Marketing the Øresund region as a wordclass ICT-cluster

During the latest six months Øresund IT has presented our ICT cluster for a number of both national and international actors. When we now sum up we can verify that we allready is one of the largest clusters in the world, with one of the largest concentrations of ICT companies - about 10 000 in our region. With the number of employess that goes beyond 100 000 we are actually larger that the Stockholm Kista area. But whats even more interesting we are 10 times bigger than the cluster around Cambridge and 7 times bigger than the cluster around Nice (Sophia Antipolis). Telling this to people sure is impressing and has allready given results in terms of knowledge, capital and companies wanting to move to Øresund.

This has also encouraged us to actually try to gear up in our efforts to attract companies and knowledge from other regions. One way of doing this is to start a larger project around the Øresund ICT cluster, with the purpose to market the region as the leading European ICT cluster. Since this is a cooperation between relevant swedish and danish organizations and universities we will try to fund the project with Interreg funding.

Today Øresund IT and our parent organization Øresund Science Region has long experience of different types of EU funding. Searching funding from the Interreg funds is not trivial and needs some expert skills. These skills are within our own organization and during May we will form a final application for a larger marketing project over a three year period.

The project will include activities as:

• a market analyzis and positioning of the ICT-cluster

• a new graphical profile

• a regional strategy for the ICT-sector in an international perspective

• matchmaking activities

• personal sales activities towards selected top brand companies

• branding events in different European cities and on trade fairs

• establishment and further development of websites and newsletters

• marketing activities towards pinpointed target groups

• a yearly event for researchers within the ICT field

• establishing further relations with media

The application will be sent in during June and hopingly we will have a positive reply during summer, so the project can start in September.

This project would be a fantastic opportunity for the region to strenghten it self within the ICT field. As we allready have a critical mass of companies, researchers and students we are very confident that we have the ability to be even stronger, attracting both knowledge, capital and companies from all over the world.