*4.3. Knowledge-Capacity Building and E*ff*ectiveness of Actions*

Regional smart specialisation clusters have been built on the needs of business sectors, but confusion comes from a situation in which several companies are connected to several clusters and the construction of the clusters is too directly based on a sectoral starting point. As an alternative, a more functional starting point could be considered. Research and development actions are widely used and implemented actions in HEIs, but not in all companies, especially small companies [37,38]. In sparsely populated regions, unmanned micro-enterprises may be a challenge for regional effectiveness. In this regional case, for example, tourism is a strong actor, and the sector companies are often small companies that are not willing to open their business concepts to international markets. Their interest in forming a tourism cluster without separate functions is low:

*"* ... *there is a need for more functional clusters. And clusters where it is possible to"surf" based on your own needs* ... *for example if a company needs more information about internationalisation etc* ... *"*

—representative of entrepreneurs, female.

A functional starting point would clearly support business needs such as development, internationalisation and joint marketing channels. As has been outlined in earlier studies, the mainly public funded institutions like HEIs in Finland have an identified role to act between companies and international markets. Small- and medium-sized companies do not take the role of knowledge broker, as pointed out in the case example [4,46]. The role of HEIs as knowledge brokers is similar when discussing the sectoral and functional starting points of clusters, and this role is similar in cluster networks:

*"Around the universities, research institutes and development organisations, there are many companies so close or sharing the same activity that they do not think about how close they are to clusters work. If our starting point is to build functional clusters, we have to pay more attention on their interaction."*

—civil servant, male.

The quotation above reflects upon the needs of the interaction and emphasise the role of knowledge and the ability to fulfill the weaknesses of the innovation system with the knowledge-brokering function [47,48].

It seems that the operational benefits and incentives can be built in cooperation between the providers of project funding and the companies [3]. The companies' engagement in long-term cooperation will be a key issue with these companies, as in the short term, the evidence of effectiveness is seldom visible. For example, the project has produced around 30 new internationally funded projects, double what was in the project goals. Their effectiveness and coverage within companies has not yet been verified.

Businesses and publicly funded organisations may have expectations of clustering that is based on a different time span. The knowledge brokers in HEIs play a significant role in meeting the needs of industry, higher education, development organisations and stakeholders. The higher education knowledge broker role is a valuable resource for increasing the institutional autonomy, building the capacity and developing a knowledge-change strategy for the HEIs [49]. Knowledge capacity can vary, and, for entrepreneurs, indirect and tacit knowledge of investment or cluster activities means more than just general information, and makes the regional embeddedness of universities as knowledge brokers even more important to smart specialisation. [5,7].
