Five Steps for Digital Collaboration in Industrial Clusters 2025

6The cluster starts exploring digital collaboration to address specific challenges (e.g., insufficient clean power capacity), enhance existing synergies (e.g., create a digital view of by-product exchange), or create new collaboration opportunities (e.g., explore the development of shared infrastructure and the impact on social and economic dimensions). Recommendations –Prioritize key impact areas and pilot pr ojects: Identifying priority areas for digital collaboration that align with cluster goals, along with targeted pilot projects addressing sharedchallenges, strengthens stakeholder engagement. To sustainthis engagement and build lasting momentum, it is essentialto establish a long-term, scalable vision – reinforced byshort-term wins – that demonstrates progress and drivescommitment. Innovation, both technological and non-technological, should be a major consideration in thisphase, ensuring that pilot projects explore novel solutionsto maximize impact. –Demonstrate tangible value and ensure transpar ency: Clear proof points are essential for securing stakeholderbuy-in, particularly in economically challenging contexts.Crafting system-value cases – beyond just business cases –and prioritizing projects that demonstrate tangible benefits, such as emissions reduction and operational efficiency, is important. Leveraging public data and preliminary analyses is useful to create compelling, transparent value cases that build trust, engage stakeholders and showcase the real-world impact of the initiatives through visualization tools. –Assess risks and develop a risk-managementstrategy: The implementation of a structured, proactive risk-management strategy is essential to fully unlock thebenefits of digital collaboration while protecting competitiveinterests, legal compliance and operational resilience.This involves regulatory compliance – adhering toGDPR, IP protection and antitrust regulations to mitigatelegal risks – security frameworks that define accessrights while protecting confidential business intelligence,and cybersecurity networks to enable real-time threatdetection and mitigation. –Accommodate the varying levels of readiness ordigital maturity across cluster members : Adopting a flexible, iterative approach that minimizes the need forcostly technology upgrades is essential for effectivelyonboarding stakeholders in the initial phase.Step 2: Scoping