Unlocking the Future: A Deep Dive into Digital Collaboration in Industrial Clusters

Industrial clusters, defined as geographical areas where co-located companies, public institutions, and organizations operate, are poised for a significant transformation. Imagine these clusters evolving into dynamic collaboration hubs, seamlessly connecting stakeholders within smart, integrated ecosystems. This vision, detailed in the “Five Steps for Digital Collaboration in Industrial Clusters” briefing paper, explores how digital technologies can revolutionize these areas, driving efficiency, sustainability, and economic growth.

As industries navigate increasing pressures from resource scarcity, energy security concerns, stricter emission regulations, and environmental impacts within a rapidly changing global economy, collaboration emerges as a crucial strategy for managing risks and overcoming challenges in a coordinated, systemic manner. Digital collaboration at the cluster level, where stakeholders leverage digital technologies to share information, enhance insights, and coordinate efforts, offers a powerful mechanism to improve competitiveness, build resilience, and strengthen security, all while delivering broader environmental and societal benefits.

The Compelling Case for Digital Collaboration

The shift from isolated digital adoption to collaborative approaches, such as data collaboration and digital integration, enables industrial clusters to harness the advantages of scale, diverse supply and demand profiles, and enhanced operational efficiencies. This collaborative paradigm allows for the achievement of outcomes that no single organization could accomplish independently. Despite this immense potential, many industrial clusters currently operate merely as co-located businesses, missing out on the opportunity to create greater system value through integrated collaboration.

Emissions in hard-to-abate sectors are frequently exacerbated by inefficiencies, waste, by-product management issues, and indirect emissions across complex value chains. The sources suggest that scaling digital solutions in these hard-to-abate industries could lead to a significant 20% reduction in emissions. While 87% of companies acknowledge that digital advancements will disrupt their industry, only half report being prepared for such changes.

The benefits of digital collaboration extend beyond emissions reduction and efficiency. A future where industrial clusters are digitally integrated means:

• Smarter Energy Management: Artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) can forecast and balance renewable energy production, optimizing usage and storage, which leads to reduced costs and emissions.
• Enhanced Resilience and Security: Manufacturers, suppliers, transport and logistic operators, alongside regulators, can collaborate through secure platforms, exchanging real-time data to ensure energy resilience and security.
• Boosted Competitiveness: Digital tools foster greater industrial competitiveness.
• Mitigated Environmental Risks: Real-time data exchange helps to reduce environmental risks.
• Stronger Local Value Chains: Digital collaboration enhances and strengthens local value chains.
• Job Creation and Economic Development: Digital technologies support the creation of jobs and foster local economic development.

Leading industrial clusters are already demonstrating how digital technologies can achieve these multifaceted benefits.

Strategic Areas and Enabling Technologies

The World Economic Forum paper highlights five strategic areas where digital technologies can unlock value through collaboration at the cluster level:

1. Resources Efficiency & Circularity: Optimizing the use of resources and promoting circular economy principles.
2. Commercial Optimization & Trading: Enhancing trading opportunities and commercial processes.
3. Environment & Risk Management: Improving environmental stewardship and mitigating risks.
4. Operations & Process Optimization: Streamlining operational workflows and processes.
5. Shared Infrastructure Development: Collaborating on the development and optimization of shared infrastructure.

To enable these strategic areas, a suite of key digital technologies is essential:

• Foundational Technologies:
  • Enterprise Data Platforms: For centralized data management.
  • Cybersecurity: To protect sensitive information and ensure secure exchanges.
  • Visualization & Collaboration Platforms: For presenting data and facilitating interaction.
  • Big Data & Analytics: For processing and interpreting large datasets.
  • Augmented & Virtual Reality: For immersive experiences and visualization.
  • Blockchain: For secure, transparent, and immutable record-keeping.
  • Advanced Connectivity & 5G: For high-speed, reliable data transmission.
  • Edge, Cloud & Quantum Computing: For distributed, scalable, and advanced processing.
• Decision Technologies:
  • AI & Machine Learning: For intelligent forecasting, optimization, and decision-making.
  • Digital Twin & Simulation Technologies: For creating virtual models to simulate scenarios and optimize operations.
• Sensing & Control Technologies:
  • Internet of Things (IoT): For connecting devices and collecting real-time data.
  • Digital Labels: For tracking inputs and outputs from production to recycling, ensuring transparency.
  • Advanced Robotics: For automation of physical tasks.
  • Drones & Imaging Automation: For monitoring, inspection, and data collection.

Navigating the Complexities of Digital Collaboration

Advancing digital collaboration within industrial clusters is a complex undertaking, with the initial stages often presenting the most significant challenges. Key hurdles include:

• Securing Buy-in: Gaining commitment from diverse stakeholders and aligning on a shared vision can be difficult.
• Data Exchange Concerns: Digital initiatives often require data exchange between companies that may be both partners and competitors, leading to concerns about cybersecurity, data privacy, and trust issues.
• Commercial and Legal Risks: Hesitation can arise due to commercial and legal risks, such as intellectual property (IP) protection, antitrust compliance, and liability concerns.
• Varying Digital Maturity: Different levels of digital maturity among cluster members can complicate system integration.

Successful clusters have overcome these challenges by focusing on key enablers and adopting a structured, phased approach.

The Digital Maturity Framework: A Five-Step Roadmap

In collaboration with Accenture, the World Economic Forum developed the Digital Maturity Framework as a structured guide for industrial clusters. This framework outlines 10 enablers and five key steps designed to enhance digital capabilities at the cluster level.

Organizational and Technology Enablers

The framework identifies critical enablers that support the digital transformation of clusters:

Organizational Enablers are crucial for aligning stakeholders, building trust, and coordinating actions:

• Stakeholder & Ecosystem Engagement: Actively involving all relevant parties.
• Strategic Alignment & Shared Vision: Establishing common goals early on to ensure participants work towards them.
• Collective Project Coordination: Effective management of collaborative projects.
• Governance for Data & Digital Collaboration: A well-defined framework that facilitates project execution and fosters accountability.
• Digital Skills Development & Change Management: Building necessary skills and managing the transition for the workforce.

Technology Enablers provide the foundational infrastructure for developing digital initiatives:

• Privacy & Security: Robust measures like encryption, access controls, and shared cybersecurity protocols to protect sensitive information and enable data collaboration.
• Data Visualization: Tools to present data clearly and effectively.
• Data Availability & Extraction: Ensuring data can be accessed and retrieved when needed.
• Data Standardization: Establishing common formats for data to enable seamless exchange.
• Interoperability & Connectivity: Facilitating the efficient exchange and integration of data across diverse systems and stakeholders.

While all these enablers are vital throughout the transformation journey, their prioritization and implementation will naturally evolve with shifting needs and priorities. A phased approach is essential for managing complexity, addressing challenges incrementally, and fostering sustained digital maturity. The Digital Maturity Framework outlines five such phases:

Step 1: Initiating

This foundational step involves building on a shared vision and clear governance structure to lay the groundwork for digital initiatives. It ensures a structured and informed approach to digitalization, preparing the cluster for subsequent phases.

Key Recommendations for the Initiating Phase:

• Prioritize System Value Outcomes: Focus on benefits that extend beyond mere cost savings, prioritizing outcomes that deliver value to multiple stakeholders to ensure sustainable progress and build trust.
• Understand Internal Data and Processes First: Before embarking on collaborative digital initiatives, key players should map and audit their data across internal systems and processes. This includes assessing the availability, accuracy, and interoperability of critical data sources like metering and operational data, establishing a solid foundation for digital integration.
• Learn from the Network: Engaging with a broader network and exchanging best practices with other industrial clusters can provide valuable insights into successful strategies. This learning helps demonstrate what is achievable, guiding the cluster toward effective digital transformation.
• Establish Data Collaboration and Digital Governance: A shared vision, clearly defined targets, and strong governance are essential for fostering collaboration among cluster stakeholders and ensuring the smooth integration of digital initiatives. The governance framework should ensure stakeholder alignment, define responsibilities, oversee risk management policies and compliance monitoring, and set principles for value distribution.

Case Study 1: Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA) TEDA serves as a prime example of large-scale collaboration, digitally connecting over 1,000 companies through a circular economy and waste-free platform. This initiative significantly reduces landfill waste, emissions, and regulatory costs while enhancing value chain risk resilience.

Digital technologies are fundamental to this vast collaboration, providing the basis for seamless data exchange, intelligent resource matching, and real-time traceability, enabling collaboration on a scale that drives both economic value and environmental impact. The success of TEDA, despite representing an advanced use case, began with establishing the right foundations: setting up governance for data collaboration and implementing robust digital solutions to address data privacy concerns related to sensitive waste and production information.

• Background and Objectives: The TEDA cluster developed a circular economy and waste-free digital platform to visualize and facilitate industrial symbiotic relationships among its members, aiming to increase resilience, reduce landfill waste, taxes, and related costs.
• Digital Technologies Used:
  • Visualization and Collaboration Platforms: Allow users to input standardized by-product exchange and emission data, simplifying carbon tracking and compliance.
  • Big Data and Analytics: Identify connections between waste by-products and resource demand, enabling intelligent matching between cluster companies.
  • Digital Labels: Ensure waste traceability with real-time tracking from generation to recycling.
• Results (within four years):
  • Connected 1,000+ enterprises.
  • Enabled 150+ industrial symbiosis relationships.
  • Reduced landfill waste by 0.98 million tons.
  • Cut CO2e emissions by 170,000 tons.

Step 2: Scoping

In this step, the cluster begins exploring digital collaboration to address specific challenges (e.g., insufficient clean power capacity), enhance existing synergies (e.g., creating a digital view of by-product exchange), or identify new collaboration opportunities (e.g., exploring the development of shared infrastructure and its impact on social and economic dimensions).

Key Recommendations for the Scoping Phase:

• Prioritize Key Impact Areas and Pilot Projects: Identify priority areas for digital collaboration that align with cluster goals, along with targeted pilot projects addressing shared challenges. To sustain stakeholder engagement and build lasting momentum, establish a long-term, scalable vision, reinforced by short-term wins that demonstrate progress and commitment. Innovation, both technological and non-technological, should be a major consideration to ensure pilot projects explore novel solutions for maximum impact.
• Demonstrate Tangible Value and Ensure Transparency: Clear proof points are essential for securing stakeholder buy-in, especially in challenging economic contexts. Crafting system-value cases—beyond just business cases—and prioritizing projects that demonstrate tangible benefits (like emissions reduction and operational efficiency) is crucial. Leveraging public data and preliminary analyses helps create compelling, transparent value cases that build trust, engage stakeholders, and showcase real-world impact through visualization tools.
• Assess Risks and Develop a Risk-Management Strategy: A structured, proactive risk-management strategy is essential to fully unlock the benefits of digital collaboration while protecting competitive interests, ensuring legal compliance, and maintaining operational resilience. This includes adhering to regulations like GDPR, IP protection, and antitrust laws to mitigate legal risks, establishing security frameworks that define access rights while protecting confidential business intelligence, and developing cybersecurity networks for real-time threat detection and mitigation.
• Accommodate Varying Levels of Readiness or Digital Maturity: Adopting a flexible, iterative approach that minimizes the need for costly technology upgrades is essential for effectively onboarding stakeholders in the initial phase, acknowledging that different members will have different levels of digital readiness.

Case Study 2: Zero Carbon Humber (ZCH) The ZCH project in the UK addressed data-sharing barriers in complex industrial projects by leveraging public data to map hydrogen demand and key infrastructure needs in the Humber region. Rather than requesting sensitive data upfront, the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), Microsoft, Avanade, and Accenture used digital visualization to illustrate the ecosystem. This approach helped stakeholders identify opportunities without sharing sensitive information. Validation workshops refined data and insights, enabling more accurate analysis and fostering a trust-based approach that streamlined decision-making.

• Background and Objectives: The ZCH Digital Twin models green and blue hydrogen and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)-enabled decarbonization scenarios to assess infrastructure and supply chain impacts in the Humber region. Leveraging open data from the Open Data Initiative (ODI), the project supports data-driven decision-making for the UK’s net-zero goals and provides visibility for supply chain and industrial development opportunities.
• Digital Technologies Used:
  • Digital Twins and Simulation Technologies: Used to model and optimize hydrogen infrastructure, carbon storage, and system-wide integration across the cluster.
  • Visualization and Collaboration Platforms: Help local communities and government stakeholders understand the project’s benefits.
• Benefits:
  • Improved Stakeholder Engagement: Provided precise data highlighting the economic, social, and supply chain benefits of hydrogen investments, facilitating informed discussions with government and regulators.
  • Supply Chain Assessment: Assessed over 300 manufacturing companies across 728 components required for the project, identifying seven manufacturing areas with significant investment opportunity through capacity scale-up.
  • Replicable Model: The digital testbed project was recognized by the ZCH consortium as a potential replicable model for decarbonizing other industrial clusters.

Step 3: Piloting

At this stage, clusters initiate pilot projects in selected areas, utilizing digital solutions to drive progress. Effective cluster governance plays a vital role in demonstrating value and fostering collaboration by ensuring transparency throughout the process. Success hinges on clear procedures for assessing project feasibility and impact, alongside building trust among participants through open collaboration and measurable results.

Key Recommendations for the Piloting Phase:

• Start Small and Then Scale: Effective collaboration often begins with a small group of stakeholders, allowing other members to join later once the project has demonstrated impact. Identifying an initiative champion to lead the pilots can accelerate progress and facilitate the transition to subsequent phases.
• Identify Capability Gaps and Map Stakeholders: Uncovering capability gaps and mapping key stakeholders is crucial for ensuring alignment and preparedness for successful collaboration. Preparing a roadmap and a plan to build or acquire required skillsets, including training and awareness programs for the workforce, is recommended.
• Secure Early Investment to Derisk Projects: Initial funding from an orchestrator (e.g., a public entity or port authority) can significantly de-risk projects, making them more attractive for broader participation in subsequent phases. Encouraging private or public parties to invest in initial pilots can build momentum and kick-start projects.
• Adopt an Iterative Approach for Refinement: Pilots serve as essential learning opportunities to validate initial assumptions, refine data collaboration processes, enhance project outcomes, and prove value. Designing pilots with scalability in mind is key for a seamless transition from trials to full-scale implementations.

Case Study 3: Port of Rotterdam’s Starlings Project Given the high costs of digitalization and inherent resistance to change, securing early buy-in is critical. Traditional business cases often focus narrowly on cost savings and efficiency, potentially overlooking broader benefits like carbon reduction, resilience, and local economic development. Demonstrating multidimensional value helps attract public-private support, unlock cross-industry partnerships, and drive systemic change.

To address grid congestion, high energy costs, and decarbonization targets, the Port of Rotterdam invested €2 million in a pilot solution to test and showcase tangible value from multi-utility optimization. This approach de-risked innovation, making it easier for companies to commit to the next phase and invest independently. Acting as an orchestrator, the port played a key role in facilitating collaboration and ensuring alignment across industries.

• Background and Objectives: Launched by the Port of Rotterdam Authority, the Starlings project involves six industrial plants and two grid operators to explore multi-utility (electricity, natural gas, and heat flows) optimization across company borders. The project aims to enhance resource flexibility, lower utility costs and emissions, and strengthen industrial resilience.
• Digital Technologies Used:
  • Digital Twins and Simulation Technologies: Model energy systems in real-time for visualization, analysis, and optimization within the cluster.
  • AI and Machine Learning: Forecast and optimize energy flow exchanges within the cluster.
  • Visualization and Collaboration Platforms: Include single participant and project-level dashboards to display user-specific information. A marketplace/auction system supports trading within the cluster and with the external energy market.
• Process and Potential Results:
  • Participants use shadow operations to simulate real-world scenarios during the pilot phase.
  • Monthly planning cycles evaluate the impact on efficiency, costs, and emissions.
  • Industrial companies retain control over their flexibility, using an auction system to allocate resources where they provide the most value.
  • A feasibility study by the Port of Rotterdam indicated the project could:
    • Achieve up to 5% energy cost savings.
    • Reduce 50 to 100 kilotons of CO2 emissions annually.
    • Provide 15MW of demand flexibility.

Step 4: Scaling

Scaling involves expanding pilot projects, adding new features, involving more stakeholders, and replicating successful initiatives. Success in this phase relies on continuous learning cycles to build a “cluster memory” that supports ongoing collaboration and business case development. Scaling can be a one-off effort or a systematic process where lessons from early stages make replication smoother and more efficient.

Key Recommendations for the Scaling Phase:

• Develop Customized and Inclusive Strategies: Scaling efforts must accommodate the diverse needs of participants joining at different stages. This includes integrating industry- or cluster-specific requirements—whether shaped by regulations, technological maturity, or data availability—into the design, ensuring flexibility without compromising project success.
• Strengthen Capacity Building and Incentives: As projects scale, sufficient capacity and appropriate incentives are needed to support deployment across a wide range of cluster members of varying sizes and sectors. This can be facilitated by the cluster convener or coordinated through the governance structure.
• Embed Learning Cycles and Standardization to Enable Replication: Embedding learning cycles and a replicability mindset makes scaling systematic and sustainable. Institutionalizing knowledge-sharing and learning frameworks can create a “cluster memory,” making future scaling efforts more efficient and impactful.

Case Study 4: The Ordos-Envision Net Zero Industrial Park Standardization is crucial for bridging innovation and large-scale impact. By institutionalizing knowledge-sharing and creating a “cluster memory,” future scaling efforts become more efficient and impactful. An example of this is the collaboration between Envision and the China National Institute of Standardization (CNIS) in developing the Construction Specification of Zero-Carbon Industrial Park, which is now an official local standard. Building on this cluster’s success, CNIS is working to establish national and international standards, ensuring global best practices can be replicated across industrial clusters.

• Background and Objectives: The Ordos-Envision Net Zero Industrial Park attracts industries such as EV and battery manufacturing, renewable energy, and hydrogen, with the goal of establishing a green industrial park powered 80% by green electricity. The cluster uses an AIoT-integrated digital “Ark” platform to optimize energy production, storage, and consumption, thereby cutting emissions and costs.
• Digital Technologies Used:
  • Internet of Things (IoT): Real-time data from IoT devices is integrated for energy-carbon accounting and analysis.
  • AI and Machine Learning: Optimize subsystem coupling, renewable redispatch, demand response, and electricity trading to cut emissions and support net-zero goals.
  • Visualization and Collaboration Platform: Aggregates data from electricity, water, and gas meters, enabling precise carbon accounting and full-process energy monitoring.
• Results (with 12 large-scale enterprises participating):
  • Reduced energy costs for tenants by 10%.
  • Cut CO2 by 100 million tons per year.
  • Increased GDP by 300 billion yuan per year.
  • Attracted industrial activity, creating tens of thousands of employment opportunities.

Step 5: North Star

In the final “North Star” step, digital collaboration becomes fully embedded within the cluster’s culture, transforming it into a self-sustaining ecosystem of innovation. Initiatives such as digital labs support broad collaboration, and clusters continuously scale digital capabilities, building on lessons learned and foundational enablers, driving long-term impact, economic growth, and sustainability.

Key Recommendations for the North Star Phase:

• Establish Institutionalized Innovation Hubs: Institutionalized innovation hubs and processes—like digital labs or the digital factory model—can accelerate cluster-wide digital transformation by fostering a safe space for testing ideas and experimenting with new projects.
• Invest in Workforce Transformation: Training programs are essential to bridge skills gaps and prepare the workforce for future roles, ensuring long-term ecosystem resilience. Institutionalizing training and awareness programs helps ensure workforce readiness for ongoing industrial transitions. Effective change management is crucial to drive adoption, align stakeholders, and foster a culture of continuous learning.
• Strengthen Ecosystem Synergies: Collaboration with diverse stakeholders, including startups, SMEs, and academia, drives innovation and builds robust local ecosystems. Strengthening partnerships across sectors sustains innovation and effectively addresses dual transformation challenges.

Case Study 5: Dkarbonation Cluster and ArcelorMittal (Dunkirk) ArcelorMittal has deployed a private 5G network at its Dunkirk site to enable real-time data transmission and digital tracking for its steel recycling project. This initiative enhances efficiency, safety, and sustainability across processes. Through this project, ArcelorMittal serves as an industrial example demonstrating how digitalization and 5G can improve production processes and develop circular economy approaches.

Recognizing the value of these innovations, ArcelorMittal established a digital lab, a space for sharing and developing innovative projects with other industries, startups, academia, and local authorities. This strengthens collaborations within the local and regional ecosystem and demonstrates ArcelorMittal’s involvement in the Dunkirk territory and city beyond individual company gains. By promoting collaboration, investing in workforce development, and strengthening local partnerships, the initiative addresses short-term transformation needs while building long-term resilience in the ecosystem.

• Background and Objectives: ArcelorMittal established a roadmap focused on industry transformation, fostering collaboration among industry players, universities, startups, and local governments. The initiative aims to stimulate innovation, accelerate industrial transformation, and build a sustainable local ecosystem through the creation of a Digital Lab (serving as a digital factory for strategy, collaboration, and innovation) and a Digital Academy.
• Digital Technologies Used:
  • Advanced Connectivity and 5G: Used to ensure seamless data integration across industrial systems.
  • Visualization and Collaboration Platforms: Leveraged for knowledge sharing and the development of decarbonization roadmaps.
• Results (since its launch in 2021):
  • The Digital Lab fosters over 120 projects annually.
  • Established partnerships with universities and engineering schools, enhancing knowledge exchange.
  • Created a “light industry campus” to share technology and foster talent synergies.
  • Launched the Digital Academy and created a training center “Défi4,” which participates in an industry-wide training program on digitization and decarbonization.

Conclusion

By collectively advancing their digital maturity, industrial clusters can unlock transformative value that individual stakeholders cannot achieve alone. This includes a multitude of benefits: strengthening energy resilience and security, boosting industrial competitiveness, mitigating environmental and operational risks, enhancing local value chains, and accelerating decarbonization. The numerous real-world examples provided in the briefing paper, such as TEDA, Zero Carbon Humber, the Port of Rotterdam’s Starlings Project, the Ordos-Envision Net Zero Industrial Park, and the Dkarbonation Cluster with ArcelorMittal, vividly demonstrate these advantages.

These case studies, along with the detailed enablers and the comprehensive Digital Maturity Framework outlined in the paper, offer both inspiration and actionable steps to strengthen digital collaboration within industrial clusters. By fostering the adoption and scaling of these digital strategies, clusters worldwide can unlock significant value, driving robust economic growth, creating new employment opportunities, and making substantial progress toward global decarbonization goals. This collaborative effort is part of the broader Transitioning Industrial Clusters initiative, launched by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Accenture and EPRI, which aims to improve collaboration among co-located companies and public institutions to drive economic growth, employment, and reduce CO2 emissions.

Aadil

CEO of onfra.io, brings a wealth of expertise in technology and entrepreneurship. With a passion for innovation, Aadil leads the team at onfra.io in revolutionizing visitor management solutions.