The following highlights are some of the most important advantages businesses may benefit from by participating and operating in a cluster:
• Access to specialised suppliers and services. This allows businesses to concentrate more on those value chain changes where they are more efficient and outsource other tasks.
• Access to training and a specialised job market. Clusters achieve a critical mass able to attract highly qualified human, and other, resources.
• Efficiency and productivity, in large part due to the effects above.
• Knowledge transfer. Clusters are networks between different agents in the regional system where information, know-how and knowledge are transferred from one to another.
Clusters are a SPECIFIC response to searching out generic conditions favouring business competitiveness. In this sense, clusters offer a series of advantages beyond other organisational forms.
• They are powerful communication channels to circulate sector needs not only to Government but also to other agents in the regional economic system.
• They identify member needs in the context of present uncertainty and provide practical tailored solutions.
• They are an optimal action unit for facing major projects (economies of scale).
• By integrating all components in the value chain and for users, they allow problems to be considered globally and systematically.
• They are access points to resources, processes, technologies and global markets.
• They provide businesses with the excellent International image the sector has acquired via the cluster.
• They provide businesses with a series of services and support acting directly on competitiveness (generally as knowledge intensity) that are not provided by other types of business organisation.