Engineering the Green Economy Project, Denmark
This project was undertaken for the Hub North Wind Energy Cluster located in the City of Aalborg in Northern Denmark. A university city, it is one of the smartest cities in Scandinavia. Despite having a population of only 200,000 people its companies have global reach across renewable energy, cleantech, intelligent engineering, IT, software, artificial intelligence, electronics industries and clusters.
Rodin Genoff & Associates mapped this cluster and in the process seeded some twenty new business collaborations, some of which were announced at Hub’s North’s Renewable Energy Summit. Key Note speakers included, Connie Haregarrd, European Climate Change Commissioner, along with Peter Renebeck, the Managing Director of Bladt Industries (the largest offshore heavy engineering company in Europe), and Rodin Genoff, outlining the results of the project.
The creation of the Danish Offshore Cluster was just one of the new collaborations delivered through the Engineering the Green Economy Project and the business networking and joint venture program facilitated by Rodin Genoff. The new joint venture integrates the capacities and capabilities of four smart SMEs, two engineering companies and two electronics companies. This initiative was supported through the Hub North Wind Energy Cluster and Northern Denmark’s regional Business Support Centre, Vaeksthaus. By forming the joint venture, the Danish Offshore Cluster was able to bid for much larger projects that were completely out of their reach as smaller individual companies.
Extract from the Introduction to Engineering the Green Economy.
Connected Companies
Resilient Communities
Introduction: Hub North Cluster Mapping Demonstration Project
Northern Denmark is forged of the steel and the ingenuity that transforms metals and ideas into knowledge intensive products and services. Whether heavy engineering solutions to deliver projects in the North Sea in some of the most extreme weather conditions on the planet, to developing integrated solutions that put entire production facilities to work not only locally but right across highly competitive and prized global markets.
But most importantly, over the generations local companies and their staff have together built a strong, resilient and proud community. A community that works together.
This project is about understanding how companies connect and collaborate with each other.
Yet it is so much more than that. It is also a barometer of trust that exists in the community – of how people work together, and in so doing shape their destiny and that of future generations.
So when companies collaborate together to win a contract, this is a win for the broader community, and an investment in future knowledge formation that builds the talent and enterprise required if a community is to remain resilient and, ultimately, prosper.
In fact this project builds on the common foundations of what it is to be Danish: resilient communities and vibrant regional economies anchored by companies that work together, as much as they compete.
The following analysis of the activities of some of the companies in Hub North’s wind energy cluster, is more than just a snapshot of their performance.
By understanding their connections, Hub North companies can both build more profitable companies, and ones that are more engaged in the market place. They can then deploy these insights and translate them into new revenue streams. In doing so, Hub North’s companies are also directly contributing to strengthening of North Denmark’s industrial fabric.
As the OECD has concluded: “Networks of innovation are the rule rather than the exception… To successfully innovate, companies are becoming more dependent on complementary knowledge and know-how in companies and institutions other than their own…”.
These networks are dynamic. They comprise companies of every shape and size from large international or national companies to small precision engineering workshops that define the very essence of perfection. They also include designers and systems integrators that put complex projects to work. Together companies such as these define and colour the very rich tapestry that goes to make up a region’s industrial fabric.
We are very happy to report that this project is creating some 20 new business collaborations, bringing together companies locally and globally into new joint ventures and even spinning off completely new companies. Some have been announced, while others will be announced over the coming months.
