Worksheet1 What is a cluster?
What is a cluster? | 1.1
Collaboration in a general sense has long been a significant strand in the mental fabric of the voluntary community sector. However, as the environment becomes more threatening, it is increasingly being seen by some smaller organisations as possibly offering a more concrete way of managing some of their vulnerabilities.
Clustering is a concept that has been established for a considerable time in the commercial world. It was defined by Michael Porter of Harvard Business School as:
“a geographic concentration of interconnected companies and institutions within a particular field” which “allows each member to benefit as if it had greater scale or as if it had joined the others formally without requiring it to sacrifice its flexibility.”
However, it is relatively new to the voluntary community sector.