Codruta Ioana JOLD
Stakeholder’s point of view: interview with Codruta Ioana JOLD, Agency Manager, Lufthansa City Center (Sibiu – Romania).
According to your opinion, a cluster need to be formally recognized? What kind of recognition does exist in your country? Do they have a juridical statute allowing them to sign contracts, etc?
Clusters should be recognized by administration, companies, stakeholders and last but not least by the civil society. The administration should come closer to the legislation process in order to make clusters more visible and attractive for membership issues.
According to your opinion, what are the main obstacles (inside the clusters or coming from the external environment) hindering clustering? What are the main success achieved?
The main obstacle is that they are not enough known as working system and stakeholders are not very familiar with this concept. For becoming successful, the participation and involvement mechanism is to be more flexible and easier to reach.
How strong is creative and cultural industry in your region? How would you define it? What development potentials can you see in them?
Our region is representative for the whole country in developing creative industries. Non-tangible industries are integrating part of economic performance of the region and are promoted over festivals, exhibition, fairs, social networking platforms. As a result, incoming tourism in the region is extending and developing well.
How strong is tourism, and what branches? What development potentials can you see in tourism?
Tourism, especially incoming is strong in most branches: eco-tourism, rural tourism, extreme sports, medical tourism, on the spot shopping tourism for organic food and handicraft articles in the hinterlands.
Is corporate social responsibility developed in the entrepreneurial world? How would you define it? Do you think clusters can promote CSR issues?
CSR has become more visible during the last years. Green industries, like tourism, connections to responsible consume and environment priorities bring more and more stakeholders together. Sharing brings in fact progress and prosperity in the area.
In your opinion, is it a good idea to help the development of cultural industry and tourism with clustering processes? Could you give advice on what could be done to this end?
Of course, all people involved have to gain if they are better known by the public and consumers. Nevertheless, the process needs time and investment in education and training in order to become really functional and sustainable.
According to you, could it be useful to organize trainings to reinforce capacities of clusters representatives in network management, increase direct links with the worlds of tourism/culture?
Yes, first of all to become familiar with the concept. Trainings are bringing awareness, information, how to use information and develop new skills and bring people together in sharing experiences.
What do you expect from the CMC project?
A good visibility and a real brand for Sibiu and stakeholders.