The South East Europe Transnational Programme project "Smarter Cluster Policies for South East Europe", (ClusterPoliSEE) is being implemented in the period from 2012 till 2014. The project's main objective is to enhance the capacity of regional policy makers to develop smart specialization strategies for cluster improvement. 25 project partners cover 11 different SEE programme countries to develop smarter cluster policies supporting territorial cohesion, research and development and open innovation systems in the SEE region. The work plan spans six cross-cluster development areas: Innovation, R&D driven cluster development; Sustainability through cluster development; International cluster cooperation and networking; Financial framework improvement; Cluster and regional specialization and New skills and jobs creation. The key milestones in this project are to: (a) set up a collaborative ICT platform as a learning mechanism systems for partnership and relevant stakeholders aimed at improving SEE cluster policies through cooperative learning, policy transfer and information exchange between them; (b) provide an in-depth assessment of the regional cluster policies in the partners countries; (c) identify factors, tools, experiences, and best practices related to the six thematic areas; and (d) strengthen support to transnational cooperation for designing new strategies for project results sustainability and as contribution to support the South East Europe region as the place of innovation. This article presents a Triple Helix concept, with particular reference to the roles of the constituents of this concept - university, industry and government - in the implementation of the innovation system. It also presents the possible avenues of their interaction, pointing out individual categories of intermediaries, which play a particularly significant role. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of clusters and cluster policies in the region was conducted based on the data gathered by means of SWOT analysis and a questionnaire on the ClusterPoliSEE project, in order to establish the impact of clusters on university-industry interaction. These initial theoretical and empirical analysis activities served as a foundation for identifying activities that need improvement so as to raise the importance of clusters in the further development of university-industry cooperation.
