During the summer the Business Cluster Opportunity Group that represents the Digital Media industry in the West Midlands asked me to produce a kind of positioning paper whilst the discussions were ongoing about the formation of Local Economic Partnerships (LEP).

The group was formed in 2003 so the paper is kind of saying: ‘don’t dump that knowledge, it might be useful’. It’s probably not a group that too many people have a wider awareness of in the West Midlands but it actually did a lot of the strategic positioning work around placing ‘digital’ as a key focus in the region’s economic strategy.

The paper draws on a range of secondary research and from a short survey sent to representatives of the cluster. The finished paper was sent directly to those writing LEP proposals in the West Midlands region but we thought it worth a wider dissemination also.

You might also wish to take a look at the article I wrote on this cluster for the Creative Industries Journal.

An excerpt from the executive summary:

“In the current climate where business support policy is being reshaped and support mechanisms rethought, this paper strongly makes the case for those groups forming new partnerships to draw on the existing expertise of the West Midlands Digital Media Cluster Opportunity Group”

Digital Media Sector Cluster Paper 2010 Final

Paper in full (PDF).