2016 12 01 Cluster Panorama 2016

European Cluster Observatory
REPORT
European Cluster Panorama 2016
Prepared by:
Christian Ketels and Sergiy Protsiv
Center for Strategy and Competitiveness

Stockholm School of Economics
November 2016
Internal Market,
Industry,
Entrepreneurship
and SMEs
European Cluster Observatory in Brief

The European Cluster Observatory is a single access point for statistical information, analysis and mapping
of clusters and cluster policy in Europe. It is primarily aimed at European, national, regional and local policy-
makers and cluster managers and representatives of SME intermediaries. It is an initiative run by the ‘Clus-
ters, Social Economy and Entrepreneurship’ unit of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for
Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs and aims to promote the development of more world-
class clusters in Europe, notably with a view to promoting competitiveness and entrepreneurship in emerg-
ing industries and facilitating SMEs’ access to clusters and internationalisation activities through clusters.
The ultimate objective is to help Member States and regions to design smart specialisation and cluster
strategies that will help companies to develop new, globally competitive advantages in emerging industries
through clusters, and in this way to strengthen the role of cluster policies in boosting Europe’s industry as
part of the Europe 2020 Strategy.
In order to support evidence-based policy-making and partnering, the European Cluster Observatory pro-
vides an EU-wide comparative cluster mapping with sectoral and cross-sectoral statistical analysis of the
geographical concentration of economic activities and performance. The European Cluster Observa-
tory provides the following services:
■ a biannual ‘European Cluster Panorama’ (cluster mapping) providing an update of and exten-
sion to the statistical mapping of clusters in Europe, including for ten related sectors (i.e. cross-
sectoral) and a correlation analysis with key competitiveness indicators;
■ a ‘European Cluster Trends’ report analysing cross-sectoral clustering trends, cluster
internationalisation and global mega trends in industrial transformation; identifying common inter-
action spaces; and providing a forecast for industrial and cluster opportunities;
■ a ‘Regional Ecosystem Scoreboard’ setting out strengths and weaknesses of regional and na-
tional ecosystems for clusters, and identifying cluster-specific framework conditions for three cross-
sectoral collaboration areas;
■ a ‘European Stress Test for Cluster Policy’, including a self-assessment tool accompanied by
policy guidance for developing cluster policies in support of emerging industries;
■ a showcase of modern cluster policy practice, provided in the form of advisory support
services to six selected model demonstrator regions. The services offered include expert anal-
ysis, regional survey and benchmarking reports, peer review meetings and policy briefings in sup-
port of emerging industries. The policy advice also builds on the policy lessons from related initia-
tives in the area of emerging industries;
■ the European Cluster Conferences 2014 and 2016, which bring together Europe’s cluster pol-
icy-makers and stakeholders for a high-level cluster policy dialogue and policy learning, and fa-
cilitate exchange of information through, e.g. webpages, newsletters and videos.
More information about the European Cluster Observatory is available at the EU cluster portal at:
http://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/cluster/observatory/.
This work has been carried out under a service contract for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal
Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. It is financed under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework pro-
gramme (CIP) which aims to encourage the competitiveness of European enterprises. The views expressed in this docu-
ment and the information included in it do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of the European Commission.
Internal Market,
Industry, Entre-
preneurship and
Table of Contents
Key Facts at a Glance ...........................................................................................................................i
1. Introduction...........................................................................................................................1
2. Concepts and data sources explained ................................................................................3
3. The Role of Clusters in Europe ...........................................................................................9
3.1 Measuring clusters in the European economy ...................................................................9
3.2 Strong clusters and their performance .............................................................................12
3.3 Regional cluster hotspots ................................................................................................16
3.4 Entrepreneurship .............................................................................................................18
3.5 Reindustrialisation ...........................................................................................................19
4. Emerging Industries in Europe ..........................................................................................21
4.1 Overall Observations .......................................................................................................21
4.1.1 Profiling the Performance of Emerging Industries ................................................................................... 21
4.1.2 Hotspots of Emerging Industries .............................................................................................................. 24
4.2 Profiling the Ten Emerging Industries ..............................................................................27

4.2.1 Advanced Packaging ............................................................................................................................... 27
4.2.2 Biopharmaceuticals .................................................................................................................................. 31
4.2.3 Blue Growth Industries ............................................................................................................................. 35
4.2.4 Creative Industries ................................................................................................................................... 39
4.2.5 Digital Industries ....................................................................................................................................... 44
4.2.6 Environmental Industries .......................................................................................................................... 48
4.2.7 Experience Industries ............................................................................................................................... 52
4.2.8 Logistical Services.................................................................................................................................... 56
4.2.9 Medical Devices ....................................................................................................................................... 60
4.2.10 Mobility Technologies ........................................................................................................................ 64
Methodological Appendix .................................................................................................................68

Key Facts at a Glance

The Role of Clusters in the European Economy
…3 000 strong clusters across Europe account for more than 54 million jobs and 45% of all traded indus-
tries’ wages (23% of the overall economy)
…wages in strong clusters are close to 3% higher than in industries not located in such regional hotspots,
and the wage gap towards both other traded industries and the overall economy is growing
…103 leading clusters are in the top 20% of European peers across all four performance dimensions meas-
ured (size, specialisation, productivity, and dynamism)
…all parts of Europe have clusters; 55% of all European regions have between 30% and 60% of traded
industries employment in strong clusters
…strong clusters have shown resilience through the crisis; their share in total traded industry employment
and wages has from 2008 to 2014 increased slightly to 45% (jobs) and 51% (wages)
…the industrial cluster landscape is constantly evolving as a result of changes in market conditions, tech-
nologies, and competition; about one fifth (20%) of all clusters significantly changed in their market position
(strong, medium, weak) between 2008 and 2014
Emerging industries: Overall trends and hotspots

…account together for about 46% of all traded industry employment
…continue to outperform the rest of the traded economy with average wages about 9% higher than in all
traded industries
…have about 40% of Europe economic activity in cross-sectoral, emerging industries concentrated in 20%
of all European locations
…tend to be strongest in regions that have a strong portfolio of traditional sectoral clusters and above
average economic performance with average value added per employee 37% above the EU average
…have each their own geographical footprint, indicating location-specific opportunities for specialisation
and diversification
…the list of European hotspots of cross-sectoral, emerging industries differs significantly from the list of
hotspots of traditional clusters
i
1. Introduction
The European economy has in the recent past made progress in putting one of the deepest economic
crisis in its existence behind it. Exports are up, growth and investment have improved, and labour mar-
kets are slowly moving towards their pre-crisis state. Still, the economic challenges that EU member
countries are facing remain formidable. The heterogeneity across Europe is high, and especially South-
ern European countries continue to struggle with high unemployment, particularly among the young.
The macroeconomic climate still hinges on the support given by historically unprecedented monetary
policies. And it is not only these current economic issues that are a concern: The result of the UK refer-
endum on leaving the EU has been a shock, and has raised broader economic and political questions.
Successful upgrading of European competitiveness is critical for the EU to meet these challenges, and
create new dynamism in the European economy. The European Commission has in the context of Com-
mission President Juncker’s Agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change1 launched a
wide range of initiatives with this goal in mind. Focusing on microeconomic dimensions of this overall
agenda key recent efforts include the Single Market Strategy, the Digital Single Market, the Digitisation
of Industry strategy, the Energy Union, the Circular Economy Package, the Start-up and Scale-up Initi-
ative and the New Skills Agenda with the Investment Plan for Europe and set of up of Thematic Platforms
to facilitate the implementation of smart specialisation strategies that guide innovation-related invest-
ments under the European Structural and Investments Funds being other important contributors.
Clusters are a key dimension of this policy agenda. They have powerful roles in diagnostics, design,
and delivery of effective policies in order to contribute to the number one objective of achieving more
jobs, growth and investments. Clusters offer a fertile ground for fostering industry transformation and
the development of emerging industries. Accordingly, the European Commission has had a long stand-
ing focus on clusters, providing data, policy tools, and support for cross-European linkages among clus-
ter organisations.
The European Cluster Panorama, provided by the European Cluster Observatory, focuses on providing
policy makers and business leaders across the EU with fresh insights into trends of cross-industry link-
ages and the regional footprint of these groups of related activities. The Panorama applies evidence-
based categories for understanding the likely directions of industrial change and industry emergence,
mapping the performance and economic geography of ten specific emerging industries across Europe.
Its first version, the European Cluster Panorama 2014, documented the strong economic performance
of these broader cross-sectoral, emerging industries in terms of productivity and dynamism, outperform-
ing both the average of existing clusters and the broader EU economy. The economic geography of
emerging industries shows opportunities across Europe. But it also revealed a significant role of legacy
effects and underlying competitiveness driving future opportunities: many of the European regions reg-
istering the strongest position in these ten emerging industries are also in the leading group in terms of
current cluster portfolio strengths and prosperity.
1 Jean-Claude Juncker, A New Start for Europe: My Agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change,
Strasbourg, 15 July 2014. https://ec.europa.eu/priorities/sites/beta-political/files/juncker-political-guidelines-
speech_en_0.pdf.
1
This European Cluster Panorama 2016 provides an updated perspective on clusters across Europe,
focusing again in more detail on the evolution of the ten emerging industries identified in 2014. The
analysis is based not only on two additional years of data, but can draw on a significantly enhanced and
broadened data set (see the methodological appendix for a more detailed discussion of how the data
set was constructed):
■ One key novelty is the introduction of firm-level data to supplement the statistical data from
national and EU statistical offices. This firm-based data significantly increases the robustness
of the data, especially in countries like Germany that collect regional data through samples
rather than reporting by all firms. It also enables performance of individual firms to be tracked
over time, gaining more granular insights into patterns of entrepreneurship.
■ Another key novelty is the inclusion of new indicators, in particular data on skills. Skills are a
critical dimension of the quality of the business environment, including for its ability to adapt to
industrial transformation processes. It can thus sharpen our understanding of how clusters in-
teract with other factors to influence economic performance. Skills are also a signal for the type
of activities that a cluster within a specific category is engaged in.
Based on this enhanced data set, a deeper analysis is presented compared to the last Panorama in
2014. Updated information is provided on the ten emerging industries, tracking their further evolution in
the post-crisis recovery with data now available up to 2014. The information on the role of existing clus-
ters in Europe is also updated, looking at their overall size, dynamics, and patterns of regional distribu-
tion. The combination of these two views provides comprehensive insights in the current status and
future opportunities inherent in the economic structure of European regions.
Moreover, the enhanced data set also enable a number of new analyses that provide a more granular
perspective on clusters, emerging industries, and their dynamics. A focus is placed on two particular
aspects: the heterogeneity of cluster profiles, and the dynamics of cluster evolution:
■ The profile of individual clusters is measured within a given cluster category or emerging
industry through differences in the mix of occupations most prevalent in different locations. How
clusters with different profiles perform, and what type of regions they are located in can provide
important additional insights for policy.
■ The dynamics of cluster evolution are measured through a closer look at firm entry and exit
data as well as through exploiting the longer time-series of data. This helps to identify where
entrepreneurship in terms of new business formation is most prevalent, both in terms of the
regions and the specific clusters and emerging industries. It also allows to track the dynamics
of cluster evolution, i.e. how much change is observed over time in the economic geography of
clusters and emerging industries and the economic composition of regions.
All underlying data used in this report are available at the cluster mapping tool of the European Cluster
Observatory under the web pages of the EU Cluster Portal set up by the European Commission’s Di-
rectorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.2 The definitions of specific
analytical categories, in particular the definitions of all clusters and emerging industries, as well as the
analytical approaches used to develop them, are also all available on the EU Cluster Portal.
2 https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/cluster/observatory/cluster-mapping-services/mapping-tool_en.
2
2. Concepts and data sources explained

What are clusters?
Clusters are regional concentrations of activities in groups of related industries. Clusters emerge natu-
rally in market processes, because local spill-overs among such activities enhance performance at the
firm and regional level. Examples of such positive effects – that usually grow with the critical mass in a
given location – are a labour market with specialised skills, local supplier networks with specialised
capabilities, and a local knowledge pool driven by the research and innovation activities of local firms
and knowledge institutions.
The evolution of clusters is driven by the benefits of agglomeration. Some of these are the automatic
result of market forces, such as firms growing faster or choosing to locate in clusters, while others de-
pend on purposeful action, e.g. collaboration among firms that enhances spill-overs or government ac-
tion that improves the cluster-specific business environment. But the evolution of clusters is also affected
by economic forces encouraging dispersion: as clusters become larger, there are increasing ‘congestion
costs’ that emerge as disadvantages of the agglomeration effect. For instance, firms bidding up prices
for scarce inputs in clusters, such as wages for specialised workers. There is also the potential risk of a
‘lock-in’ effect in the face of technological change, i.e. all firms in a cluster opting for one technology that
might get disrupted by innovation in other locations. The interplay between these forces of agglomera-
tion and dispersion shapes the evolution of clusters over time,
Clusters differ from cluster organisations, which are the organisations that manage the networks of firms
and other entities within a given cluster. Cluster organisations can help firms to better engage with other
local actors within their cluster and to organise collective action to strengthen the local context. And they
can reduce the transaction costs for firms, especially SMEs, in building linkages to firms and collabora-
tion partners in other locations. The stronger the local cluster, the higher the potential for building suc-
cessful international linkages.
Clusters are also different from both narrow specialisation in individual industries and broad agglomer-
ation of economic activity in cities: clusters reflect the positive spill-overs among a set of related indus-
tries, neither driven only by economies of scale in one industry nor by the economy-wide benefits of
economic density across all industries.
Clusters have a distinct geographic dimension, reflecting the dynamics of local spill-overs. They are also
deeply embedded in a broader geographic context: they serve markets elsewhere and are connected
to other clusters with complementary strengths in regional, interregional or global value chains. This
mirrors the role of location for firms: while local conditions provide the unique context for building distinct
capabilities and strategic positions, national and international linkages are critical to access other mar-
kets, suppliers, and collaboration partner.
More explanations can be found in the Smart Guide to Cluster Policy3 that was published in June 2016
to give guidance on how to make better use of clusters for promoting regional industrial modernisation,
supporting the growth of SMEs and encouraging smart specialisation.
3 The Smart Guide explains what cluster and cluster policies are and what not, what makes them successful and
why they matter. It presents eight Do's and Don'ts and many cluster programme examples and practical instru-
ments. See http://ec.europa.eu/DocsRoom/documents/16903/attachments/1/translations/en/renditions/native.
3
What are emerging industries?

Emerging industries have been defined as “the establishment of an entirely new industrial value chain,
or the radical reconfiguration of an existing one, driven by a disruptive idea (or convergence of ideas),
leading to turning these ideas/opportunities into new products/services with higher added value”.4 They
are in many cases new combinations of existing industrial sectors that are changing in response to new
technologies, new business models and market demands.
The 2014 Cluster Panorama developed a method to empirically identify broad sets of ‘emerging indus-
tries’ in which such new combinations of related activities were seen as likely to emerge.5 Data on weak
linkages across industries were used as indicators of the potential for stronger future linkages to emerge.
Emerging industries based on these weak linkages can be contrasted with the clusters based on existing
strong linkages visibly today, often reflecting the cumulative effect of past connections. The figure below
indicates how the ten emerging industries identified relate to the traditional cluster categories.
Figure 1: Emerging Industries and Clusters
Metalw. Light. Med

Medical Dev
Digital
Aerosp. Appl Devices IT
Comm
Upstr.
Autom
Mobility Metal
Plastics
Prod.
Tech
Fishing
Adv. Downst.
Packaging metal
Blue Growth Transp. Adv.
P&P Elect. Logistics
Power
Environ. Env
Services Serv
Vulc.
Downs.
Chem Mat.
Upstr. Oil &
Chem Gas
Marke‐
Biopharma Agricult. Video tng
Bioph.
Creative Bus
Serv
Wood Economy
Prod Music
Tourism
Experience Perf
Economy Arts
4 This definition developed by Heffernan & Phaal (2009) was used in the policy roadmap of the European Forum
for Clusters in Emerging Industries that is available at http://www.emergingindustries.eu/Up-
load/CMS/Docs/Policy_roadmap.pdf.
5 The detailed process and reasons for choosing such an approach are explained in the “Methodology and
Findings Report for a Cluster Mapping of Related Sectors”, available at http://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/clus-
ter/observatory/cluster-mapping-services/cluster-panorama_en.
4
What regional level is used?

Regions are the geographical areas in which the local spill-overs that drive cluster evolution have a
meaningful influence on economic performance. Depending on the specific sector, activity, and exter-
nality the scope of the appropriate area varies: It is, for example, the area in which it makes sense to
speak about an integrated labour market where people can find jobs without moving. It also refers to the
area in which there is a significant likelihood for knowledge to be spread through unplanned meetings
or chance observations of what others do.
This notion of regions is applied in the Panorama by using data for specific administrative regions, gen-
erally at the so-called NUTS 2 level. The European economy is made up of 327 such regions,6 each
with its own profile and economic performance. These regions are used as a pragmatic choice because
they are likely to encompass the ‘economically relevant’ regions, there is data available, and in most
cases there is some level of government that can take action for this specific region.
Why are regions important?

The European economy is ultimately a combination of linked regional economies. While macroeconomic
conditions are well tracked at the level of nations, microeconomic circumstances differ significantly
across regions, even when they are part of the same national economy. An effective strategy to under-
stand and strengthen European competitiveness, especially its microeconomic dimensions, has to
acknowledge this heterogeneity across regions.
One of the key dimensions in which regions differ is their specialisation pattern. Previous studies have
shown that the strength of a region’s cluster portfolio is related to the overall level of prosperity that the
region is able to support7. The European Cluster Panorama adds an additional step and explores the
presence of emerging industries, build up from core clusters and further related industries, across Eu-
rope. It ultimately wants to enable European regions to pursue more evidence-based strategies as they
explore their unique opportunities in emerging industries, a key ambition of the entrepreneurial discover
process part of smart specialisation strategies.8
What data are used?

The 2016 Panorama is based on a new dataset that is compiled specifically for analysing detailed pat-
terns of cluster evolution. The core of the dataset is the firm- and plant-level data sources from the Orbis
Historical dataset supplied by Bureau van Dijk (June 2016 release). This dataset provides detailed data
on the economic performance of firms. It allows to use data of firms’ turnover, wage bill, capital, materials
and employment9 totalling more than 1 billion data points. The coverage is very good in most countries
in Europe, and especially for larger limited liability companies, however significant gaps were still pre-
sent.
6 The analysis covers all EU-28 countries (comprising 276 NUTS-2 regions) as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herze-
govina, Iceland, Israel, FYROM, Kosovo (regarding the political status of which no claims are implied), Montene-
gro, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, and Turkey by applying the NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statis-
tics) standard for the subdivisions of countries for statistical purposes.
7 For example in Ketels, C. & S. Protsiv (2013). Clusters and the New Growth Path for Europe. WWWforEurope
working paper series, issue 14.
8 See for more detail the material on the European Commission’s Smart Specialisation Platform: http://s3plat-
form.jrc.ec.europa.eu.
9 Employment is usually the only variable available on plant level, the rest are for the firm as a whole.
5
Therefore, three Eurostat datasets were used for calibration: Business demography to obtain counts of
businesses in missing legal forms,10 Structural Business Statistics to provide aggregate values to match
to, and Regional Economic Accounts to calibrate the final numbers to be comparable across countries.11
Using this firm-level data allows to get a more consistent picture across European businesses and com-
puting entrepreneurship indicators that would otherwise be unavailable.
While the dataset is completely new, it resembles the one used in the 2014 Panorama and most of the
values remained fairly stable in the countries where data quality was good in both 2014 and 2016. The
main difference is that the employment indicator is now using a uniform definition across countries,
defining a full-time employee as equivalent to 1 800 hours worked per year. This has the advantage that
it makes the labour input more comparable across countries and does not depend on local legislation
specifying a standard work week (although of course the measurement of working hours is imprecise).
The main outcome of this is that the countries where the average work time is significantly lower than 1
800 hours (e.g. Germany and the Netherlands) see their employment numbers lowered while their
productivity is increased, while the opposite occurs in the Eastern countries with longer working hours.
Another major addition to the dataset are the skills indicators obtained from Labour Force Surveys (LFS),
which were used to obtain the relative sophistication of workers in each cluster according to the following
four skill levels12 using broad sections of the ISCO 08 occupational classification:
■ Officials, Managers, Professionals, Technicians (“Managers”): jobs usually employing abstract
cognitive tasks (ISCO sections 0, 1, 2, 3)
■ Clerical Support Workers (“Clerks”): jobs using routine cognitive tasks, usually in offices (ISCO
group 4)
■ Craft, Trade, Operators, Assemblers (“Crafts”): routine manual jobs, usually on the factory floor
(ISCO sections 6, 7, 8)
■ Service, Sales, Elementary (“Services”): basic non-routine manual jobs like sales or cleaning
(ISCO sections 5 and 9).
Finally, the dataset is complemented with new data on fast-growing new firms (so-called “gazelles”) that
was derived using the same data source. Data on company births, their ownership structure (to remove
subsidiaries of the existing firms), as well as the financial indicators computed in the previous step were
used to select the firms that are less than 5 years old and grew by at least 10% a year over 3 years.13
Other differences between the 2014 and 2016 editions of the Panorama include the per-industry dis-
counting of monetary indicators over time (i.e. the inflation adjustment for output is based on the prices
for this industry’s output within a country, and similarly for the inputs a company uses based on input-
output tables). This, together with purchasing parity adjustments, makes the monetary values across
regions more comparable and in general increases the relative stance of poorer regions since they also
generally have lower prices.
10 Usually sole traders, but in some countries also partnerships. More details on this procedure can be found in
methodological appendix.
11 This calibration was necessary due to different definitions of employment and wages used in different countries
and to ensure that the dataset is consistent with regional and national accounts.
12 Acemoglu, D., D. Autor (2011) Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings. Hand-
book of Labor Economics, Volume 4b.
13 More details follow in the section dedicated to entrepreneurship.
6
All data (other than skills) is now from a uniform source: company accounts (as opposed to, for example,
employee surveys), which further enhances the comparability across regions and industries, though
some inconsistencies remain.
How is cluster performance measured?

The strength of a cluster is a complex multi-faceted concept, capturing aspects of overall size, speciali-
sation, productivity, and dynamism (see figure 2).
Figure 2: Measuring cluster performance
In the analysis of the European Cluster Panorama, a two-stage approach is used. In the first stage,
‘strong clusters’ are identified, i.e. situations in which a region is specialised in a set of related indus-
tries relative to peers. This notion is operationalised by identifying the top 20% of European locations by
location quotient, subject to a cut-off of at least 500 employees. 14
■ Specialisation, measured by the relative size of regional employment in a given (sectoral or
cross-sectoral) cluster category reflected in its location quotient (LQ). This relative measure
indicates how much stronger a region is in a cluster category than would be expected given its
overall size, compared to the average employment size in the specific cluster category across
all regions
In the second stage, up to three additional ‘performance stars’ are awarded to capture how well a
location is leveraging the presence of a cluster. These further stars are awarded if a location falls into
the top 20% of European regions in any of the following three dimensions:
14 The Location Quotient is a measure of a region’s specialisation in an industry and is computed as the ratio of this
industry’s shares of a) this region’s employment and b) of the whole European employment across all regions.
Thus, the values above one imply high regional specialisation, with LQ of 2 corresponding to twice as many
employees in an industry than expected if all employment was distributed evenly.
7
■ Absolute size, measured by the number of employees and establishments. This measure is
based on the observation that the number of linkages within a cluster is growing exponentially
with the number of participants. Only when economic activity in a given cluster category moves
beyond a threshold of critical mass do cluster effects become significant.
■ Productivity, measured by the wages paid in a regional cluster (adjusted for local cost levels).
This measure reflects not only what is being done in a region, but how well it is being done,
influenced by the strength of cluster effects. Wages are also influenced by the structure of labour
markets and other factors but are strongly correlated with productivity.
■ Dynamism, measured by a simple average of measures on employment growth and the pres-
ence of fast-growing new firms (gazelles). This measure aims to capture whether a cluster con-
tinues to benefit from strong cluster effects in its development, or not. The cluster may be hin-
dered in its growth because it has already reached a level where costs are greater than the
benefits or other factors such as industry-specific growth trends.
The two first employment-based indicators formed the basis of the initial ‘three-star’ methodology used
by the European Cluster Observatory of the first European cluster mapping in 2007.15 Our current star-
rating is comparable to the one used in the 2014 European Cluster Panorama. The one conceptual
change is the inclusion of data on gazelles, i.e. consistently fast growing new companies, to measure
dynamism. Regions that grow through creating new firms rather than through employment growth in
established firms score higher compared to the method used in 2014. The overall effect of this change
on the report rankings is, however, relatively minor.
The strength of a region’s cluster portfolio is measured by summing up the performance across its
individual clusters. For the analysis of overall regional performance, the total number of stars across all
sectoral clusters or cross-sectoral, emerging industries is used as the core measure. There are other
measures that are reported in some tables, in particular the share of employment in strong clusters for
regions. This measure essentially weights clusters by their employment size, which provides another
useful perspective on the strength of the cluster portfolio. Because it is also more affected by whether
specific large cluster categories are strong, in particular business services, the star methodology is used
as the main indicator of regional cluster or emerging industry strength.
While these indicators enhance the understanding of economic geography across Europe, some cave-
ats should be kept in mind: First, some indicators, particularly the new ones, are measured with error
and depend on changes in how industries are captured in the different statistical systems16. Second, all
indicators have some biases: Absolute employment size can be a sign of low productivity. Large regions
benefit in the size measure, but are less likely to have high location quotient. More established clusters
tend to have higher wages, while they generally grow slower due to their already large size. High wages
measure not only superior productivity but are also reflective of the general cost and wage levels in a
region.17 With these different possible ‘biases’ often working in different directions, the four-star clusters
really stand out with strong performance across all dimensions.
15 See “The concept of clusters and cluster policies and their role for competitiveness and innovation”, Communi-
cation from the European Commission of 17 October 2008 available at http://bookshop.europa.eu/is-
bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/EU-Bookshop-Site/en_GB/-/EUR/ViewPublication-
Start?PublicationKey=NBNA23591.
16 For example, while the attempt is to only use the data supplied using NACE 2.0 industry codes, sometimes the
older NACE 1.1 classification needs to be used complicating the growth computations. In other cases, the detailed
regional wage data was missing and had to be imputed using a combination of the detailed national data and less
detailed regional data.
17 This is to some degree controlled for using purchasing power adjusted data.
8
3. The Role of Clusters in Europe
3.1 Measuring clusters in the European economy

Industries that show significant levels of geographic concentration account for 47% of all European em-
ployment covered in our data. While the data is not fully comparable given differences in sectoral cov-
erage, this ratio is significantly higher than in the United States where traded industries account for 36%
of employment.18 Firms operating in these industries serve markets beyond their home location, com-
pete with rivals from other locations, and have a choice where to locate. Because of these characteris-
tics, similar to firms engaged in international trade, these industries are often called “traded”.19
Figure 3: Employment and wage dynamics in Europe in the post-crisis period
The recent job dynamics, in Europe as well as in the US and other countries for which comparable data
is available, has seen employment in traded industries to be decreasing as a share of total employment:
Figure 3 above illustrates this by local employment displaying higher growth than traded employment.
In Europe there has been a net increase of 522 000 traded industry jobs since 2008 (most of it in non-
EU countries, Turkey in particular, covered in our data; employment in traded industries has remained
stable within the EU), compared to the net gain of more than 11 million in the rest of the economy.
Productivity and wage dynamics, however, have pointed in the opposite direction. In terms of wages
paid traded industries generate a stable 51% of the European total. Lower relative employment numbers
have been compensated by higher relative wages. Industries that cluster register an average annual
wage of 34 800 Euro in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP; a measure that accounts for differences in local
price levels) per full time employee.20 This is 17% higher than the wage in other industries, called local
or non-traded.
18 For data on the US see the US Cluster Portal at www.clustermapping.us.

19 Note, however, that trade across national borders is not the defining aspect, even though by definition all exporting
firms are part of traded industries.
20 The monetary unit used throughout the report is 2010 PPP (i.e. all monetary values are deflated both to account
for inflation and relative prices across regions).
9
These higher wages in traded industries are likely to be driven by higher levels of productivity, based on
higher capital or skill intensity as well as potentially the benefits of clusters. The wage gap between
traded and local industries has been slowly rising over time.
Traded industries can be further organised in 51 cluster categories, i.e. groups of industries that exhibit
strong linkages in terms of co-location, skill use, and so-called input-out relationships.21 These cluster
categories differ significantly (see Table 1), such as in the absolute number of jobs they represent: The
three largest cluster categories Distribution and Electronic Commerce, Business Services, and Hospi-
tality and Tourism, account, with between 15.8 million and 11.2 million employees each, i.e. for about
one third of all traded employment Europe-wide and are present essentially everywhere. The smallest,
Tobacco, registers only about 38 000 employees, with only 60 regions across Europe accounting for at
least 100 employees each.
Table 1: Profile of 51 Traded Cluster categories

Cluster Plants Employment Avg Wage Manager Clerk Craft Service
(1000) (PPP) share share share share
Aerospace Vehicles and
Defence 926 297 38 809 50% 9% 31% 11%
Agricultural Inputs and
Services 5 479 463 20 270 29% 5% 46% 19%
Apparel 10 302 1 343 12 721 24% 7% 57% 12%
Appliances 1 839 235 26 522 36% 9% 41% 13%
Automotive 19 162 2 528 35 778 33% 7% 51% 9%
Biopharmaceuticals 2 350 518 51 706 58% 9% 21% 12%
Business Services 70 239 11 990 45 574 74% 10% 8% 8%
Coal Mining 955 189 22 975 36% 6% 47% 11%
Communications
Equipment and Services 7 242 828 45 220 56% 12% 19% 13%
Construction Products
and Services 44 053 3 411 28 279 33% 8% 44% 15%
Distribution and
Electronic Commerce 167 110 15 855 34 046 42% 13% 22% 22%
Downstream Chemical
Products 22 432 2 572 29 258 39% 9% 33% 19%
Downstream Metal
Products 10 500 1 012 32 846 30% 9% 50% 12%
Education and Knowledge
Creation 24 299 4 866 35 121 69% 9% 7% 15%
Electric Power Genera‐
tion and Transmission 10 864 1 078 39 223 44% 11% 36% 10%
Environmental Services 18 252 1 373 27 152 34% 8% 20% 38%
Financial Services 45 084 7 861 40 982 38% 21% 24% 17%
Fishing and Fishing
Products 2 698 457 18 068 28% 7% 46% 18%
Food Processing and
Manufacturing 37 836 2 370 30 252 31% 9% 42% 18%
21 Delgado, Porter, Stern (2016), Defining Clusters of Related Industries, Journal of Economic Geography, Vol. 16,
No. 1. Input-Output relationships measure to what degree the products and services generated by one industry
enter into the production processes of another industry.
10
Cluster Plants Employment Avg Wage Manager Clerk Craft Service

(1000) (PPP) share share share share
Footwear 3 062 472 17 681 21% 7% 62% 11%
Forestry 5 052 500 17 630 31% 4% 49% 16%
Furniture 35 338 3 688 28 037 26% 6% 60% 8%
Hospitality and Tourism 79 029 11 286 33 574 55% 15% 7% 23%
Information Technology
and Analytical Instruments 21 663 1 666 45 583 48% 9% 35% 8%
Insurance Services 16 684 2 841 39 527 39% 22% 23% 16%
Jewellery and Precious
Metals 4 286 175 23 758 25% 7% 54% 14%
Leather and Related
Products 2 078 118 22 507 24% 7% 58% 11%
Lighting and Electrical
Equipment 23 259 2 081 35 340 35% 8% 51% 7%
Livestock Processing 7 679 894 24 317 23% 7% 50% 20%
Marketing, Design, and
Publishing 31 558 2 055 37 546 70% 12% 8% 9%
Medical Devices 12 361 726 39 293 49% 7% 35% 8%
Metal Mining 534 47 34 352 36% 8% 40% 16%
Metalworking
Technology 22 625 2 987 33 458 27% 6% 60% 7%
Music and Sound
Recording 2 835 127 38 165 53% 12% 21% 14%
Nonmetal Mining 5 669 303 28 378 26% 7% 52% 15%
Oil and Gas Production
and Transportation 5 140 451 63 698 54% 7% 33% 6%
Paper and Packaging 16 184 1 059 32 638 29% 9% 48% 15%
Performing Arts 21 206 3 354 43 032 83% 5% 7% 5%
Plastics 20 435 1 921 31 612 30% 9% 48% 14%
Printing Services 19 809 1 305 31 745 32% 8% 48% 12%
Production Technology
and Heavy Machinery 36 917 3 330 40 642 38% 9% 46% 7%
Recreational and Small
Electric Goods 11 912 793 27 266 36% 9% 38% 17%
Textile Manufacturing 17 256 1 185 21 673 28% 8% 50% 13%
Tobacco 496 38 43 391 41% 9% 35% 14%
Transportation and
Logistics 23 933 7 112 26 819 26% 12% 47% 14%
Upstream Chemical
Products 6 738 418 39 334 38% 8% 41% 13%
Upstream Metal
Manufacturing 27 125 1 639 37 797 30% 7% 54% 9%
Video Production and
Distribution 6 992 377 46 375 72% 7% 9% 12%
Vulcanised and Fired
Materials 34 177 2 100 27 792 28% 8% 49% 15%
Water Transportation 11 711 893 42 380 38% 12% 37% 13%
Wood Products 26 355 2 506 23 667 27% 7% 50% 16%
TRADED 1 061 720 117 693 34 782 44% 11% 30% 15%
TOTAL 1 735 261 251 676 32 103 40% 9% 23% 28%
11
Table 1 shows that cluster categories differ significantly in average wage levels – likely reflecting the
differences in capital and skill intensity. Across Europe, Oil and Gas is with more than 63 000 Euro in
PPP the highest wage cluster category. Its wages are about five times higher than the lowest wages
cluster category, which is Apparel.
Table 1 also shows the differences in skill s, by showing the allocation of skills for the four job categories
of managers/professionals, clerks, crafts/operators, and service workers. Management and craft tend to
be the largest groups but still differ widely in terms of their relative importance for specific cluster cate-
gories: cluster categories comprising creative industries (Design, Music, Performing Arts, Video) have
around 70% of all jobs among management/professionals, while the footwear cluster category has only
21%. Footwear also has the highest crafts share at 60% of all jobs, while several of the knowledge-
intensive services have less than 10%. Environmental services had the highest service share at 38% of
their jobs, insurance and financial services the highest clerk share at more than 20%.
3.2 Strong clusters and their performance

In total, 3043 strong regional clusters have been identified in Europe; they are defined to capture the
leading 20% of regions by specialisation (i.e. location quotient) in each of the 51 cluster categories.
Strong clusters account for 46% of all traded industries employment. Strong clusters have thus on av-
erage about twice as much presence of economic activity in a specific cluster category than the Euro-
pean average. Strong clusters register an average wage of 36 100 Euro (PPP), which is about 3% more
than all traded industries.22
About 2 550 of these strong clusters register at least 500 employees and a location quotient (i.e. number
of employees relative to what would be expected on average given the size of the region) larger than
1.5. Most of the strong clusters have two stars (the one for specialisation by the definition of “strong”,
and another one), while there are 103 four-star clusters.
Table 2: Number of regions by total stars in strong regional clusters
1 Star 2 Stars 3 Stars 4 Stars
618 1 536 786 103
Cluster categories differ in the dispersion of activity across locations, measured by the degree that
strong clusters (i.e. the top 20% specialised clusters) dominate overall activity in the cluster category
across Europe. For the majority of the sectoral categories strong clusters account for between 40% and
60% of economic activity. But in some larger categories the share is lower, for example about one third
for Distribution and Electronic Commerce. Conversely, in categories related to natural resources (coal
and metal mining) but also in aerospace vehicles and defence, the share is instead above 80%.
22 While this benefit of being in a strong cluster might seem relatively small, it is obscured by the impact of cross-
cluster locational effects on wages. If clusters in a specific cluster-category, for example food processing, are
predominantly concentrated in less advanced regions, the average in strong clusters in this cluster category will
be lower than in generally higher wage regions with less food processing activity.
12
Looking more narrowly at the ten leading clusters by category, one can find that they tend to account
for about 25% of all economic activity, again with significant variation. On average, the next 50 locations
then account for about the same amount of activity as the leading ten.
Table 3 shows that the profile and performance of strong clusters differs across cluster categories. The
size of the average strong cluster in Business Services (91 700 employees) is much larger than those
in smaller categories like Jewellery. On the other hand, the wages in Oil are among the highest of all
cluster categories at close to 70 000, more than five times those in Apparel (even as all the wage num-
bers are corrected for price differences across regions).
Table 3: Performance of Strong Clusters in 51 Traded Cluster categories
Cluster Strong Other locations

Average Average Average Average Average Average
Employ‐ Wages Annual Employ‐ Wages Annual
ment Empl. ment Empl
Growth Growth
2008‐14 2008‐14
Aerospace Vehicles and Defence 5 128 35 951 N/A23 226 52 749 N/A
Agricultural Inputs and Services 4 013 16 923 5.17% 807 24 432 5.51%
Apparel 14 994 8 167 2.14% 1 354 25 470 ‐0.59%
Appliances 3 202 22 864 N/A 194 40 366 N/A
Automotive 20 811 32 640 7.03% 4 521 39 389 1.02%
Biopharmaceuticals 5 761 52 259 5.23% 790 50 749 0.33%
Business Services 91 655 50 347 3.23% 22 762 40 713 2.08%
Coal Mining 5 923 19 220 15.26% 78 60 778 1.72%
Communications Equipment and
Services 8 744 45 687 5.55% 997 44 194 3.32%
Construction Products and Services 24 197 23 265 ‐0.01% 6 951 32 694 0.45%
Distribution and Electronic
Commerce 77 406 26 688 5.73% 41 035 37 622 0.51%
Downstream Chemical Products 22 508 25 328 4.09% 4 164 34 630 0.64%
Downstream Metal Products 6 422 33 146 1.72% 2 255 32 629 0.42%
Education and Knowledge Creation 28 583 34 671 3.67% 11 460 35 407 4.58%
Electric Power Generation and
Transmission 8 853 35 824 7.26% 1 899 43 245 4.62%
Environmental Services 10 194 20 867 3.51% 2 900 32 675 1.02%
Financial Services 62 477 42 217 1.27% 14 320 39 621 1.95%
Fishing and Fishing Products 8 550 16 471 1.27% 294 25 487 2.05%
Food Processing and
Manufacturing 10 836 24 814 1.99% 6 357 32 552 1.11%
Footwear 6 848 16 729 2.56% 285 23 306 ‐1.02%
Forestry 5 523 15 208 N/A 757 21 956 N/A
Furniture 24 739 20 435 0.13% 7 810 34 242 1.46%
Hospitality and Tourism 61 096 36 901 3.77% 27 793 31 724 3.73%
23 N/A = data not available.
13
Cluster Strong Other locations

Average Average Average Average Average Average
Employ‐ Wages Annual Employ‐ Wages Annual
ment Empl. ment Empl
Growth Growth
2008‐14 2008‐14
Information Technology and
Analytical Instruments 13 419 44 193 3.05% 3 053 47 110 0.97%
Insurance Services 25 051 40 669 2.57% 4 627 37 993 2.42%
Jewellery and Precious Metals 1 951 21 503 ‐1.66% 264 27 184 ‐0.02%
Leather and Related Products 2 154 21 086 4.90% 131 26 328 2.50%
Lighting and Electrical Equipment 12 810 30 203 ‐1.88% 4 751 38 855 0.63%
Livestock Processing 7 053 20 394 0.38% 1 664 28 443 ‐0.01%
Marketing, Design, and Publishing 17 980 39 017 0.91% 3 325 35 535 1.16%
Medical Devices 5 592 39 467 2.16% 1 460 39 129 0.82%
Metal Mining 1 612 32 163 N/A 54 44 822 N/A
Metalworking Technology 17 553 33 762 0.77% 7 004 33 265 0.42%
Music and Sound Recording 2 735 40 521 ‐3.92% 137 32 444 3.79%
Nonmetal Mining 2 700 20 925 1.31% 649 34 160 0.42%
Oil and Gas Production and Trans‐
portation 5 040 68 521 5.24% 543 53 359 0.98%
Paper and Packaging 7 154 30 450 ‐0.08% 2 268 34 351 0.02%
Performing Arts 24 654 55 817 3.23% 6 640 30 981 1.51%
Plastics 12 106 27 486 3.20% 4 317 34 549 0.13%
Printing Services 9 426 31 747 ‐2.27% 2 669 31 743 ‐1.55%
Production Technology and Heavy
Machinery 25 179 42 978 2.91% 6 390 38 315 0.18%
Recreational and Small Electric
Goods 7 036 25 450 2.40% 1 263 29 833 0.87%
Textile Manufacturing 11 808 17 519 3.53% 1 600 29 306 ‐0.39%
Tobacco 1 200 39 211 ‐0.26% 88 49 028 N/A
Transportation and Logistics 47 015 21 431 ‐0.31% 15 361 30 990 0.81%
Upstream Chemical Products 3 542 36 627 ‐2.37% 742 42 439 ‐0.10%
Upstream Metal Manufacturing 11 981 36 361 2.97% 3 310 39 096 0.87%
Video Production and Distribution 4 554 50 409 0.90% 453 37 491 2.13%
Vulcanised and Fired Materials 15 124 21 513 ‐0.55% 4 221 33 481 0.10%
Water Transportation 9 155 41 664 2.16% 1 171 43 747 0.60%
Wood Products 18 114 17 788 ‐0.37% 5 040 29 031 0.84%
Wages in a specific regional cluster are driven by cluster effects and by location effects. The stronger
the cluster and the better the location-specific business environment, the higher the cluster’s productivity
and wages. In some cluster categories, strong clusters tend to be in locations with weak business envi-
ronments; the negative location effect then results in a relatively low wage in strong clusters. Accounting
14
for this effect, however, wages in strong clusters are higher.24 When it comes to growth, strong clusters
outperform weaker ones in about half the industries. In some clusters (e.g. Automotive) the difference
in growth is substantial. Here, the cluster effects are strong enough to compensate for the usual con-
vergence, i.e. the normally faster growth in locations with lower current levels of economic activity,
across locations that economic theory predicts.25
Clusters are constantly evolving: Market conditions and demand are changing, technologies and busi-
ness models are changing, and the local cluster and its business environment is changing too. At the
same time, there are forces that will drive path-dependency, which means that clusters with strong per-
formance yesterday have capabilities that make it more likely that they will also be strong today. The
analysis of the new dataset, which includes comparable time-series data over the 2008-2014 period,
allows to track these two forces. To do so, all regions have been categorised into three different groups
depending on whether they display weak, medium, and strong cluster strength overall. The share of
regions was then calculated that either stayed within the same cluster strength category or changed its
position into a different strength category.
Table 4: Regional overall cluster strength development (2008 to 2014)
Cluster strength Weak 2014 Medium 2014 Strong 2014
Weak 2008 92% 8% 1%
Medium 2008 13% 78% 9%
Strong 2008 2% 14% 85%
Strong: following the definition of strong clusters used above, i.e. top-20% specialised (i.e. location quotient, LQ in
short); Medium: capturing clusters above the median LQ, but not in top 20%; Weak: the clusters below the median
LQ.
The data in table 4 reveals that there is indeed significant evidence of both churn and path dependency.
Between 78% (medium) and 92% (weak) of all clusters by category remain in the same group over this
six-year period, which covers the crisis and its aftermath. About 20% of all clusters did change the group
they were in. Among strong clusters there was more stability: 89% of the clusters strong in 2014 were
already strong in 2008. This data is consistent with a view that locations with little existing assets find
developing cluster strength very hard, while among those that have some assets and those that already
have strong clusters there is significant mobility in terms of changing market success.
24 A more appropriate comparison is thus to look at the wage in strong clusters taking regional and sectoral effect
into account. Controlling for these effects yields the effect of strong cluster equal to approximately a 3% increase
in average wage. However, this coefficient is driven down by non-EU countries (where our data is also weaker)
and the effect of a strong cluster within EU is close to 8%.
25 Delgado, Porter, Stern (2014), Clusters, Convergence, and Economic Performance, Research Policy, Vol. 43,
Issue 10, pp. 1785 – 1799.
15
3.3 Regional cluster hotspots

Most regions have between 5 and 15 strong clusters according to the definition applied by the Pano-
rama. 75% of all regions fall into this bracket. Regions then tend to achieve 10 to 30 stars in their strong
clusters; 66% of all regions fall into this bracket.
There are roughly 50 regions with fewer than 10 stars, and 50 regions with more than 30 stars. Among
the top five regions in terms of total number of stars in strong clusters there are three Polish regions
(Slaskie, Wielkopolskie, and Dolnoslaskie), one German region (Mittelfranken), and one from the UK
(Western Wales). The roughly 20 regions with five or less stars in strong clusters are predominantly
from Southern Europe, especially Greece and Turkey.
Consistent with the analysis conducted in the 2014, figure 4 and table 5 apply a broader measure of
regional cluster portfolio strength, counting all stars achieved in individual cluster categories, not just in
strong clusters. Locations like the Istanbul region but also Ile de France and Lombardia with a larger
overall size, generally display higher growth, or higher overall wage levels. A look at the strong clusters
in these regional hotspots (one other measure) reveals that there are many different specialisation pro-
files that are consistent with an overall strong cluster portfolio. Each region has its own distinct profile of
activities supporting value creation and prosperity.
Figure 4: European regional hotspots for sectoral clusters by number of stars
16
Table 5: Leading Regions by Cluster Stars
Region Region Largest Total 1‐star 2‐star 3‐star 4‐star Empl. Top 3 Clusters by LQ
Name City Stars clus‐ clus‐ clus‐ clus‐ Share of
ters ters ters ters Strong
Clusters
TR10 Istanbul Istanbul 101 3 31 12 0 58.14% Appliances

Textile Manufacturing
Biopharmaceuticals
DE21 Ober‐ Munich 92 9 23 11 1 48.34% Aerospace Vehicles and

bayern Defense
Biopharmaceuticals
Video Production and
Distribution
FR10 Île de Paris 92 10 32 6 0 63.75% Performing Arts

France Video Production and
Distribution
Marketing, Design, and
Publishing
DE11 Stuttgart Stuttgart 83 10 20 7 3 56.29% Production Technology

and Heavy Machinery
Automotive
Metalworking Technology
ITC4 Lombar‐ Milan 80 17 19 7 1 63.65% Textile Manufacturing

dia Insurance Services
Financial Services
DEA2 Köln Köln 80 7 26 7 0 44.26% Video Production and

Distribution
Metalworking Technology
Insurance Services
DE71 Darm‐ Frankfurt 76 13 21 7 0 53.28% Biopharmaceuticals

stadt am Main Financial Services
Insurance Services
DE60 Hamburg Hamburg 73 13 14 8 2 67.49% Water Transportation

Metal Mining
Medical Devices
DEA1 Düssel‐ Düssel‐ 73 16 15 9 0 32.04% Production Technology

dorf dorf and Heavy Machinery
Communications Equip‐
ment and Services
Upstream Chemical
Products
PL22 Slaskie Katowice 72 15 25 1 1 61.61% Coal Mining

Lighting and Electrical
Equipment
Furniture
PL41 Wielko‐ Poznan 72 13 25 3 0 56.89% Appliances

polskie Furniture
Livestock Processing
17
3.4 Entrepreneurship
For the 2016 Cluster Panorama firm-level data was used to identify so-called ‘gazelles’, i.e. firms that
have grown quickly over an extended period of time.26 Gazelles are defined here as companies less
than 5 years old that have grown their employment at least 10% annually over a period of three years.
This definition is more inclusive than the common 20% growth requirement used for gazelles, enabling
us to capture a larger share of the dynamics of new business formation. At the same time, the focus is
placed on traded industries and thus those parts of the economy where companies are not constrained
in their growth potential by the size of their local market.27
While about half of all gazelles are in local industries, by their nature this activity is more likely to reflect
churn and the displacement of less productive existing firms than net addition of economic activity.
Due to the novelty of this data source and differences in coverage across countries, the results have to
be interpreted with caution. In particular, it seems likely that country-specific rules and regulations, for
example on taxation, have an important influence on the presence of new business formation that is not
directly linked to the overall dynamism of the economy.
Table 6: Top regions by presence of Gazelles
Region Region Name Largest City Gazelles Gazelle Employees Share of region's

employment, %
FR10 Île de France Paris 1998 57908 1.8%
ES51 Cataluña Barcelona 1455 33794 2.2%
ES30 Madrid Madrid 1358 37676 2.7%
FR71 Rhône‐Alpes Lyon 1292 22218 2.2%
HU10 Kozep‐Magyarorszag Budapest 1145 28561 2.6%
ES61 Andalucía Sevilla 1090 25273 2.4%
ITC4 Lombardia Milan 1008 63373 2.6%
LT00 Lietuva Vilnius 979 27927 3.9%
SE11 Stockholm Stockholm 977 13886 2.3%
ES52 Valencia Valencia 930 22051 2.3%
There are more than 67 700 gazelles in traded industries in Europe employing 1.9 million workers or
1.6% of all employees. Of these, 25 000 or 38% of gazelles are located in strong clusters. These new
firms are also substantially larger in strong clusters: their share of overall gazelle employment is 46%
and they employ 35 employees on average compared to 24 outside of strong clusters.
Many of the new enterprises are located in Southern and Eastern European regions, particularly in
countries like Spain and Italy that have historically a very high share of small, family-owned enterprises.
26 Similar analysis has recently been presented for regions and broad sectors; see http://ec.europa.eu/euro-
stat/documents/2995521/7706167/4-26102016-AP-EN.pdf. The Cluster Panorama puts this data into the con-
text of regional clusters, and focuses more specifically on fast growing firms that have been newly established.
27 Guzman/Stern (2015), Nowcasting and Placecasting Entrepreneurial Quality and Performance, NBER Working
Paper No. 20954, MBER: Cambridge, MA, find being part of a traded industry to be a core driver of future growth
opportunities for new businesses.
In some of these regions, the gazelles constitute more than 3% of the overall employment. Since the
thresholds are relatively low, it is not clear whether many of these new businesses have ambitions to
grow beyond a few employees.
3.5 Reindustrialisation
Manufacturing has in the post-crisis period attracted renewed interest from policy makers, both in Eu-
rope and North America. Manufacturing is seen as important for building capabilities over time, helping
regions to create more competitive and resilient economies. Cases of ‘reshoring’ of industrial activity
from Asia offered hope that manufacturing could be a driver of growth in the post-crisis period. The
European Commission’s 2014 Communication 'For a European Industrial Renaissance’ stresses in this
context the need for Europe to focus on the post-crisis modernisation of its economic structure, espe-
cially in industry.28
This message was strengthened with the 2016 Communication on “Digitising European Industry”.29 The
data set compiled for the Panorama tracks the dynamics of economic activity in manufacturing between
2008 and 2014 by following the traditional narrowly defined sectors for manufacturing activity.30 The vast
majority of manufacturing is included in traded industries, and thus captured in our cluster analysis. Most
clusters are fully manufacturing or services driven. This is partly the result of a lack of granularity in the
available data. There are a few, however, that mix both types of industries: Communications Equip. &
Services, Electric Power Gen. & Transmission, as well as most natural resource driven ones (Mining,
Forestry).
Overall, manufacturing accounted for 37.4% of traded industries employment in 2014, down from 39.9%
in 2008 (see figure 5). In absolute terms manufacturing employment has decreased from 46.7 million to
44 million in the same period. Despite decreasing employment shares, the share of gross value added
(GVA) in manufacturing has remained stable at about 33%, and the share of total wages declined from
35% to 34%. There are strong indications of rising productivity in the sector: wages grew 4% from 33
600 to 35 000, and value added per employee grew from 63 400 to 67 900 (a 7% increase).
These trends have been very similar when looking only at strong clusters in manufacturing and in the
economy overall. Manufacturing activity tends to be somewhat more concentrated in strong clusters
than other traded industries but experienced a similar decrease from 42.6% to 40.5% as a share of all
strong cluster employment.
This data is consistent with the view that (advanced) manufacturing is achieving a rate of productivity
growth that is outpacing demand growth for manufacturing goods. Production requires a decreasing
number of employees that are more and more productive, and thus able to secure a growing wage
premium versus the average worker. Clusters in manufacturing are affected by these broader trends but
not differently from manufacturing activities in other locations. The changes in productivity seem to be
fairly broad-based across all locations.
28 European Commission (2014), For a European Industrial Renaissance, COM (2014) 14 final.
29 Digitising European Industry - Reaping the full benefits of a Digital Single Market (COM(2016) 180 final), available
at https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/digitising-european-industry.
30 Traded industries part of section C in the NACE 2.0 classification of economic activities are used as the definition
of manufacturing.
19
Figure 5: Dynamics of manufacturing in Europe
One much discussed aspect is the distribution of manufacturing activity within Europe. With the acces-
sion of Eastern European countries in 2004 there was a significant relocation of labour-intensive manu-
facturing activity to the East; this was a core driver of their robust catch-up. Our data indicates that this
process of west-east relocation of manufacturing activity has largely been completed. While the overall
level of manufacturing employment remains larger in Eastern Europe,31 much in line with their factor
endowments, the decrease in the share of manufacturing in traded industry employment has been sim-
ilar to the EU overall, dropping from 51.6% to 48.3% between 2008 and 2014.
A look at individual regions within EU confirms these broader trends as the level of cross-region variation
is relatively modest. When regions are ranked by their manufacturing employment share in 2008, the
top 59 regions have all seen this share decreased. Only 9 regions have increased their manufacturing
share by more than one percentage point, while many regions have lost more than 10 percentage points.
Very few regions have grown their manufacturing employment share.
31 Defined as the EU members that joined the EU in 2004 and after, excluding Cyprus and Malta.
20
4. Emerging Industries in Europe
4.1 Overall Observations
4.1.1 Profiling the Performance of Emerging Industries
The ten emerging industries (see them listed in table 7) identified in the 2014 edition of the European
Cluster Panorama continue to play an important role in European economic development. The 492 000
companies comprising the sector employ 54 million employees, or 46% of the overall traded industry
employment.32 The average wage at 37 900 Euro (PPP) is 9% larger than traded industries overall and
all but two emerging industries have a higher average wage than traded industries overall.
While the cross-sectoral, emerging industries categories are more similar in size and performance than
the sectoral cluster categories due to being broader and partially overlapping, they do exhibit substantial
heterogeneity in skill compositions. Creative and Digital industries rely on managerial and professional
talent nearly twice as much as traded industries in general. At the same time, Logistical Services and
Mobility Technologies employ much more manual craft labour, while Experience Industries focus on
service workers.
Table 7: Profile of Emerging Industries
Emerging Industry Plants Employment Average Manager Clerk Craft Service

(1000) Wage share share share share
(PPP)
Advanced Packaging 38 913 4 854 023 35 839 29% 8% 53% 10%
Biopharmaceuticals 20 961 2 315 157 47 533 54% 11% 21% 14%
Blue Growth Industries 75 235 12 953 282 32 320 39% 12% 38% 12%
Creative Industries 107 276 14 166 879 44 765 74% 10% 8% 7%
Digital Industries 80 535 9 994 767 44 949 62% 9% 21% 8%
Environmental Industries 71 882 8 725 709 38 466 46% 11% 32% 11%
Experience Industries 113 445 15 248 961 35 323 56% 14% 10% 20%
Logistical Services 28 316 7 614 898 26 390 26% 12% 49% 14%
Medical Devices 43 863 4 826 157 43 527 49% 10% 32% 9%
Mobility Technologies 78 787 10 818 547 38 251 36% 9% 45% 9%
Compared to 2014, figure 6 shows relative wage levels remaining similar while there have unsurprisingly
been more significant changes in terms of employment growth.33 Employment dynamics have improved
in traded sectors as the European economy is emerging from the crisis, and the same is true for most
emerging industries. Overall the ten emerging industries continue to outperform the average of all traded
industries on at least wage level or employment growth. But over the last two years one of them, Logis-
tical Services, has dropped below this benchmark. While the industries captured in this category had
32 Note that since the emerging industry definitions are overlapping, the overall employment across all emerging
industries is lower than the simple sum of employment in each industry separately.
33 Comparisons over time are made within the new data set. The figures cannot be directly compared to the data
reported in the 2014 Cluster Panorama, even though the patterns are generally similar.
21
registered below average traded industry wages before, they also had less dynamic employment growth
over the last two years.
Experience industries, a category dominated by tourism including also some business services, per-
forming arts, and other industries, is now the emerging industry with the highest employment growth.
Medical Devices, a category that includes around a small medical device core large segments of infor-
mation technology, production technology and other industries, saw employment growth drop to the
lowest level among all emerging industries, falling further behind also the traded industries average.
Figure 6: Performance of Emerging Industries
Taking the same strength measure as for cluster categories in the previous section, table 8 profiles the
performance in strong emerging industry clusters.34 Strong emerging industry clusters account for about
51% of employment and 53% of wages paid across all emerging industries. In all categories apart from
Blue Growth and Logistical services strong clusters report faster growth than weaker ones, highlighting
the possible presence of positive feedback loops. In 8 out of 10 emerging industries the average strong
cluster has positive growth, compared to 6 out of 10 among weaker locations. Wages tend to be higher
in locations in which the respective emerging industry is strong, but again in some cases these locations
are predominantly in less-advanced lower wage regions, dragging down the average; this is just like for
the traditional clusters as discussed earlier in this report.
34 Emerging industries are broader conceptual categories than the cluster categories defined in the previous section,
and there is no evidence that cluster dynamics extend to the full breadth of cross-sectoral industries they com-
prise. The term cluster is here used to characterise the presence of critical mass in the set of more weakly related
industries captured by emerging industries.
22
Table 8: Performance of strong locations in Emerging Industries
Emerging Industry Strong Other Locations

Average Em‐ Average Avg Empl Average Em‐ Average Avg Empl
ployment Wages Growth ployment Wages Growth
2008‐14 2008‐14
Advanced Packaging 34 012 36 393 1.28% 11 093 37 679 ‐0.17%
Biopharmaceuticals 15 400 58 486 3.80% 4 896 48 409 ‐0.18%
Blue Growth Industries 53 214 35 314 1.34% 34 605 36 179 0.69%
Creative Industries 116 924 50 199 3.35% 30 217 39 534 1.81%
Digital Industries 71 102 51 790 0.75% 22 041 40 836 0.88%
Environmental Industries 44 917 45 305 1.17% 23 271 38 372 0.47%
Experience Industries 97 663 39 283 3.84% 37 625 33 852 2.80%
Logistical Services 37 870 26 332 ‐0.30% 16 078 32 205 0.62%
Medical Devices 35 043 48 050 0.19% 10 108 42 829 ‐1.22%
Mobility Technologies 79 420 39 784 0.51% 23 740 39 764 ‐0.31%
When it comes to entrepreneurship, emerging industries register 15 100 gazelles in strong clusters (48%
of all gazelles in emerging industries) with employment of 415 000 (51%). This corresponds roughly to
the geographic footprint of the existing activities in these industries. Among the emerging industries
there is a clear pattern that service-dominated sectors, like Creative Industries and Logistical Services,
have relatively more high-growth companies and they constitute a larger share of employment. This is
driven partially by the recent shift towards services, but also by the generally lower capital requirements
and other barriers to entry.
Table 9: Gazelles in Emerging Industries
Emerging Industry Gazelles Gazelle Em‐ Share of em‐ Share of ga‐ Share of gazelle

ployees ployment in ga‐ zelles in employees in
zelles strong strong locations
locations
Advanced Packaging 1 567 62 302 1.3% 36.6% 47.9%
Biopharmaceuticals 783 21 023 0.9% 29.9% 33.4%
Blue Growth Industries 8 129 276 568 2.1% 21.6% 25.4%
Creative Industries 14 539 289 810 2.0% 53.2% 49.9%
Digital Industries 5 940 148 834 1.5% 35.6% 42.6%
Environmental Industries 5 172 187 305 2.1% 23.8% 41.6%
Experience Industries 9 027 232 254 1.5% 34.7% 45.8%
Logistical Services 3 975 121 455 1.6% 28.9% 32.5%
Medical Devices 1 518 50 922 1.1% 35.9% 41.8%
Mobility Technologies 3 300 126 157 1.2% 35.5% 44.8%
The geographic distribution of gazelles thus follows roughly the same patterns as the geographic foot-
print of existing activity in the respective emerging industry: it is the same 20% of clusters that account
for twice as much current economic activity and entrepreneurship as the average of all locations.
The share of gazelles in strong clusters varies from nearly one half in Logistics and Creative Industries
to one quarter in Environmental Services. These variations likely reflect industry-specific differences in
23
barriers to entry but potentially also location-specific conditions relevant for entrepreneurship in the type
of locations an emerging industry is predominantly found.
4.1.2 Hotspots of Emerging Industries
While the present analysis is generally focused on individual emerging industries, it also identified re-
gions with cluster strengths across all emerging industries. Similar to the hotspots analysis of regional
sectoral cluster portfolios, the total number of stars registered across the four cluster performance di-
mensions for the ten cross-sectoral, emerging industries was also identified for each region.
Table 10 shows strong differences in size and economic performance across groups of regions by their
overall number of stars for emerging industries. Regions with more stars are not only significantly larger
(this gives them a better chance to capture stars for absolute size) but register also much higher wages,
value added, and patenting intensity.
Table 10: Regional competitiveness outcomes and emerging industry cluster portfolio strength
Cluster star rating range
Average
0‐4 5‐9 10‐14 15‐19 20+
GDP, million € 26 342 37 673 68 883 111 967 181 896 41 815
GDP per capita, PPP 23 450 25 300 30 400 37 200 44 550 27 200
Employment 453 315 535 265 730 730 989 725 2 144 157 570 227
Average Wage, PPP / Employee 30 930 29 126 36 251 42 191 41 641 32 949
Gross Value Added, PPP 21 249 27 214 45 520 77 725 182 879 31 386
Patents per Million People 9 066 10 705 14 402 19 118 41 234 11 405
Number of regions 100 111 77 29 10
As in the 2014 edition of the Panorama, most of the top regions come from Southern Germany with
Stuttgart as the leader in 2016 compared to Darmstadt two years ago. Due to the substantial changes
in the underlying datasets it is hard to compare the relative performance of the regions directly, but the
stability of the top-10 is a sign of the robustness of the main results.
Many of these hotspots are concentrated in large urban areas and traditional manufacturing regions.
This is due to the nature of emerging industries that combine strong service-oriented industries like
Creative and ICT and the industries that build upon the accumulated manufacturing knowledge. The
former are much more likely to be strong in urban centres, and in fact most of the capitals and large
cities in Europe score high on the number of stars. While the latter prosper in historically strong techno-
logical areas stretching from Cologne to Milan, as well as some Eastern European regions.
24
Figure 7: European regional hotspots of cross-sectoral, emerging industry clusters
Table 11 profiles the European regions with 15 or more stars for emerging industries. These 39 regions
have more than 51% of traded industry employment in emerging industries, compared to 43% in re-
maining 288 regions. The corresponding shares for wages paid are 57% and 45% respectively. These
regions are overall considerably richer and more productive having 37% larger average value added
per employee suggesting the possible impact of favourable business environment.
Table 11: Europe’s emerging industries hotspots (15 stars or more)
Rank Region Region Name Largest City Size Spec. Productivity Dynamism Total

stars stars stars Stars stars
1 NO01 Oslo og Akershus Oslo 5 5 10 5 25
2 DE11 Stuttgart Stuttgart 10 6 7 1 24
3 DE71 Darmstadt Frankfurt am 10 6 7 0 23
Main
4 DE21 Oberbayern Munich 10 5 7 0 22
4 DEA1 Düsseldorf Düsseldorf 10 5 4 3 22
4 DEA2 Köln Köln 10 3 9 0 22
7 DE12 Karlsruhe Karlsruhe 10 7 3 1 21
7 DE14 Tübingen Tübingen 5 5 8 3 21
25
Rank Region Region Name Largest City Size Spec. Productivity Dynamism Total

stars stars stars Stars stars
9 FR10 Île de France Paris 10 3 7 0 20
9 TR10 Istanbul Istanbul 10 0 0 10 20
11 DE13 Freiburg Freiburg 7 7 4 1 19
11 DE25 Mittelfranken Nürnberg 6 6 7 0 19
11 DEA5 Arnsberg Dortmund 9 5 5 0 19
11 IE02 Southern and Dublin
7 5 4 3 19
Eastern
15 CH06 Zentralschweiz Luzern 0 4 10 4 18
15 DE60 Hamburg Hamburg 8 6 4 0 18
15 DEB3 Rheinhessen‐Pfalz Mainz 6 5 6 1 18
15 DK01 Hovedstaden Copenhagen 5 4 8 1 18
15 ITC4 Lombardia Milan 10 8 0 0 18
15 SE11 Stockholm Stockholm 6 4 5 3 18
21 BE21 Antwerpen Antwerpen 2 4 10 1 17
21 BG41 Yugozapaden Sofia 7 1 0 9 17
21 DE23 Oberpfalz Regensburg 3 5 5 4 17
24 AT13 Wien Wien 4 4 3 5 16
24 DE27 Schwaben Augsburg 5 6 5 0 16
24 NO04 Agder og Ro‐ Kristiansand
2 3 9 2 16
galand
24 TR33 Manisa Manisa 3 6 0 7 16
24 TR42 Kocaeli İzmit 1 7 0 8 16
24 UKI7 Outer London ‐ London
West and North 4 3 8 1 16
West
30 CH04 Zürich Zürich 3 2 10 0 15
30 FR71 Rhône‐Alpes Lyon 10 2 3 0 15
30 ITC1 Piemonte Turin 10 4 0 1 15
30 ITH3 Veneto Venice 9 5 0 1 15
30 ITH5 Emilia‐Romagna Bologna 9 6 0 0 15
30 NL32 Noord‐Holland Amsterdam 7 2 6 0 15
30 NL33 Zuid‐Holland Rotterdam 7 2 5 1 15
30 NO05 Vestlandet Bergen 1 4 9 1 15
30 UKI6 Outer London ‐ London
1 2 8 4 15
South
30 UKJ1 Berks, Bucks and Oxford
5 3 7 0 15
Oxon
Comparing the regional hotspots for the ten cross-sectoral, emerging industries with those for the 51
sectoral cluster categories, it is evident that while all the emerging industry hotspots are also sectoral
cluster hotspots, the reverse is not true. In general, regions in the Eastern and Southern Europe, partic-
ularly in Poland, Baltic States and Spain, are much stronger in sector-based cluster measures then they
are in emerging industry cluster based ones. This could reflect a different industrial composition of these
regions, but also substantial difference in the overall business environment.
There are seven regions (five in Germany) that are in top-10 by cluster stars according to both the
emerging industry definition and the sector-based one: Istanbul, Stuttgart, Paris, Düsseldorf, München,
Köln, and Frankfurt am Main. Some regions have stronger emerging industry cluster portfolios (Oslo,
Dublin, Karlsruhe, Nürnberg, and Dortmund), while others are much stronger in sectoral cluster portfo-
lios (Milan, Hamburg, Lithuania, Poznan, Katowice).
26
The strongest regions exhibit very different patterns of strength. Some, like Oslo, Antwerpen, and Swiss
regions, have high wages in every emerging industry and score high on productivity. Regions in Eastern
Europe, particularly Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, score high on dynamism due to high entrepre-
neurship indicators. Many regions have reached large sizes in all of the sectors, but it is by definition
hard to specialise in many areas. This makes Lombardia’s eight emerging industries with high speciali-
sation a particularly strong achievement. Top regions usually combine two or three strong dimensions,
but are weaker in the remaining ones. The most balanced regions among the top 25 are Stockholm and
Dublin which score at least three stars along each dimension.
4.2 Profiling the Ten Emerging Industries

The following section reports key new data on each of the ten emerging industries that were defined in
the 2014 European Cluster Panorama. It also reproduces a basic profile of the activities included in each
emerging industry, including a graphic representation of industry composition. For a more qualitative
discussion of the emerging industries and key trends that they are exposed to please see the 2014
document.
4.2.1 Advanced Packaging
Basic Facts Level in 2014 Change since Share of traded Share of

2012 clusters overall economy
Employment 4 854 023 2.01% 4.12% 1.93%
Establishments 38 913 -1.93% 3.67% 2.24%
Average Wage 35 839 2.38% 103.04% 111.64%
Gazelle Employment 62 302 N/A 3.26% 1.65%
Figure 8: Employment over time, 2008 - 2014
27
The core of the Advanced Packaging industry is the Paper and Packaging cluster, complemented with
packaging-related industries from Plastics, Automotive, Metalworking and other clusters that are often
significantly larger in overall employment. Packaging of goods occurs throughout industry value chains,
from early steps in manufacturing, any distribution actions (transport packaging) until the end product
having arrived at the final user (the consumer package).
Figure 9: Advanced Packaging Industry composition35
35 The size of the different boxes is proportional to industry employment
28
Table 12: Occupational profile of employment in Advanced Packaging
Occupation Employment Employment share

Craft, Trade, Operators, Assemblers 2 161 000 53.7%
Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers 769 100 19.1%
Stationary Plant and Machine Operators 663 900 16.5%
Assemblers 214 800 5.3%
Other 513 200 12.8%
Officials, Managers, Professionals, Technicians 1 157 600 28.8%
Science and Engineering Associate Professionals 353 800 8.8%
Other 803 800 20.0%
Service, Sales, Elementary 397 200 9.9%
Labourers in Mining, Construction, Manufacturing and Transport 270 200 6.7%
Other 127 000 3.2%
Clerks 355 300 8.8%
Numerical and Material Recording Clerks 224 800 5.6%
Other 130 500 3.2%
Figure 10: Leading regions in Advanced Packaging
29
Table 13: Europe’s top locations36 in Advanced Packaging
# Region Region Name Largest City Employment LQ Avg. Wage, Annual Gazelle Stars

PPP Growth Empl.
Share
1 HU22 Nyugat‐Dunantul Györ 45 369 4.69 22 134 19.6% 3.3% 3
2 TR42 Kocaeli İzmit 26 088 3.52 34 916 40.1% 1.4% 3
3 DE14 Tübingen Tübingen 39 513 2.43 53 297 ‐0.3% 0.4% 3
4 DE11 Stuttgart Stuttgart 102 150 2.38 62 906 ‐0.1% 0.3% 3
5 DE23 Oberpfalz Regensburg 24 502 2.27 58 934 0.8% 2.5% 3
6 DE27 Schwaben Augsburg 34 486 2.15 53 179 ‐11.6% 1.2% 3
7 RO42 Vest Timisoara 36 256 2.11 11 888 8.5% 3.2% 3
8 DE26 Unterfranken Würzburg 24 490 2.07 58 313 ‐1.8% 1.1% 3
9 DEA5 Arnsberg Dortmund 59 020 1.95 52 847 2.3% 2.1% 3
10 DE25 Mittelfranken Nürnberg 33 530 1.93 75 102 7.8% 0.8% 3
11 DE12 Karlsruhe Karlsruhe 53 226 1.93 81 453 4.7% 1.7% 3
12 DE13 Freiburg Freiburg 37 830 1.85 54 033 1.6% 0.3% 3
Table 14: Strategic profiles of top locations in Advanced Packaging
Region Region Name Largest City Top 3 Occupations

HU22 Nyugat‐Du‐ Györ 82 Assemblers
nantul 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers
81 Stationary Plant and Machine Operators
TR42 Kocaeli İzmit 75 Food Processing, Woodworking, Garment and Other Craft and Re‐
lated Trades Workers
DE14 Tübingen Tübingen 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers
31 Science and Engineering Associate Professionals
DE11 Stuttgart Stuttgart 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers
DE23 Oberpfalz Regensburg 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers
DE27 Schwaben Augsburg 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers
RO42 Vest Timisoara 82 Assemblers
93 Labourers in Mining, Construction, Manufacturing and Transport
72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers
DE26 Unterfranken Würzburg 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers
DEA5 Arnsberg Dortmund 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers
DE25 Mittelfranken Nürnberg 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers
93 Labourers in Mining, Construction, Manufacturing and Transport
36 We sort locations here and in all following sections by the number of stars, followed by LQ.
30
4.2.2 Biopharmaceuticals
Basic Facts Level in 2014 Change since 2012 Share of traded Share of overall
clusters economy
Employment 2 315 157 0.79% 1.97% 0.92%
Establishments 20 961 -1.96% 1.97% 1.21%
Average Wage 47 533 1.13% 136.66% 148.06%
The Biopharmaceutical emerging industry is an expansion of the cluster category with the same name
with industries added from upstream (chemical), downstream (wholesale and packaging), as well as the
core activities (research and development). The Biopharmaceuticals industry is producing medical drugs
by biotechnology methods (involving live organisms or bioprocessing). A basic distinction is made be-
tween biopharmaceuticals, manufactured by biotechnology methods and involving complex biological
molecules, and drugs, manufactured by chemical (non-biological) means and involving small molecules
and other chemical substances. 37 The two largest parts of the Biopharmaceuticals category are re-
search and development and manufacture of pharmaceuticals, which together constitute about one half
of the overall wages paid in the industry. This reflects on the strong scientific basis of the sector. The
other half consists of roughly equally upstream activities, such as chemical inputs needed for the man-
ufacturing of pharmaceuticals, and downstream activities like packaging and wholesale.
37 There is no consensus on the use of biopharmaceutical or related terms in the scientific community. Those con-
cerned with biopharmaceuticals are divided among a large number of scientific and industrial disciplines and
professional associations. None have taken a visible position concerning terminology.
31
Figure 12: Biopharmaceuticals Industry composition
Table 15: Occupational profile of employment in Biopharmaceuticals
Occupation Employment Employment

share
Officials, Managers, Professionals, Technicians 969 300 60.0%
Science and Engineering Professionals 204 100 12.6%
Business and Administration Associate Professionals 165 700 10.3%
Business and Administration Professionals 103 400 6.4%
Other 335 400 20.8%
Craft, Trade, Operators, Assemblers 291 500 18.1%
Other 133 300 8.3%
Labourers in Mining, Construction, Manufacturing and Transport 89 000 5.5%
Other 118 100 7.3%
Clerks 189 000 11.7%
Other 84 500 5.2%
32
Figure 13: Leading regions in Biopharmaceuticals
Table 16: Europe’s top locations in Biopharmaceuticals
# Region Region Name Largest City Employment Avg. Gazelle

Wage, Annual Empl.
LQ PPP Growth Share Stars
1 DEB3 Rheinhessen‐Pfalz Mainz 29 046 3.38 78 772 ‐1.5% 0.0% 3
2 BE24 Vlaams‐Brabant Leuven 9 771 2.84 97 897 ‐0.8% 0.7% 3
3 DK01 Hovedstaden Copenhagen 23 113 2.79 67 934 1.7% 0.3% 3
4 BE10 Brussels Brussels 15 062 2.63 86 890 1.7% 0.1% 3
5 DE71 Darmstadt Frankfurt am 43 449 2.51 79 307 ‐0.4% 0.3% 3
Main
6 BE21 Antwerpen Antwerpen 15 368 2.36 98 449 ‐1.3% 0.0% 3
7 UKI6 Outer London ‐ London 13 250 2.04 54 251 ‐5.3% 0.0% 3
South
8 IE02 Southern and Dublin 35 300 1.99 56 931 18.4% 0.4% 3
Eastern
9 UKI7 Outer London ‐ London 15 638 1.66 93 380 ‐21.4% 1.0% 3
West and North
West
33

Wage, Annual Empl.
11 UKJ1 Berks, Bucks and Oxford 22 299 1.66 69 881 ‐0.2% 0.0% 3
Oxon
12 SE22 Sydsverige Malmö 10 590 1.58 137 469 ‐7.3% 0.2% 3
13 SE11 Stockholm Stockholm 19 230 1.55 68 171 0.6% 0.4% 3
14 NO01 Oslo og Akershus Oslo 10 223 1.52 79 579 4.0% 0.0% 3
15 DED2 Dresden Dresden 10 007 1.48 27 935 26.6% 0.9% 3
16 CH06 Zentralschweiz Luzern 6 891 1.39 81 115 ‐16.4% 0.1% 3
17 DEA2 Köln Köln 23 003 1.33 74 636 ‐5.0% 2.0% 3
18 DEA3 Münster Münster 12 857 1.29 67 779 1.2% 0.3% 3
19 DE73 Kassel Kassel 6 592 1.24 64 437 11.7% 4.3% 3
20 SE12 Östra Mellans‐ Uppsala 9 404 1.24 63 646 5.3% 0.4% 3
verige
Table 17: Strategic profiles of top locations in Biopharmaceuticals
DEB3 Rheinhessen‐Pfalz Mainz 81 Stationary Plant and Machine Operators

21 Science and Engineering Professionals
DE71 Darmstadt Frankfurt 31 Science and Engineering Associate Professionals

am Main 43 Numerical and Material Recording Clerks
UKI6 Outer London ‐ South London 33 Business and Administration Associate Professionals

12 Administrative and Commercial Managers
26 Legal, Social and Cultural Professionals
IE02 Southern and Eastern Dublin 24 Business and Administration Professionals

33 Business and Administration Associate Professionals
75 Food Processing, Woodworking, Garment and Other
Craft and Related Trades Workers
UKI7 Outer London ‐ West London 33 Business and Administration Associate Professionals

and North West 12 Administrative and Commercial Managers
13 Production and Specialised Services Managers
DE13 Freiburg Freiburg 21 Science and Engineering Professionals

34
4.2.3 Blue Growth Industries
Basic Facts Level in Change Share of Share of overall

2014 since 2012 traded economy
clusters
Employment 12 953 282 2.03% 11.01% 5.15%
Establishments 75 235 -1.45% 7.09% 4.34%
Average Wage 32 320 1.63% 92.92% 100.68%
“Blue Growth” is here defined as the development and use of the potential of oceans, seas, and related
infrastructures as well as of any inland fresh-water sources and their exploitation. The “Blue Growth
Industries” therefore include all sectors and industries related to a maritime environment as well as
sectors producing, making use of, and treating fresh-water sources.
35
Figure 15: Blue Growth Industries Industry composition
Table 18: Occupational profile of employment in Blue Growth Industries
Occupation Employment Employment

share
Science and Engineering Professionals 1 011 600 10.6%
Other 1 463 000 15.3%
Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators 2 284 400 23.8%
Other 806 400 8.4%
Clerks 1 209 300 12.6%
Other 569 700 5.9%
36
Figure 16: Leading regions in Blue Growth Industries
Table 19: Europe’s top locations in Blue Growth Industries
# Re‐ Region Name Largest City Employ‐ LQ Avg. Annual Gazelle Stars

gion ment Wage, Growth Empl.
PPP Share
1 NO05 Vestlandet Bergen 112 801 4.41 59 470 8.5% 5.2% 4
2 UKM5 NE Scotland Aberdeen 45 646 3.57 60 220 20.0% 0.6% 3
3 NO04 Agder og Rogaland Kristiansand 66 248 2.91 51 170 ‐8.4% 3.3% 3
4 NO01 Oslo og Akershus Oslo 64 946 1.73 75 048 ‐0.1% 3.7% 3
5 NL33 Zuid‐Holland Rotterdam 95 617 1.34 49 930 ‐5.3% 0.4% 3
6 LV00 Latvija Riga 77 249 1.28 16 368 6.6% 4.5% 3
7 LT00 Lietuva Vilnius 99 918 1.24 22 378 1.5% 8.9% 3
37
Table 20: Strategic profiles of top locations in Blue Growth Industries
Re‐ Region Name Largest City Top 3 Occupations

gion
NO05 Vestlandet Bergen 31 Science and Engineering Associate Professionals
UKM5 NE Scotland Aberdeen 21 Science and Engineering Professionals
NO04 Agder og Rogaland Kristiansand 31 Science and Engineering Associate Professionals
NO01 Oslo og Akershus Oslo 21 Science and Engineering Professionals
NL33 Zuid‐Holland Rotterdam 21 Science and Engineering Professionals
83 Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators
LV00 Latvija Riga 75 Food Processing, Woodworking, Garment and Other
Craft and Related Trades Workers
42 Customer Services Clerks
LT00 Lietuva Vilnius 83 Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators
38
4.2.4 Creative Industries
Basic Facts Level in Change Share of Share of

2014 since 2012 traded overall
clusters economy
Employment 14 166 879 4.82% 12.04% 5.63%
Establishments 107 276 -0.45% 10.10% 6.18%
Average Wage 44 765 1.56% 128.70% 139.44%
The European Commission’s 2010 Green Paper defines creative industries as “industries which use
culture as an input and have a cultural dimension, although their outputs are mainly functional. They
include architecture and design, which integrate creative elements into wider processes, as well as sub-
sectors such as graphic design, fashion design or advertising.”38 For this report any further activities
driven by intellectual inputs and which are delivering intellectual outputs only (not being complemented
with delivery of any hardware or product), are also be considered as part of this industry. Such activities
include market research, opinion polling, translation, business and management consulting.
38 European Commission (2010) Green paper – Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries, Commu-
nication COM (2010) 183.
39
Figure 18: Creative Industries Industry composition
Table 21: Occupational profile of employment in Creative Industries

Information and Communications Technology Professionals 1 591 000 13.7%
Science and Engineering Professionals 1 424 100 12.3%
Business and Administration Professionals 1 361 600 11.7%
Administrative and Commercial Managers 685 800 5.9%
Legal, Social and Cultural Professionals 649 500 5.6%
Other 2 297 700 19.8%
Clerks 1 255 000 10.8%
Craft, Trade, Operators, Assemblers 885 400 7.6%
40
Figure 19: Leading regions in Creative Industries
Table 22: Europe’s top locations in Creative Industries
# Region Region Name Largest City Employment LQ Avg. Annual Gazelle Stars

Wage, Growth Empl.
PPP Share
2 DEC0 Saarland Saarbrücken 113 459 3.43 53 484 ‐0.7% 0.6% 3
3 NL31 Utrecht Utrecht 105 843 3.22 53 438 4.5% 1.4% 3
4 NL32 Noord‐Holland Amsterdam 207 979 3.12 59 597 2.5% 0.4% 3
5 UKI3 Inner London ‐ London 148 831 2.85 73 969 10.3% 1.9% 3
West
7 CZ01 Praha Praha 132 762 2.27 28 704 17.3% 3.1% 3
8 NL33 Zuid‐Holland Rotterdam 171 456 2.20 59 476 1.3% 2.2% 3
9 UKI4 Inner London ‐ East London 143 248 2.15 85 149 5.6% 0.5% 3
10 NL41 Noord‐Brabant Eindhoven 92 092 1.95 54 192 ‐1.1% 0.7% 3
41

Wage, Growth Empl.
PPP Share
11 CH04 Zürich Zürich 101 483 1.92 57 785 ‐0.5% 1.1% 3
12 UKI7 Outer London ‐ London 108 023 1.88 90 219 7.0% 0.4% 3
West and North
West
13 DE91 Braunschweig Braunschweig 78 656 1.88 51 244 67.3% 3.0% 3
14 IL05 Tel Aviv District Tel Aviv 63 592 1.79 42 421 21.2% 7.4% 3
15 DE71 Darmstadt Frankfurt am 185 020 1.75 55 440 7.3% 1.0% 3
Main
16 DE21 Oberbayern Munich 220 908 1.71 62 546 2.4% 3.1% 3
17 IE02 Southern and East‐ Dublin 185 852 1.71 40 058 21.5% 2.8% 3
ern
18 UKJ1 Berks, Bucks and Oxford 132 447 1.61 61 913 19.0% 0.1% 3
Oxon
19 DK01 Hovedstaden Copenhagen 79 423 1.57 56 508 ‐6.0% 2.2% 3
20 DEA2 Köln Köln 163 972 1.55 67 327 3.4% 0.7% 3
Table 23: Strategic profiles of top locations in Creative Industries

gion
NO01 Oslo og Akershus Oslo 25 Information and Communications Technology Pro‐
fessionals
24 Business and Administration Professionals
DEC0 Saarland Saarbrücken 31 Science and Engineering Associate Professionals

25 Information and Communications Technology Pro‐
fessionals
NL31 Utrecht Utrecht 24 Business and Administration Professionals

fessionals
NL32 Noord‐Holland Amsterdam 24 Business and Administration Professionals

fessionals
UKI3 Inner London ‐ West London 24 Business and Administration Professionals

43 Numerical and Material Recording Clerks
SE11 Stockholm Stockholm 24 Business and Administration Professionals

fessionals
42

gion
CZ01 Praha Praha 21 Science and Engineering Professionals
fessionals
NL33 Zuid‐Holland Rotterdam 24 Business and Administration Professionals

fessionals
41 General and Keyboard Clerks
UKI4 Inner London ‐ East London 13 Production and Specialised Services Managers

fessionals
NL41 Noord‐Brabant Eindhoven 24 Business and Administration Professionals

fessionals
11 Chief Executives, Senior Officials and Legislators
43
4.2.5 Digital Industries
Basic Facts Level in Change Share of Share of overall

2014 since 2012 traded economy
clusters
Employment 9 994 767 2.64% 8.49% 3.97%
Establishments 80 535 -2.23% 7.59% 4.64%
Average Wage 44 949 1.39% 129.23% 140.01%
Digital industries cover some of the core sectors in the information age. They combine services related
to information technologies with the hardware they use. As an increasingly cross-cutting generic tech-
nology, IT has become an element of most parts of economic activity. Digital Industries capture the
sectors that are at the heart of these trends.
44
Figure 21: Digital Industries Industry composition
Table 24: Occupational profile of employment in Digital Industries

Information and Communications Technology Professionals 1 434 900 17.8%
Information and Communications Technicians 467 800 5.8%
Other 1 148 200 14.2%
Other 1 207 700 15.0%
Clerks 793 000 9.8%
45
Figure 22: Leading regions in Digital Industries
Table 25: Europe’s top locations in Digital Industries
# Region Region Name Largest City Employment LQ Avg. Annual Ga‐ Stars

Wage, Growth zelle
PPP Empl.
Share
2 DE14 Tübingen Tübingen 70 901 2.12 56 532 3.1% 4.6% 4
4 IL03 Haifa District Haifa 44 155 2.67 24 280 9.2% 0.0% 3
5 DE11 Stuttgart Stuttgart 215 739 2.44 66 434 11.4% 0.7% 3
6 AT13 Wien Wien 68 743 1.91 48 125 26.4% 1.9% 3
8 UKJ1 Berks, Bucks and Oxford 102 599 1.77 70 758 ‐0.2% 0.1% 3
Oxon
9 CH04 Zürich Zürich 64 523 1.73 75 473 ‐12.7% 0.6% 3
10 CH02 Espace Mittelland Bern 59 442 1.72 79 363 ‐7.8% 0.6% 3
46
# Region Region Name Largest City Employment LQ Avg. Annual Ga‐ Stars

Wage, Growth zelle
PPP Empl.
Share
Main
13 DEA1 Düsseldorf Düsseldorf 133 607 1.42 58 197 1.4% 1.4% 3
14 DEA2 Köln Köln 101 449 1.36 57 550 2.8% 1.1% 3
15 FR10 Île de France Paris 341 822 1.31 60 221 8.3% 2.1% 3
16 UKJ3 Hants and Isle of Southampton 51 900 1.29 57 369 6.0% 0.1% 3
Wight
Table 26: Strategic profiles of top locations in Digital Industries
NO01 Oslo og Oslo 25 Information and Communications Technology Professionals

Akershus 24 Business and Administration Professionals
35 Information and Communications Technicians

SE11 Stockholm Stockholm 25 Information and Communications Technology Professionals


AT13 Wien Wien 25 Information and Communications Technology Professionals

DK01 Hovedstaden Copenhagen 25 Information and Communications Technology Professionals

UKJ1 Berks, Bucks and Oxford 25 Information and Communications Technology Professionals

Oxon 33 Business and Administration Associate Professionals
CH04 Zürich Zürich 25 Information and Communications Technology Professionals

CH02 Espace Mittel‐ Bern 25 Information and Communications Technology Professionals

land 73 Handicraft and Printing Workers
47
4.2.6 Environmental Industries

clusters economy
Employment 8 725 709 2.74% 7.41% 3.47%
Establishments 71 882 -1.33% 6.77% 4.14%
Average Wage 38 466 0.49% 110.59% 119.82%
Environmental Industries are the most crosscutting of the ten selected industries, containing parts of 20
of the 51 cluster categories overall. The area of the ‘green economy’ is defined as encompassing all
economic activities that lead to reducing environmental pressures of human activity. The latter is ex-
pected to result from the more efficient use of natural resources and from reducing harmful emissions
across the lifecycle. Green economy includes a range of products, services, technologies and processes
serving many different economic sectors.
48
Figure 24: Environmental Industries Industry composition
Table 27: Occupational profile of employment in Environmental Industries

Other 1 113 700 16.0%
Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators 396 200 5.7%
Other 719 600 10.3%
Clerks 767 100 11.0%
Other 326 400 4.7%
49
Figure 25: Leading regions in Environmental Industries
Table 28: Europe’s top locations in Environmental Industries

Wage, Annual Empl.
1 TR51 Ankara Ankara 87 628 2.14 29 291 66.2% 23.3% 3
2 DEB3 Rheinhessen‐Pfalz Mainz 59 964 1.85 57 684 ‐1.7% 0.3% 3
3 DE14 Tübingen Tübingen 51 550 1.76 53 768 ‐0.1% 0.6% 3
4 NO01 Oslo og Akershus Oslo 42 962 1.70 83 262 ‐5.4% 1.3% 3
7 DE11 Stuttgart Stuttgart 116 852 1.52 58 768 ‐0.3% 1.0% 3
8 DE25 Mittelfranken Nürnberg 46 137 1.48 55 143 ‐4.1% 1.2% 3
9 DE23 Oberpfalz Regensburg 28 207 1.45 55 853 3.7% 4.6% 3
10 DEA5 Arnsberg Dortmund 77 357 1.42 53 668 1.9% 1.5% 3
50
Table 29: Strategic profiles of top locations in Environmental Industries

gion
DEB3 Rheinhessen‐Pfalz Mainz 21 Science and Engineering Professionals

NO01 Oslo og Akershus Oslo 21 Science and Engineering Professionals


DE13 Freiburg Freiburg 21 Science and Engineering Professionals

DE11 Stuttgart Stuttgart 21 Science and Engineering Professionals

DE25 Mittelfranken Nürnberg 21 Science and Engineering Professionals

DE23 Oberpfalz Regensburg 31 Science and Engineering Associate Professionals


DEB3 Rheinhessen‐Pfalz Mainz 21 Science and Engineering Professionals

51
4.2.7 Experience Industries

clusters economy
Employment 15 248 961 6.57% 12.96% 6.06%
Establishments 113 445 -0.28% 10.69% 6.54%
Average Wage 35 323 0.54% 101.55% 110.03%
Experience Industries combine creation and consumption of cultural products and services. According
to earlier analysis of the European Cluster Observatory, “Experience Industries comprise companies
whose activities supply innovative products and services to provide customers with 'experiences' that
stimulate emotions and senses, move, entertain and surprise, thrill, enthuse and involve”. In its separate
2011 priority sector report, experience Industries are defined “as the combination of six sub-sectors:
Accommodation and tours, Food and drink, Gambling, Museums and parks, Sports and leisure, and
Arts”.
52
Figure 27: Experience Industries Industry composition
Table 30: Occupational profile of employment in Experience Industries

Legal, Social and Cultural Professionals 1 074 400 8.5%
Legal, Social, Cultural and Related Associate Professionals 996 500 7.9%
Information and Communications Technology Professionals 979 400 7.7%
Hospitality, Retail and Other Services Managers 787 800 6.2%
Other 1 798 800 14.2%
Service, Sales, Elementary 2 664 600 21.1%
Personal Services Workers 1 043 700 8.3%
Other 1 620 900 12.8%
Clerks 1 705 900 13.5%
Customer Services Clerks 846 700 6.7%
Other 859 100 6.8%
53
Figure 28: Leading regions in Experience Industries
Table 31: Europe’s top locations in Experience Industries

Wage, Growth Empl.
PPP Share
1 AT13 Wien Wien 75 419 1.37 54 670 24.5% 1.7% 4
2 ITI4 Lazio Rome 349 589 2.55 20 164 19.1% 8.8% 3
3 FR10 Île de France Paris 921 772 2.32 49 368 11.8% 0.9% 3
4 ES70 Canarias Tenerife 74 789 1.68 33 969 3.8% 4.0% 3
5 NL32 Noord‐Holland Amsterdam 110 761 1.55 52 220 6.5% 0.7% 3
7 FR82 Provence‐Alpes‐ Marseille 167 334 1.46 59 547 7.1% 0.6% 3
Côte d'Azur
8 FR61 Aquitaine Bordeaux 99 476 1.45 80 394 4.0% 0.5% 3
9 FR62 Midi‐Pyrénées Toulouse 90 307 1.43 59 895 6.7% 0.5% 3
11 DEB3 Rheinhessen‐Pfalz Mainz 76 271 1.35 27 373 66.4% 0.7% 3
54

Wage, Growth Empl.
PPP Share
13 FR71 Rhône‐Alpes Lyon 190 119 1.31 61 058 5.6% 1.3% 3
14 FR51 Pays de la Loire Nantes 105 217 1.30 62 073 7.9% 0.7% 3
15 FR81 Languedoc‐Roussil‐ Montpellier 68 319 1.29 73 095 8.0% 0.7% 3
lon
17 RO32 Bucuresti ‐ Ilfov Bucharest 113 751 1.26 21 796 7.8% 2.8% 3
ern
19 RS11 Belgrade Belgrade 71 979 1.24 18 013 2.4% 7.5% 3
Table 32: Strategic profiles of top locations in Experience Industries
AT13 Wien Wien 25 Information and Communications Technology Professionals

51 Personal Services Workers
ITI4 Lazio Rome 14 Hospitality, Retail and Other Services Managers

41 General and Keyboard Clerks
FR10 Île de France Paris 26 Legal, Social and Cultural Professionals

34 Legal, Social, Cultural and Related Associate Professionals
ES70 Canarias Tenerife 91 Cleaners and Helpers

NL32 Noord‐Holland Amsterdam 24 Business and Administration Professionals

25 Information and Communications Technology Professionals
52 Sales Workers
SE11 Stockholm Stockholm 24 Business and Administration Professionals

FR82 Provence‐ Marseille 34 Legal, Social, Cultural and Related Associate Professionals

Alpes‐Côte 33 Business and Administration Associate Professionals
d'Azur 42 Customer Services Clerks
FR61 Aquitaine Bordeaux 34 Legal, Social, Cultural and Related Associate Professionals

FR62 Midi‐Pyrénées Toulouse 34 Legal, Social, Cultural and Related Associate Professionals

55
4.2.8 Logistical Services

clusters economy
Employment 7 614 898 0.91% 6.47% 3.03%
Establishments 28 316 -1.67% 2.67% 1.63%
Average Wage 26 390 0.87% 75.87% 82.20%
Logistical Services is an industry based on Transportation and Logistics cluster with addition of several
supporting industries. Logistics is the management of the flow of goods or people and the actual process
of transport between a starting point and a specific destination land-, air-based or space-based. Fur-
thermore all auxiliary services making available the smooth operation of the transport and the provision
of carriers or vehicles can be considered as part of the “Logistical Services Industry”. On one hand, this
includes the logistics operation provision (terrestrial or via satellite), on the other hand, the development
and provision of IT-systems for the logistics planning, organisation, and management.
56
Figure 30: Logistical Services Industry composition
Table 33: Occupational profile of employment in Logistical Services

Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators 2 792 200 54.2%
Other 235 400 4.6%
Officials, Managers, Professionals, Technicians 980 100 19.0%
Other 699 200 13.6%
Clerks 664 800 12.9%
Other 240 000 4.7%
57
Figure 31: Leading regions in Logistical Services
Table 34: Europe’s top locations in Logistical Services

Wage, Growth Empl.
PPP Share
1 UKI7 Outer London ‐ W London 35 480 1.15 59 266 14.9% 0.2% 4
and NW
2 LV00 Latvija Riga 59 633 1.68 15 097 8.1% 2.7% 3
3 RO11 Nord‐Vest Cluj 46 220 1.40 6 767 7.6% 3.2% 3
4 LT00 Lietuva Vilnius 62 276 1.32 24 948 2.9% 11.3% 3
5 IE02 Southern and East‐ Dublin 73 853 1.26 42 945 ‐24.6% 0.5% 3
ern
6 UKH2 Beds and Herts Luton 39 368 1.24 50 919 ‐2.2% 0.2% 3
7 RO42 Vest Timisoara 31 819 1.18 9 395 6.1% 2.6% 3
58
Table 35: Strategic profiles of top locations in Logistical Services
Re‐
Region Name Largest City Top 3 Occupations
gion
UKI7 Outer London ‐ West London 83 Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators
and North West 93 Labourers in Mining, Construction, Manufacturing and
Transport
RO11 Nord‐Vest Cluj 83 Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators

LT00 Lietuva Vilnius 83 Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators

UKH2 Beds and Herts Luton 83 Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators

13 Production and Specialised Services Managers
RO42 Vest Timisoara 83 Drivers and Mobile Plant Operators

93 Labourers in Mining, Construction, Manufacturing and
Transport
59
4.2.9 Medical Devices

clusters economy
Employment 4 826 157 -0.07% 4.10% 1.92%
Establishments 43 863 -2.79% 4.13% 2.53%
Average Wage 43 527 1.95% 125.14% 135.58%
The Medical Devices emerging industry extends the cluster category of the same name to include pre-
cision instruments, machinery, and supporting services. The Medical Device industry is an industrial
sector, manufacturing products which are generally based on biomedical engineering, and which are
developed through mechanical, electrical and/or materials engineering, leading to products that perma-
nently or temporarily replace or support a function of the body.
60
Figure 33: Medical Devices Industry composition
Table 36: Occupational profile of employment in Medical Devices

Other 833 100 22.3%
Electrical and Electronic Trades Workers 202 200 5.4%
Other 365 600 9.8%
Clerks 393 700 10.5%
Other 164 300 4.4%
61
Figure 34: Leading regions in Medical Devices
Table 37: Europe’s top locations in Medical Devices

Wage, Growth Empl.
PPP Share
2 DE23 Oberpfalz Regensburg 29 728 2.77 61 294 ‐9.0% 5.2% 4
5 TR33 Manisa Manisa 28 653 5.62 6 626 104.4% 0.0% 3
6 NO03 Sør‐Østlandet Skien 28 909 3.36 64 440 ‐3.5% 0.2% 3
8 IL03 Haifa District Haifa 24 108 3.02 17 431 41.8% 0.0% 3
9 CH02 Espace Mittelland Bern 40 384 2.42 74 850 ‐15.4% 0.7% 3
11 DE21 Oberbayern Munich 89 424 2.04 72 933 ‐1.0% 0.1% 3
12 DED4 Chemnitz Chemnitz 22 581 1.76 31 753 0.1% 2.6% 3
62

Wage, Growth Empl.
PPP Share
Main
14 DEB3 Rheinhessen‐Pfalz Mainz 25 317 1.42 59 180 5.7% 0.6% 3
15 DE60 Hamburg Hamburg 27 463 1.40 73 702 ‐2.4% 0.5% 3
ern
Table 38: Strategic profiles of top locations in Medical Devices


74 Electrical and Electronic Trades Workers
DE12 Karlsruhe Karlsruhe 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers

DEA1 Düsseldorf Düsseldorf 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers

NO03 Sør‐Østlandet Skien 31 Science and Engineering Associate Professionals


CH02 Espace Mittelland Bern 73 Handicraft and Printing Workers

DE25 Mittelfranken Nürnberg 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers

63
4.2.10 Mobility Technologies

clusters economy
Employment 10 818 547 0.64% 9.19% 4.30%
Establishments 78 787 -2.86% 7.42% 4.54%
Average Wage 38 251 2.02% 109.97% 119.15%
Mobility Technologies stem from the Automotive cluster as a core and expands it with related technolo-
gies from the Production Technology and Aerospace cluster as well as few related upstream activities
like Metalworking and Plastics. Mobility technologies are developed with the purpose of moving people
and goods and hence for the manufacturing of transport vehicles, construction of transport infrastruc-
tures and the operation of transport services. Topics dealt with by technological innovation in the field
of mobility include road vehicle engineering, internal combustion engines, batteries and motors, electric
and hybrid power-trains, urban and high speed rail transportation, aircraft types and aerodynamics, ra-
dar, navigation, GPS, GIS, etc. (MIT, 2011).
64
Figure 36: Mobility Technologies Industry composition
Table 39: Occupational profile of employment in Mobility Technologies

Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers 2 078 800 23.7%
Other 898 300 10.2%
Other 1 129 600 12.9%
Clerks 762 800 8.7%
Other 298 600 3.4%
65
Figure 37: Leading regions in Mobility Technologies
Table 40: Europe’s top locations in Mobility Technologies
# Region Region Name Largest City Employ‐ LQ Avg. Annual Gazelle Stars

ment Wage, PPP Growth Empl. Share
3 DE23 Oberpfalz Regensburg 52 074 2.16 62 783 ‐1.4% 4.4% 4
4 HU22 Nyugat‐Dunantul Györ 69 517 3.22 19 614 16.9% 1.9% 3
7 DEA5 Arnsberg Dortmund 137 527 2.04 56 429 ‐1.5% 1.3% 3
9 DE26 Unterfranken Würzburg 50 994 1.94 54 077 ‐5.4% 0.6% 3
11 TR41 Bursa Bursa 52 074 1.75 22 549 28.3% 0.0% 3
13 NO04 Agder og Rogaland Kristiansand 31 493 1.65 74 933 6.2% 2.5% 3
66
Table 41: Strategic profiles of top locations in Mobility Technologies
Re‐
Region Name Largest City Top 3 Occupations
gion


74 Electrical and Electronic Trades Workers
HU22 Nyugat‐Dunantul Györ 82 Assemblers

DE13 Freiburg Freiburg 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers



DE12 Karlsruhe Karlsruhe 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers

DE26 Unterfranken Würzburg 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers

DEA1 Düsseldorf Düsseldorf 72 Metal, Machinery and Related Trades Workers

67
Methodological Appendix
The 2016 European Cluster Panorama is based on a brand-new dataset, derived from firm-level figures.
The data is sourced mostly from Bureau van Dijk’s Orbis Historical database, though it was compli-
mented by a few secondary sources.
The key firm- and plant-level variables of relevance for our analysis are: location, industry, legal form,
ownership and activity history, as well as periodic financial reports. Industry and legal form were availa-
ble nearly universally, while the region for each firm could be computed from the postal code or city
information. While detailed activity history has not always been available, the registration date was very
common and it was assumed that the firm was active from registration date up to its dissolution (or until
current time if no dissolution events were present).
Financial information contains data on turnover, material expenses, fixed assets, labour expenses, and
number of employees. The coverage varies country to country, though turnover and employees have
very high availability, while material expenses have the worst coverage. All of the numbers were deflated
with industry-specific output deflators (turnover), industry-specific input deflators (materials, constructed
from output deflators and input-output shares), and consumer prices (wages and assets). All of the
values have also been adjusted for inflation and converted to 2010 Euro. All of the data for these ad-
justments came from Eurostat.
We then used the Business Demography statistics from Eurostat to obtain the number of firms by legal
form and added synthetic firms where no full coverage was available (this was predominantly done for
sole traders in countries where we had no coverage of them). A statistical model was then used to
impute all of the missing values and convert firm financials to annualised values even where the ac-
counts were not perfectly aligned with calendar years. Finally, the resulting figures were calibrated
against the regional economic accounts statistics from Eurostat to ensure that the numbers are compat-
ible with official statistics and corrected for cross-country differences in definitions and coverage.
The data on gazelles was compiled from the same data source and relied on the ownership links be-
tween firms. This was crucial to differentiate between genuinely new firms and new subsidiaries of the
existing ones. A firm was considered as new if the firm itself, as well as its domestic ultimate owner are
both less than 5 years old. All sole traders and non-profits, all foreign-owned firms, all firms where the
ultimate owner is the government, as well as several specific firms identified by inspection were elimi-
nated from the results. This data was then merged with the dataset obtained in the previous step to
arrive at the final numbers. Note that none of the synthetic firms were counted among gazelles (it had
to be an actual record from the register), which has relatively small impact outside Turkey (since it was
the only country with substantial numbers of synthetic firms that were not sole traders).
Finally, the data on occupations were sources from Eurostat’s Labour Force Survey (LFS) data that
covered the intersection of 3-digit industries and 2-digit occupations per year and region. Due the nature
of LFS as a sample survey and the large number of industry-occupation pairs that were zero, some of
the missing values were imputed, though they should be inconsequential. The share in each occupation
from LFS was then combined with our main data on employment to arrive at the estimates of the number
of employees in each skill class.
68
For further information, please consult the European Cluster Observatory Website:
http://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/cluster/observatory/
This work has been carried out under a service contract for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal
Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. It is financed under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework
programme (CIP) which aims to encourage the competitiveness of European enterprises. The views expressed in this
document and the information included in it do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of the European Commis-
sion.
Internal Market,
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preneurship and
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European Cluster Observatory

European Cluster Panorama 2016

Christian Ketels and Sergiy Protsiv

Center for Strategy and Competitiveness

European Cluster Observatory in Brief

4.1.2 Hotspots of Emerging Industries .............................................................................................................. 24

4.2 Profiling the Ten Emerging Industries ..............................................................................27

4.2.2 Biopharmaceuticals .................................................................................................................................. 31

4.2.3 Blue Growth Industries ............................................................................................................................. 35

4.2.4 Creative Industries ................................................................................................................................... 39

4.2.5 Digital Industries ....................................................................................................................................... 44

4.2.6 Environmental Industries .......................................................................................................................... 48

4.2.7 Experience Industries ............................................................................................................................... 52

4.2.8 Logistical Services.................................................................................................................................... 56

4.2.9 Medical Devices ....................................................................................................................................... 60

4.2.10 Mobility Technologies ........................................................................................................................ 64

Methodological Appendix .................................................................................................................68

Key Facts at a Glance

Emerging industries: Overall trends and hotspots

2. Concepts and data sources explained

What are emerging industries?

Figure 1: Emerging Industries and Clusters

Metalw. Light. Med

What regional level is used?

Why are regions important?

What data are used?

How is cluster performance measured?

Figure 2: Measuring cluster performance

3. The Role of Clusters in Europe

3.1 Measuring clusters in the European economy

Figure 3: Employment and wage dynamics in Europe in the post-crisis period

18 For data on the US see the US Cluster Portal at www.clustermapping.us.

Table 1: Profile of 51 Traded Cluster categories

Cluster Plants Employment Avg Wage Manager Clerk Craft Service

3.2 Strong clusters and their performance

Table 2: Number of regions by total stars in strong regional clusters

1 Star 2 Stars 3 Stars 4 Stars

618 1 536 786 103

Table 3: Performance of Strong Clusters in 51 Traded Cluster categories

Cluster Strong Other locations

23 N/A = data not available.

Cluster Strong Other locations

Table 4: Regional overall cluster strength development (2008 to 2014)

Cluster strength Weak 2014 Medium 2014 Strong 2014

Weak 2008 92% 8% 1%

Medium 2008 13% 78% 9%

Strong 2008 2% 14% 85%

3.3 Regional cluster hotspots

Figure 4: European regional hotspots for sectoral clusters by number of stars

Table 5: Leading Regions by Cluster Stars

TR10 Istanbul Istanbul 101 3 31 12 0 58.14% Appliances

DE21 Ober‐ Munich 92 9 23 11 1 48.34% Aerospace Vehicles and

FR10 Île de Paris 92 10 32 6 0 63.75% Performing Arts

DE11 Stuttgart Stuttgart 83 10 20 7 3 56.29% Production Technology

ITC4 Lombar‐ Milan 80 17 19 7 1 63.65% Textile Manufacturing

DEA2 Köln Köln 80 7 26 7 0 44.26% Video Production and

DE71 Darm‐ Frankfurt 76 13 21 7 0 53.28% Biopharmaceuticals

DE60 Hamburg Hamburg 73 13 14 8 2 67.49% Water Transportation