Identifying the general competencies of Iranian cluster development agents

Cluster development agent (CDA) is a person or a group who has a central leading role and critical function in all stages of cluster development process. CDA as an important agent of change, has full authority in executing the cluster development project, where he has a leading and facilitating role throughout the cluster developing path. Therefore, it could be claimed that the success of the cluster development project directly depends on the CDA's competencies. CDA's competencies could be divided into two different categories: general and process-based competencies. General competencies refer to a set of knowledge, skills and traits which a CDA is expected to possess at all stages of cluster development process in order to illustrate an appropriate performance. The current study aims to identify CDAs’ general competencies in Iranian industrial clusters. This exploratory study has been done implementing qualitative narrative interviews with a sample of 15 CDAs who were purposefully selected and participated in the study. The interviews had been continued till when the theoretical saturation has been granted. Findings of the current study highlighted the CDA's general competencies as following: Negotiation and bargaining skill, Administrative skills, Professional ethics observance, Effective social networking skill, Influencing and persuasion skills, Institutionalizing skill, feedback giving and acceptance skills, role modeling and benchmarking skills, the teaching-learning skills, problem-based decision-making, information and cluster advertising skills. These findings are discussed and their implementations are outlined in the paper.