15 years of CLIB – 15 years of transformation
CLIB celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. Our network has now been active for 15 years – something that hardly anyone expected at the beginning. This was also reflected in the name CLIB2021 chosen at that time. While in 2008 this still seemed to be a long way in the future, today this date is already 2 years in the past and CLIB has more members than ever before (currently 110). The number 2021 was of course not chosen at random, it was borrowed from the BMBF’s BioIndustry 2021 funding programme, which at the time was the trigger for the first cluster concept and the founding of the association.
Those involved and familiar with the process at that time will of course rightly object that the actual founding of the association already took place in 2007. Strictly speaking, we are already in our 16th year since the founding. However, the establishment of the office and the start of work in the initial project “Cluster Management of the Industrial Biotechnology Cluster CLIB 2021” began in 2008 – and with it the actual activity as a network.
The then CEO and cluster manager Manfred Kircher (then Degussa, now Evonik Industries) received the funding decision for this project in April 2008, the reward of about one and a half years of work that went into the applications in the two-stage BioIndustry 2021 competition and into the preparation of more than 30 project outlines that were to show the cluster’s announced project portfolio. It provided the basis for the 26 collaborative projects carried out in the following years, which included a funding volume of more than 20 million euros. These projects and actors then in turn formed the cluster core, from which further projects and activities emerged over the years. In the weeks leading up to our CLIB Networking Day on 23 October at Covestro in Leverkusen, we would like to look back with you on some of these activities and projects and review important events in the history of the cluster. Be excited!
Let’s look back together on a manifold 15-year development that is far from over. Like our members, CLIB has constantly evolved during this time and will continue to do so. In 2007, 37 organisations joined forces to form an association with the idea of “making an important contribution to the transformation of the chemical industry” through industrial biotechnology (BioIndustrie 2021 application). An ambition that has lost none of its relevance 15 years later, and is perhaps even more urgent today than ever before. Let us continue to work together towards this goal!
