Evaluating Clusters: Where Theory Collides with Practice

Cluster policies are widely used to strengthen regional competitiveness, yet difficult to evaluate. While academic approaches to cluster evaluation are often ignorant of the needs of policy-makers and practitioners, practitioner-led approaches often lack structure and rigour. As such, there remain significant gaps between theory and practice. The contribution of this paper is to reflect on a unique methodological approach that has regularly brought together academics, policy-makers and practitioners from around the world to collectively address the challenges of cluster evaluation. A participatory process of integrating theory and practice highlights the importance of triple helix engagement to co-design evaluation of what is a triple helix policy proposition.