Innovative Clusters in Times of Economic Crisis. Case Study Romania

The small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are deeply affected by the current economic crisis, especially due to decrease in demand and much harder access to financing sources. Most of the small and medium-sized companies (over 90% of them) face major difficulties due to decrease in orders and diminution of their financial resources. Other impacts of the financial crisis identified at work within the SMEs environment are the decline in exports, the lower investments and, not least, the psychological effect of the market hindrances. In order to alleviate and/or fight back the impacts of the crisis, programs and measures are envisaged, including certain solutions, both at governmental, as well at local and company level, destined to support the development and efficiency of the viable SMEs. The financing solutions for the SMEs may be oriented also to a modern type of industrial activities organization namely clusters and clusters networks. The concept of cluster has gained a lot of popularity in the past few years, policy-makers, practitioners and scientists having equally referred to it. A lot of policies have been initiated and implemented in Europe in the past few years with the purpose of stepping up the activity of the current clusters and of providing favorable conditions for the creation of new ones, especially innovative clusters. The paper intends to present the records registered in this field by Romania on regional level, and the challenges faced by the Romanian firms under the circumstances of the financial crisis and the lack of institutional framework and of clusters governance tools.