Although TCI Network and its work on clusters and competitiveness revolves around collaboration, the 20th TCI Global Conference aims at emphasizing the importance of deepening collaboration among countries and between regions in these areas, in order to further improve competitiveness. While progress has been made, there is still ample room for catalyzing this type of collaboration. Moreover, this collaboration gains further relevance in the current complex geopolitical context in which countries and regions are increasingly looking inward and not beyond their borders.

In this context, institutional frameworks supporting cluster agendas appear to be the optimal scenario of collaboration, since they have increasingly been adopted in more and more places worldwide as a fundamental part of local development policies, opening the possibility of new meeting points between countries and between regions.

The 20th TCI Global Conference will allow interactions between cluster and competitiveness professionals of multiple countries and regions,looking to exchange experiences and build synergies, to lead to better:

1. Policies (Productive development policies – Modern industrial policy).
2. Implementation (Practice) of these agendas.
3. Business and joint activities between clusters from different regions and countries.

During the conference we will also:

• Evaluate the evolution experienced during the last 20 years in local competitiveness policies and cluster agendas and the results of their implementation, in order to carry out a prospective exercise to imagine what the coming 20 years might look like.
• Understand how competitiveness, innovation, and cluster development is implemented in different contexts around the world.
• Discuss the relevance for global development of local competitiveness agendas implemented in developing countries.
• Show the progress of Colombia and especially of Bogota in the implementation of its Productive Development Policy (Modern Industrial Policy) through cluster agendas, amid a promising scenario arising from the ending of a conflict that has affected the country for more than 50 years.

In order to achieve these goals, plenary sessions will be held with keynote addresses and conversation panels with experts in each subject that will be the perfect backdrop for the parallel sessions, in which each theme will be discussed in participatory workshops designed to allow all those attending the conference to share and contribute to the dialogue.