic sciences, or law. Because of the similar


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educational directions, all cluster managers characterised their current job as economically

focused. There is also a huge variety in the time spent as a cluster manager. There are

cluster managers that started this job 5 years ago, but also cluster managers that are 1 or 2

years on this position. All of these cluster managers see their future professional

development in the same field.

Cluster managers have to master all different kinds of skills and knowledge. There are

certain skills specific for a cluster management that are usually used daily and, therefore,

they are the most important. The interviewed cluster managers indicated communication as

the most important skill because communication is a basis for many other areas, and

because the communication with member firms and partners is a daily duty. The

organisational skills (general cluster management or project management and coordination)

are the second most common skill used by the cluster managers. Marketing knowledge and

skills were also indicated as indispensable. Marketing is important on one hand, to ensure

greater visibility for the cluster and so for its members. On the other hand, a cluster

provides services for it members, and also for companies and institutions outside the

cluster. These services also have to be promoted. Cluster managers feel a big need for

further improvement in certain skills. Technological knowledge on the cluster’s field,

administration skills and time management were noted as the topics where cluster

managers don’t feel so strong and in which they would like to improve.

The Hungarian cluster managers also agree that the management of innovation, strategic

planning, internationalization, project management and marketing and PR should definitely

not be excluded from the educational courses. Other suggestions for including financial and

legal regulations, cluster optimisation and development, and crisis management were

noted.

Foreign language is also one of the biggest issues in cluster management. Building strong

relations on international level assume good language knowledge that brings you good

negotiation advantage. All Hungarian cluster managers asked in the in depth interview

stated using foreign language every day. As English is the basic and essential language,

there are also other languages like German. Despite the great importance of foreign

languages, their further development should not be, according to our opinion, a part of


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cluster managers training. Mastering foreign language is a long-term run and the managers

should take a full responsibility in it.

Moreover, during the interviews we received the experiences with some past training. This

further information served for deeper understanding of the problem. However, the results

were in general identical with the information gathered by the survey. A successful training

should carefully balance the line between the theory and practise. A lot of theoretical

explication, little relevant topics or lecturing without interactivity can quickly turn a

promising educational course into a disaster. On the other hand, the topics relevant to the

cluster management or a concrete cluster, success stories, case studies, experienced

trainers from practice or orientation on practical training are highly demanded.

The question of time and money was opened once more. The maximal length of the course

should be 10 days and the maximal price should be 1000 € for those ten days.

3. Conclusions

The picture of the form for the future cluster managers training in Hungary and also the

demands of the cluster managers are quite clear. From the survey and interviews result we

can propose following educational course.

Training structure:

• A modular course.

• The maximal length of the course should be in total 2 weeks (10 days) per a year,

structured into one, two or maximum three days courses.

• The cost of the training should be 1000 € top for the whole two-week course.

• Does the location matter? If the training course will be modular it can be used

universally.

• Lectors should be rather experts from practice than academic teachers.


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Training Content (Curriculum):

• Management of innovation (creativity, visions, management of changes); 2 days

• Management of knowledge 1 day

• Marketing, PR and communication (assertivity and negotiation, networking skills,

presentation skills, team management); 1-2 days

• Project management (time management, financial management, team management,

…); 1-2 days

• International strategy development (preparation, implementation and evaluation,

cluster members motivation), Internationalisation through cooperation in R&D

projects (information about grants and programs, project application creation and

project implementation); 2-3 days

• Strategy planning and development; 1-2 days

• Financial planning (raising funds, ect.); 1 days

This proposal for the training content will be probably valid also for other countries than

only for Hungary. As long as the training course will be modular, it can be universally used

in any country. The cluster managers have different skills in these fields, however, if the

opportunity of their own selection is provided, the course can be used in general.

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