7th Silicon Saxony Day - Accelerating Towards The Future?

At the fomer site of Qimonda in Dresden on the edge of the Dresdner Heide the 7th Silicon Saxony Day is currently taking place. The topic is the current state, and future outlook of the regional high-tech cluster Silicon Saxony, and the microelectronics economy in general in the region, and beyond.

The press talk at 11am GMT+2 stood under the topic "Will Clusters be the Technology Companies of the Future?" with representatives of four national cutting edge technology clusters at the podium. 

Rorbert Weichert, CEO of PR Piloten GmbH opened the press talk and led directly over to the panel directly.

Prof. Thomas Mikolajick, Cool Silicon Cluster  - Energy Efficiency Innovations from Silicon Saxony who gave a broad overview of the cluster's work since 2009. The named beneficials of it being the brand name, the larger network organisation, and most recently the initiative of Silicon Europe that is expected to accelerate from this autumn on.

Walter Birkhan - Airbusinesscluster Metropolregion Hamburg talked about the relevance of the cluster in an ever increasing air traffic (5% p.a. worldwide) and the challenges of having two Global Players (Airbus, Lufthansa) on board. He also mentioned that it took six years to build up the trust amongst its stakeholders, and the necessary networks. Efficient Airport 2030 (only in German) being one of the major projects currently under way.

Stephan Witt - BioEconomy Cluster a pretty new cluster focusing on the use of non-food biomass.

Dr. Peter Frey - SolarValley pointing out the future opportunities despite the present challenges in the global solar market as the cost of solar PV cells are decreasing exponentially (via "Abundance - The Future is Better Than You Think").  Currently the solar branche is in a situation where production exceeds demand by 100% which gives power to even more accelerating decrease of prices, and the rise of new producers in Asia. 

As Mr. Witt outlined it should be so that solar power should take the energy lead, and biomass re-use should more and more find its way in replacing fossil fuels in the chemical industry.

Finishing off it became clear to all in the room that the challenges of the decreasing funding schemes (especially for Eastern Germany) will drive new forms of cooperations, even though as Prof. Mikolajick pointed out it is the hope that funding will still flow, or at least reorganized in the future. The positive effects of the clusters will more become self-accelerating positive economic impact due to the closeness of its involved partners as Mr. Witt said. Which will be more than obvious for all that the region needs to become the breeding place of future global players.

Will this be the Abundance that is laid out in Peter Diamandis book? Or will iHub in Nairobi, Kenya, be one other role model of future citizen-based hotspots based on information technology, trust, and collaboration, as described in KPMG's High Growth Markets (from page 32 on)?

Copyright: own

Update 2012-07-13 Article in Sächsische Zeitung, 2009-05-23 which points to the back then and current need, connectors being able to span across between academic research to SME in the region as Hartmut Fiedler, Managing Director of VSW back in 2009, now Secretary of State for Economics, Work, and Traffic of Free State of Saxony, is pointing out.

Update: 2012-07-18 Cluster können Technologiekonzerne nicht ersetzen (Heiko Weckbrodt, DNN)