Context: Cluster in the engineering sector located in the North East of Italy in which a diversified network of companies participates, including a company specialized in the treatment of material surfaces.
Problem
- Presence of a large number of entrepreneurs who want to increase, individually and collectively, their own innovative capability and their own competitiveness on the market through a project of a Business Network.
- Problems deriving from the assignment of management and development activities to the entrepreneurs of the individual companies which caused the Network to be condemned to a marginal position with respect to the business of each entrepreneur.
- Selection of management figures who thanks to a common Network program will cooperate in pre-set ways and fields pertinent to the management of the companies.
- Need to identify strategic partners territorially.
- Need for visibility and promotion on communication channels.
Suggested solutions
- Presence in the company of a Network Manager able to coordinate the entrepreneurs’ different opinions and channel them into a single project identifying the priority activities to carry out.
- A wide range of actions, in pre-set fields, of the Manager who is multi-functional and can carry out a wide variety of activities: from the operators’ training to the innovation of processes and products, to the improvement of the workplace to the protection of brands, to the promotion and management of commercial relationships without forgetting a good knowledge of economics and finance core concepts.
- Constant presence of the Network in the companies.
- Choice of a Manager having competences complementary to those of the ownership and of the single entrepreneurs for the management of possible contrasts and internal disagreements, in order to improve the synergy, the understanding of the Network and consequently its productivity.
- Development of a Network communication strategy.
- Appreciation of excellences of the companies belonging to the Network, the promotion of the territory, the competitiveness on the market, and motivation towards internationalization.
- Working groups between the entrepreneurs of the Cluster/Network motivated to intensify experience and knowledge sharing and to implement an evolution of the management culture in the Cluster/Network companies.
Timing
Still in progress
Results achieved
- Priorities on which to intervene were identified.
- Growth of the innovative capability and of the competitiveness on the market, both of the single company and as a group.
- Integration of competences and knowledge favouring the sharing of expertise.
- Activation of virtuous circles of a technical, industrial and commercial nature in order to widen development opportunities.
- Expansion of goods and services range offered in order to guarantee a positive and innovative response to any request by the customer.
- Management, at an international level of complex projects, from conception to realization through the integration of competences and as a competitive advantage putting in the very high specialization, flexibility and dynamism specific of small and medium-sized companies.
- Ability to direct the customer in order to support the entire production chain along a continued improvement path.