5 years ago, at the occasion of Semicon Europe in Dresden, we had a first gathering of a group of leading European semiconductor clusters. A new baby was born. Less than a year later, this cooperation was formalised in the European project “Silicon Europe”, aiming at creating a common vision and strategy to strengthen the European semiconductor industry, based on an inter-cluster cooperation model. Then last year, we decided that our baby had to learn to walk, and we started the implementation of the Silicon Europe vision and strategy and the related action plan. For the implementation phase, the original project partners were joined by others, and with 12 leading European semiconductor clusters, the Silicon Europe Alliance was founded. I was honoured to be elected as the first chairman of this Alliance.

Now, five years after our first European semiconductor cluster gathering in Dresden, and 1 year after launching the Silicon Europe Alliance, I am very proud that we have been able to realise an impressive list of achievements, together with our 12 Silicon Europe Alliance cluster partners. We have achieved several formal partnerships in European projects, but moreover, we have brought together some of our cluster members in innovation partnership with members of the other clusters. The Silicon Europe Alliance aims at really helping its cluster members in creating new European partnerships! During the past year, we have taught our Silicon Europe Alliance baby to walk! The baby has become an upgrowing child!

Achievements of the first year include :

•          Several cluster-to-cluster matchmaking activities (H2020 info day at Minalogic, B2B forum at DSP Valley and Minalogic, Silicon Saxony Days, where other cluster members participated)
•          New joint projects involving several Silicon Europe Alliance clusters (in H2020-NMBP, H2020-ICT) or joint activities : NMI-DSP Valley seminar, joint Silicon Saxony – BCS trade mission to Finland, …
•          New inter-cluster company cooperation (Feeligreen of SCS cluster with Unitron of DSP Valley cluster, MinDCet of DSP Valley with Dolphin of Minalogic, Sofics of DSP Valley with Creative Chips of Silicon Saxony).
•          Reach out about the Silicon Europe Alliance through several presentations at international conferences (ENF in Berlin, INC12 in Leuven, European Week for Regions and Cities…)

And now it is time to teach our child to run! With the Silicon Europe Alliance action plan, we have to accelerate to a higher speed! And therefore, I am very happy and proud to hand over the chairmanship of the Alliance to my good friend and colleague Mrs. Isabelle Guillaume, Managing Director of our French cluster partner Minalogic from the Grenoble region. I wish her a lot of success, and with our whole team, we will continue to support her in the accelerated strengthening of our European Semiconductor industry, by bringing our cluster members together with other European partners for your innovation projects.The Alliance is now at full speed and is also inviting other cluster partnerships for starting cross-sectoral cluster collaboration.