Høye Høyesen, Interim CEO, GCE NODE
There has perhaps never been a clearer example of how difficult it is to predict the future. The Covid-19 pandemic has – almost overnight – changed the way we interact with other people, how and where we work, and how and where we travel. No one saw it coming. No one had planned for it. No strategy established even a month prior to the pandemic’s outbreak, described how to operate in this extraordinary new global environment.
In the midst of the pandemic, the GCE NODE Board of Directors approved a new long-term strategy. It is the cluster’s strategy for the period 2020-2024, which by no coincidence coincides with the final stage of the Innovation Norway 10-year GCE-funding period.
The strategy provides direction and focus and is considered an important tool for the day-to-day work of the cluster administration and participating companies. It is however, more than ever, clear that a long-term strategy must be dynamic and subject to change whenever change is required.
The reservations posed in this introduction represent no devaluation of the content of the newly approved GCE NODE strategy. It is merely putting in context how a strategy should be regarded and utilized, in both calm and stormy waters. We are, of course, delighted to have a new GCE NODE strategy in place, and we are grateful to the many companies and their employees who have contributed and helped put in words what GCE NODE should be, and what the cluster and its administration should work for and aim to accomplish.
In writing the strategy, cluster participants have come together to discuss important issues for their individual enterprises, as well as the cluster as a whole. This has been of tremendous value for us at GCE NODE. So again, thank you all!
The new GCE NODE strategy consists of eight focus areas which are briefly described on the following pages. Please take some time to read and understand the path on which GCE NODE embarks.
And please keep in mind, as we do, that the strategy is subject to change whenever change is required.