Meeting of the Initiative Committee for the creation of Cluster Sofia city of knowledge
The first official meeting of the Initiative Committee for the creation of the Cluster Sofia Knowledge City was held. The general vision and goals of the cluster were discussed. The general criteria and requirements for partnership creation were considered and an agreement was reached on the base
of the documents the cluster should take as its roadmap - the Smart Specialisation Strategy of Sofia. Several members of the Initiative committee took part in the development of this strategy, which is a good basis for cluster acceptance as a result of the implementation of this strategy. The chairman of the IC announced that the idea and the concept of the Sofia Knowledge City project were accepted very well by the Mayor of Sofia and the decision of the municipality to join the cluster is pending. The Sofia Smart specialization strategy aims to increase the degree of smart specialization of the capital through the transformation of Sofia as a Smart City, which builds an environment of high quality of life for the citizens and good governance.
The cluster will support the corporate sector by stimulating the creation of better conditions for synergy and partnership in the innovation ecosystem and through the efficient use of ICT. The Sofia Smart specialization strategy contains areas of specialization of Sofia on a horizontal and vertical level. The horizontal policy is to strengthen the innovation ecosystem while vertical clustering focuses on the development of two of the thematic areas of intelligent specialization: Informatics and ICT and new technologies in creative and recreational industries.
As other clusters are operating in Sofia, the IC decided that the CSKC should be based on the Sofia Smart specialization strategy, thus linking horizontally and vertically the creation of a value-added chain of networking companies, in close co-operation between competitors for bigger access to general infrastructure, information and human resources. The IC agreed unanimously that once the Sofia Knowledge City initiative is implemented through the establishment of a cluster organization, one of the first tasks should be the institutional building of the cluster. There are international standards for developing clusters and good practices that need to be studied. In this connection, a decision was taken to start preparing for participation in the OPIC project tender due to be published.