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Lyon’s competitiveness clusters

In a highly competitive global economy, the ability to innovate is a key factor in competitiveness. Greater Lyon provides funding towards research carried out by companies and laboratories as part of its « competitiveness clusters » programme.

What is a competitiveness cluster?

The policy, launched in France in 2004, aims to encourage and support initiatives from the academic and economic actors present in a territory.

A competitiveness cluster brings together, in a given territory, businesses, training centers and research units engaged in a partnership to develop joint projects and innovative with a sufficient critical mass to acquire and develop international visibility.

Join the competitiveness clusters!

The benefits of competitiveness clusters

Competitiveness clusters enable:

industrial actors
- to obtain grants (funding)
- to keep in touch with the world of research
private investors to build international partnerships
academics
- to keep in touch with the world of industry and
- to build collaborative partnerships
Greater Lyon to support innovation in business

Greater Lyon and competitiveness clusters

Greater Lyon has supported competitiveness clusters since their creation in 2004, providing assistance both for activities and for projects.

Greater Lyon’s role

Management support, lobbying
Development engineering support: delivery, R&D projects, cross-functional projects, major projects
Mobilisation of SME’s/SMI’s
Introduction of a self-evaluation system
Changes to economic development policies: relationship with universities, entrepreneurship, prospecting, communication
Contribution to cluster funding:
- public authorities provide up to 30% of clusters’ funding (via corporation tax)*
- industrial actors provide the remaining 70%* of funding

* Vary according to the clusters and the projects

Greater Lyon grant allocation criteria

In order to be eligible for support from the Lyon urban community, a project must meet the following criteria:

accredited by the competitiveness cluster
supported by the government (FCE, OSEO ANVAR)
collaborative public/private research project involve
companies/laboratories located within the urban area
project related to the urban community’s areas of competence
SME’s/SMI’s and public laboratories
expected economic and employment benefits

Competitiveness clusters in Lyon

When it created France’s competitive clusters in 2005, the government was determined to galvanize the community of innovation players into collaborating as effectively as possible.

Today, Greater Lyon alone has 5 competitive clusters, 2 of them on a global scale.

After participating actively in establishing their candidatures, Greater Lyon also contributed several million euros to their projects, starting in 2006. Over the last three years, 300 million euros worth of projects have been approved by the 5 clusters.