Organizational Dynamics (2012) 41, 327—335
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journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/orgdyn
Talent management in clusters
Denis Chabault, Annabelle Hulin, Richard Soparnot
INTRODUCTION
Since the mid 1990s there has been a marked increase in the
number of cluster policies in various different countries
throughout the world. In Europe, Spain was one of the first
countries to take up the practice, and it is often held up as an
example of success. Sweden, Denmark, Germany and France
followed, but also emerging countries such as India, Brazil
and China were quick to follow and develop very strong
clusters of their own.
The increase in cluster policies has been shown to have a
positive impact on employment, organizational perfor-
mance, regional economic growth and particularly competi-
tive advantage globally between country states. Clusters
play an important role in reinforcing links between business
entities and universities in order to produce incremental
innovation but also disruptive innovation — with global
impact. Companies in Silicon Valley, such as Intel, Google,
Apple and Facebook, have benefited from the ‘‘cluster
effect’’ and been able to develop synergies linked to high
performing ecosystems, which have enabled them to flourish
within their competitive environment.
In this article we focus specifically on the French type of
clusters, known as competitive clusters. Contrary to the
experience of some clusters — such as those in Silicon Valley
that developed naturally as a result of links between the
University of Stanford and certain local businesses (‘‘bottom-
up’’ approach) — French competitive clusters have come
about as a result of voluntary economic policy introduced
by the government (‘‘top-down’’ approach). The aim of the
competitive clusters is to lay the foundations of a new indus-
trial policy based on the economics of knowledge and talent.
This initiative was launched in 2005 by the French government;
as of 2012 there are now 71 competitive clusters in existence.
This policy, which is still very new, is beginning to produce
results. The government monitored progress carefully
throughout the period 2005—2008 to assess the merit and
success of the initiative, particularly since it had committed
itself to an investment of 1.5 million euros throughout this
0090-2616/$ — see front matter # 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2012.08.008
period. For their part, the clusters successfully demonstrated
the success of the initiative, in that more than 2500 collec-
tive innovation projects — covering a wide spectrum of
technologies and applications — were started during this
same period.
In order to boost this collaborative innovation, the French
government extended its investment to provide funding for a
further four-year period from 2008—2012, during which it
encouraged the clusters to become involved in inter-organi-
zational human resource management practices. In fact,
these inter-organizational innovative projects are based on
the knowledge, skills and competencies of the individual
organization members. Even though a substantial mass of
human capital is considered a necessary resource, one spe-
cific category of individuals — those with ‘‘talent’’ — con-
tribute even more significantly to the innovation process.
Innovative organizations driven by the economics of knowl-
edge and talent need individuals with original and varied CVs
(curriculum vitaes) to bring creative flair. In this context,
talent management becomes a matter of strategic and cri-
tical importance — something directly linked to market
position and performance.
The main aim of this article is to identify good talent
management practices currently operational within French
clusters so that they can be shared with other clusters
throughout the world. In fact, we believe the experience
of French clusters is useful to other clusters on several
different levels. First, more and more countries are introdu-
cing ‘‘top down’’ policies without prior knowledge of the best
way to manage such cluster organizations. Second, French
clusters have been encouraged to formalize their talent
management practices in order to help identify relevant
talent and learn how to better measure its potential benefit.
Finally, clusters worldwide have a vested interest in optimiz-
ing inter-organizational management of their individual
members in order to promote innovation. This is by no means
a ‘‘fait accompli,’’ because individual cluster members are
still in competition with each other and find it difficult to
collaborate on this issue.
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Therefore the aim of this article is twofold: first, it
seeks to promote the benefits of inter-organizational talent
management, and to demonstrate the difficulties and chal-
lenges involved; second, it seeks to identify the best
operational practices and what would best suit specific
clusters. In order to do this we need first to re-examine
the notion of talent. We will then discuss the challenges
and issues arising from the notion of talent in the context
of organizational clusters. Finally, we will move on to
examine certain talent management techniques currently
in operation amongst the French clusters in order to
extract the best practices.
TALENT AT THE HEART OF COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGE
Studying Talent
The development of the notion has come about as a result of
globalization and increased market competition, both of
which were features of the late ‘90s and coincided with
the increase in new technological advancement. Faced with
the uncertainty of how long they could maintain competitive
advantage and optimum organizational performance, com-
panies needed individuals who could ‘‘make a difference.’’
So, the notion of talent first appeared in 1997 in the manage-
rial sphere in a study carried out by the Mc Kinsey research
team, who coined the term ‘‘the war for talent.’’ Since this
study, the concept of talent has expanded and is now widely
used in the professional workplace. Since 2000, a profusion of
management articles and theses have been written on the
subject.
Not only has the issue of talent management taken the
world of management by storm, but the subject has had a
similar reception in the world of academia. There has been a
huge increase in output of articles on the theory of the
subject over the past few years. Nonetheless, the notion is
the subject of intense criticism. Some say it lacks clarity and
theoretical basis and has brought nothing but failure in
practice. One of the main criticisms is the difficulty in
differentiating talent management from management of
traditional competencies. Others believe that there is con-
fusion as to whether an individual might be talented, highly
promising or an expert. For others talent management boils
down to a highly individualistic concept of human resource
management, which goes against the more currently
accepted collective notion of management. According to
the latter, talent is defined as ‘‘genius,’’ and thus confined
to a small elite with the potential for discrimination within an
organization. According to this school of thought, talent is
just a particular notion of management that happens to
currently be in fashion. In order to understand the concept
more fully, we believe it is beneficial to go back over the
fundamentals involved.
Understanding Talent
The term talent can be defined by several particular char-
acteristics.
 Talent is individual
D. Chabault et al.
First and foremost, talent is individual and not collective.
Talent is ‘‘boasted’’ about, whether it is the talent of a well-
known comedian, architect, composer, or sports
personality. . . It is invested therefore within a particular
individual who is differentiated from other individuals as a
result. Talent is first and foremost about the distinction to be
made between those who have a particular talent and those
who do not. Talent boils down to the particular style of an
individual that allows him or her to succeed better and more
easily than others. It is that little bit extra which is often very
difficult to quantify — the demonstration of individual excel-
lence in a given sphere of activity. Talent contains the notion
of excellence, to which is added the notion of something
different; in combination, those traits provide a source of
competitive advantage for the organization that employs
such an individual. Gifted and talented individuals are
endowed with exceptional personal qualities and can play
a very controlling role in the decision-making processes for an
organization (in relation to concept creation, manufacturing
and increased prestige and status of a product).
In the case of IBM, for example, talent management is all
about four main issues. First, it’s about fully meeting client
expectations and providing satisfaction. Since IBM’s income
derives mainly from its service activities, the quality of its
product depends on the skill of its collaborators. Second,
another challenge is the fight against apathy within the
organization — a huge issue, given the size of the group
and the fast moving pace of technological change in the
sector. Next, there is the matter of identifying and shaping
future managers, which is a major issue given the group’s
development plans. Finally, perhaps the ultimate challenge
in terms of talent management for IBM is its attractiveness as
an employer — set against a backdrop of the war for talent
and stiff competition in the labor market.
The special characteristics or attributes a talented indi-
vidual may possess are, however, difficult to identify and
measure formally.
 Talent represents a whole group of resources
Talent is a specific personal resource configuration. Some
authors distinguish certain specific resources belonging to
talented individuals: cognitive resources (the ability to deal
with information, and to seek out, select and decide which
bits are of use), emotional resources (an ability to empathize
and get on with other people, an ability to handle difficult
situations and demonstrate good coping mechanisms, the
ability to be one’s own person. . .), and instinctive resources
(the ability to deal with emergency situations, and to ener-
gize others. . .). It is all these factors combined that make up
the character of an exceptional individual.
According to the director of human resources at Vinci — a
global group specializing in public facility concession and
construction, with 2000 operational business units spread
across a hundred or so countries, employing some 183,000
staff — talent is all about ‘‘men and women who are com-
mitted to action and making a difference. These people are
creative and design staff who bring their imagination, their
curiosity and their passion to the job; inventors who bring
their foresight, client responsiveness and rigorous standards
to the task at hand — they are all entrepreneurs who
Talent management
demonstrate their conviction and drive in the results they
achieve on behalf of their clients’’.
 Talent exists at every level within an organization
Talent can exist at different levels of an organization, but
this is not something the majority of individuals within an
organization are necessarily aware of, nor is it applicable to
all organizations. It follows therefore that although some
academic research has concentrated on those ‘‘at the top of
the pile,’’ and/or those in ‘‘top management positions,’’ the
talent is actually not necessarily invested in directors or the
leaders of the organization. In this context, the notion of
talent has to be distinguished from similar concepts, such as
individuals who are highly skilled or high performers or who
demonstrate great potential. In effect, if an individual’s
potential is the combination of individual dispositions that
he or she has not yet exploited, talent is more a question of
the dispositions an individual has already explicitly demon-
strated. So, talent would correspond more to the term
‘‘highly promising individual,’’ as this term indicates corre-
lation with the performance of an organization. A talented
individual also has to be differentiated from an expert, who is
expected to possess a particularly high degree of ability in his
or her particular area of competence. If an expert is consid-
ered to be a professional who has achieved a high degree of
competence in his field of specialty, this does not necessarily
equate to the excellence or the sense of being different that
is the hallmark of a talented individual.
For instance, for the majority of businesses that have set
up specific programs for talent management, this is still
limited to a certain category of personnel — namely manage-
ment. At Pernod Ricard, one of the world’s leading players in
the wine and spirits industry, individuals considered to be
talented make up 25 percent of the overall workforce. The
category of talented individuals is often divided into sub
categories. The Pernod Ricard group in fact has isolated
three distinct types of talented individuals divided into the
following sub-groups — individuals whom they consider to
have ‘‘Emergent talent,’’ ‘‘Talent’’ or ‘‘Key talent.’’ Each
category corresponds to a particular level of professional
achievement demonstrated conclusively by results in prac-
tice. There are also two other categories at a lower level,
e.g. individuals who are considered to be ‘‘Good performers’’
or ‘‘Under performers’’.
Having now defined the term talent, it is important to
come back to the theme of management of talent.
Managing Talent
 Outside and inside talent management
First we should touch briefly on the nature-nurture debate
— that is, whether talent is innate or acquired. Some authors
believe that the personal resources of an individual said to be
talented are innate, in other words a gift of nature, family or
personal history. . . On the other hand, less determinist
authors highlight the fact that talent is a collection of
different competencies that a person accumulates through
a string of experiences. This suggests that talent can be
acquired, or at the every least developed and managed.
329
We subscribe to this latter, more strategically oriented school
of thought, and we believe that talent is a resource that is
managed. In line with this thinking, organizations can there-
fore make global provision for talent management (Fig. 1).
Two factors are involved here. First, organizations need to
attract and recruit talented individuals on the employment
market. So what they need to do at this point is to increase
strategic capacity through the use of various specific human
resource practices (attraction and recruitment). This phase
presupposes that a particular talent has already been recog-
nized and identified. As an example, the Allianz group —
leaders in the field of insurance and provision of financial
services, aims to recruit 25 talented individuals per year,
including those recruited onto its graduate training program.
In order to do this, the group has introduced a two-tiered
selection process. First, they pre-select candidates from a
list of highly regarded universities. Second, they put these
candidates through quasi-real professional situations.
Although this is not a completely new concept, it is carried
out in an interesting way at Allianz. The recruiters receive no
advance information about the candidates and evaluate
them strictly on the basis of objective criteria. They are
judged therefore entirely on the results of their perfor-
mance. In this way the consequences of network effect
and corporatism are minimized or neutralized.
Second, organizations are keen to identify employees with
specific talent that could be developed in the context of their
particular organization. This second phase needs the imple-
mentation of various practices to nurture and develop the
talent. What are required here are performance levers and
resources to enable it to flourish. The hypothesis being put
forward here is that it is the interaction between an indivi-
dual’s potential and the professional environment in which he
or she works that will assist the individual to evolve, and his
or her talent to emerge and develop. The environment in
which an individual develops professionally is, in this sense,
particularly important. The issue of longevity of service
appears to be crucial here, because it is throughout an
individual’s career trajectory, through successive experi-
ences, that talent is developed. To cite the same example,
Figure 1 Talent Management Process.
330
at Allianz, candidates recruited onto the graduate training
course follow a very specific program. They work in three
different departments over a 12-month period. The aim is for
them to learn about the different sectors of the group, to find
out what services are carried out in each and to start making
an internal network of workplace contacts. As part of the
program they take part in specific technical and manage-
ment-training sessions, meet managers and attend seminars
and conferences.
 Management talent practices
These two dimensions are associated with a few particular
HR (human resource) practices regularly discussed in a vari-
ety of management journals that propose tools and methods
for talent management. These practices are essentially
‘‘classic’’ human resource type practices documented in
previous academic literature but reformulated or reworked.
So, given that talent is a specific resource, it is necessary to
deploy certain specific HR practices in order to develop it
(Table 1).
 Key factors of successful talent management
Throughout the above, successful talent management
needs to be based on an understanding of three categories
of factors (internal, external and interconnecting).
First, completely organizational approaches to the issue
of talent management highlight the importance of workplace
structure and atmosphere. Collaborative creation of talent in
this manner very much depends on the mobilization of the
distinctive personal resources of an individual and his or her
ability to make a difference. In this context, professional
development and training is particularly important, because
it encourages self-reflection, and it allows targets and
Table 1 Examples of HR Talent Management Practices.
Phases Examples of Associated RH Practices
Attraction Develop an attractive and legitimate
reputation as a good employer
Recruitment Remunerate talent
Offer good career development
which is challenging, rewarding
and fulfilling
Identification Instill a culture of success
Reward exceptional competencies
360-Degree feedback
Development Offer individual professional career
development
Invest in quality work conditions
and ensure daily recognition and reward
Take an interest in individual employees
Coaching, mentoring
Set targets for results and responsibilities
Continuous monitoring and evaluation
Retention/ Have an understanding of
fostering loyalty motivational factors
D. Chabault et al.
objectives for any individual to be increased progressively.
By way of illustration, IBM aims to offer its employees a
workplace in which the potential of each and every individual
is able to flourish and find expression. In contrast to many
companies operating talent management programs, IBM
believes all its employees to be talented individuals.
The company offers each one the opportunity to ‘‘meet
challenges on a daily basis and step up to responsibility from
day one’’.
Second, organizations should be in a position to offer a
workplace environment that is able to encourage individual
performance (best working tools made available along with
expert colleagues in the field). What is required here is the
creation of a stimulating and dynamic environment for the
employee on an intellectual and emotional level, as well as
exciting challenges and opportunities. For example, in order
to encourage innovation, maintain a pioneering spirit and
enable the talent of its workforce to find full expression and
fulfillment, Google has introduced the Twenty Percent time
strategy. Every employee is allowed one day per week in
order to explore any project that interests him or her and to
work on something completely separate from the more usual
functions of the search engine. According to David Vise, who
wrote The Google Story, this is ‘‘a way of encouraging
employee interest in new technology, which has enabled
Google not only to come up with a variety of new innovative
products such as Google News, but also to give entrepre-
neurial spirit free reign in the company on a daily basis.’’
Eventually, talent develops as a result of interaction. In
this context, mobility allows talent to develop by increasing
an individual’s exposure to an increasing range of challenges,
which in turn allow the individual to express himself and so
develop professionally. Talent develops through experience
and exposure to different workplace scenarios as well as
competitive situations. What is required here is an increase in
the number of experimental situations an employee is
exposed to. It is largely through such experiences that an
individual’s resources develop and his or her talent evolves.
For instance, STMicroelectronics — a world leader in the
business of semi-conductors, has created an inter-business
mobility cluster that enables them to maximize use of their
best employees in different professional and cultural con-
texts. The whole company gains from exposure to this wide
variety of experiences.
These first developments illustrate that talent is an asset
specifically incorporated within an individual. Management
of this talent depends on a certain number of specific per-
formance levers. In the next section we examine the char-
acteristic components of talent and the challenges that arise
in its management within the context of organizational
clusters.
TALENT IN THE CONTEXT OF CLUSTERS
Clusters Foster Talent Management
The issue of talent management within the specific context of
clusters has been explored very little to date. However,
innovative clusters constitute contexts in which talent is
both given expression and developed. In fact, several
studies have demonstrated that industries characterized
Talent management
by permanent innovation, principally as a result of the scale
of technological advancement, are fertile territory when it
comes to the development of talent. Those studies illus-
trate that talented individuals positively seek out environ-
ments such as clusters that favor individual personal and
professional development. In effect, being by definition
open-minded organizations, clusters, in theory, offer the
possibility for individuals to expand their career prospects,
to acquire greater practical experience, and be able to
update their competencies. In this context, staff turnover
figures are a reflection of a dynamic and exciting business
environment, and an indication of opportunities for perso-
nal development rather than an indication of poor job
satisfaction. Talented individuals can thus become involved
in situations that constantly challenge them, enable them
to express and demonstrate their talent, and to develop
personally and take charge of their own professional devel-
opment and career trajectories. Talented individuals within
clusters will go wherever they are most likely to learn new
skills and develop their competencies. They seek out orga-
nizations that will speed up their professional learning
curve.
As an example, in order to meet the career expectations
of its talented individuals, IBM makes certain guarantees to
those it considers ‘‘Top talented individuals’’ (about 10
percent of personnel). These relate to career progression
and new experiences on offer to them within the group. For
these ‘‘Top talents,’’ the company maps out their next two
roles. These career moves are carefully monitored to provide
variety in terms of length of secondment, geographical
location and exposure to inter-divisional experience.
In other words, if one accepts that talent is a collection of
different competencies accumulated by a particular indivi-
dual over years of experience, the more talented individuals
are allowed to circulate within a cluster, the more interaction
will take place and the faster their talent is likely to develop.
Individuals within a cluster, can in fact, be persuaded to
change employers, to join collective R&D (research and
development) projects, to participate in inter-organizational
activities — all of which increase the opportunities for inter-
action. As a result, individually, the fact of belonging to a
cluster is likely to improve employment prospects for
talented individuals.
Moreover, because they move around between cluster
members — accumulating experience as they go, from an
inter-organizational point of view, talented individuals con-
tribute to the performance of the whole cluster. In fact,
companies that belong to a cluster benefit from the effects of
‘‘pollination’’ as a result of the mobility of its members.
Employee mobility helps mutual enrichment and exchange
between companies and assists in the innovation process
generally. In clusters, circulation of ideas and personnel
energizes the innovative process like an insect moving from
flower to flower. For example, Energie Relais is a French SME
specializing in renewable energy. It belongs to a specialist
cluster known as the Science and Systems of Electric Energy
Cluster. It has set up an exchange scheme between itself and
overseas institutions whereby foreign engineering students
come and spend time in France with similar reciprocal
arrangements in place for their own in-house engineers.
The aim is twofold. On the one hand it is to motivate, reward
and encourage loyalty amongst its most promising engineers,
331
and on the other it is to expose staff to new experiences
whether they are technical, cultural or sector-based.
The Paradox of Talent Management in Clusters
Nonetheless, the specific characteristics that highlight
talented individuals within clusters also pose a conundrum,
namely that clusters, which by definition are grouped
together around a specific subject, also have to deal with
the fact that talent within its borders needs to be fueled by
exposure to other organizational contexts. Thus it would
appear necessary to push these individuals into different
business environments in order to ‘‘cultivate’’ and ‘‘enrich’’
this same talent. This conflict between the need to hold on to
talent and at the same time require it to circulate — also
potentially throwing up issues of confidentiality — illus-
trates the difficulty faced by clusters in this regard and
requires nothing short of a sea change in human resource
management. What is required here is the need to find an
acceptable compromise between preservation of talent
within the area and the necessary mobility of talented
individuals outside their own organizational clusters.
What’s more, letting talented employees go also increases
exposure to confidentiality issues. This question becomes
crucial from the moment when talent can be seen to result
in market advantage and thus constitute a strategic chal-
lenge for companies.
As a result, we believe it is important to identify the
manner in which clusters respond to the challenge of this
inherent conflict and to provide examples of this in practice.
TALENT MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN FRENCH
CLUSTERS
French cluster organization members evolve in a highly
competitive environment and are permanently on the look-
out for innovation and an ability to differentiate their pro-
duct on the market. The question of talent management
would seem to be of particular strategic importance for these
organizations. Numerous French competitive clusters have
adopted practices based explicitly on talent management
theory. In order to discuss these practices, we use the five
phases of the talent management process as described
above: namely, attraction, recruitment, identification,
retention and development of talent.
Practices Aimed at Attracting Talented
Individuals
Demographic changes in France have alerted business to the
need to expect changes in their human resource polices. The
fact that some critical skills have become increasingly scarce
has encouraged organizations to anticipate the actual or
future needs in some industry sectors where demand out-
strips supply. This issue is equally relevant for the talented
individuals themselves. Study of competitive clusters demon-
strates that the attraction of talent is based on several types
of practice.
First of all, we need to be clear that a certain level of
competition between specialist clusters in a particular field
332
does exist, and that this competition is even international
because global clusters are in competition with each other
in attracting talent. The director of Cosmetic Valley com-
petitive cluster — specializing in the cosmetic perfumes
industry — has declared that ‘‘to increase the visibility of a
cluster and to promote its advantages with the aim of
making it more attractive for talented collaborators is one
of the major functions of our cluster.’’ In this context, the
internationalization and promotion of the image of a
competitive cluster is a medium for attracting talent
globally. Increasing the visibility of a competitive cluster
is the first step to take in any drive towards internationa-
lization. The perpetuation of international events, e.g.
participation in professional salons, the organization of
international scientific conferences, the constitution of
official delegations. . ., assists the creation and promotion
of a trademark or a label. Through a variety of practices,
the name of Cosmetic Valley has become a truly global
trademark in the cosmetic perfumes industry. Membership
of the cluster has enabled the company to recruit numer-
ous designers, other creative talents in the industry and
some of the most specialist perfumers. . . from across the
whole world.
Local institutional entities (Regional Councils, General
Councils, Borough Councils and Local Authorities. . .) also
participate in the whole business of attraction by promoting
their geographical region or area. For instance, they are able
to comment on issues of availability of rare resources, and on
the quality of the local context (proximity of high-tech R&D
centers, the excellent reputation of local universities, the
physical presence of big businesses in the area, the concen-
tration of industry savoir-faire, the importance of potential
funding, the dynamism of local networks, and finally quality
of life and life-style issues. . .). In Cosmetic Valley, local
authorities offer some set-up assistance for some individuals,
tax exemption for certain expenses, assistance with child
care costs. . . What is involved here is setting up a virtuous
circle able always to attract new talent. As the Director of
the Cosmetic Valley cluster says ‘‘we are convinced that
talented individuals attract other similarly talented peo-
ple.’’
To attract new talent, the competitive clusters use dedi-
cated Internet recruitment tools. A case in point is the
‘‘Talents 2020’’ program run by the Arve Industries compe-
titive cluster. This cluster, which represents the factory
industry and the machinemanufacturing sector, has experi-
enced considerable recruitment problems over the past few
years because the sector is not a particularly attractive
proposition to the younger age group. The ‘‘Talents 2020’’
program is designed to attract new talent able to perpetuate
the sector as well as energize innovation in the sector. To do
this, the cluster uses new IT (information technology) and
communications technology, as evidenced by the internet
platform it has set up with a specific section dedicated to
‘‘Image and promotion of employment’’ — the aim of which is
to promote the image for excellence of its organizational
cluster members. This has enabled the sector to increase the
profile of career opportunities available within the cluster
for talented individuals. The results of this practical mea-
sure appear to be positive, in that the number of new
collective innovative projects increased from 7 in 2006 to
19 by 2010.
D. Chabault et al.
Practices Aimed at Recruiting Talent
Practices designed to recruit talent collectively are more
difficult to find within the competitive clusters. The indivi-
dual members of the cluster remain competitors in the field,
and recruitment of talented individuals tends to remain a
process dealt with internally by each organization, as they
wish to preserve the market advantage their key resources
bring to them. Nonetheless, we are aware of the emergence
over the past few years of business employer groups that aim
to share the need for skilled individuals. These groups aim to
recruit and employ applicants on a shared basis to meet the
need for part-time or seasonal work in the sector. The
Cosmetic Valley competitive cluster is one of the first to
have implemented such a practice — dating back to 1999. The
Director of the cluster states: ‘‘we noticed that 20 to 40
percent of Paco Rabanne’s workforce was made up of tem-
porary agency workers, and that it was the same case for
Guerlain, but at a different time of year. So the training
offered to these members of staff was a waste of time. We
therefore created an association, the aim of which is to
recruit and employ employees on open-ended/permanent
contracts. Then we arrange things so that they are able to
work for several businesses.’’
Although these business employer groups aimed initially
to deal with all manner of employees, some clusters such as
Cosmetic Valley realized that this measure could work parti-
cularly well with the recruitment of individuals with rare
competencies, and that once found they should be shared. As
an example, the Cosmetic Valley cluster recruited a designer
through this system, who is shared by the organizations in the
business employer group: ‘‘We brought an Italian designer
over that everyone was desperate to have, but he chose to
come here, where he can be free to live and work for as many
businesses as he likes.’’ This type of inter-organizational
initiative seems to be increasingly applied in the recruitment
of talented individuals. In the same way the Sciences and
Systems of Electric Energy cluster, which concentrates on
home automation and buildings automation, has instructed a
recruitment agency to develop a full range of collective
recruitment measures. This agency or cabinet named by
the cluster has to sign up to a set of pretty specific rules
and regulations governing the recruitment of individuals with
profiles considered to be talented.
Practices Aimed at Identifying Talent Internally
The practices involved in identifying talent within a business
that belongs to an competitive cluster are not straightfor-
ward. We have already spoken about how hard it is to
quantify talent. It requires certain knowledge of an indivi-
dual to enable his or her talent to be discovered. One would
hope that a particular cluster would be able to identify talent
already within the cluster. What is important here is that the
individual members of the competitive cluster understand
the importance of their live resources. The main practice
used by French clusters is the request for proposals. Let’s just
remind ourselves that collective innovation projects at the
very centre of emerging clusters have, in the main, come
about as a result of requests for proposals put forward by
the clusters. These requests for proposals have given rise to
Talent management
the creation of a working group dedicated to deciding which
is the best way to identify (with precision) the particular
scarce skills required to bring a project to a successful
conclusion. Each member of the group then tries to identify
individuals within their organization who would be best able
to integrate efficiently into proposed new, innovative pro-
jects. The identification of talent remains the responsibility
of businesses that employ talented individuals; however, the
request for proposal practice constitutes a performance
lever for the identification of talent within the cluster.
Practices Designed to Develop Talent
The aim of these practices is to allow talented individuals,
identified either internally or through external recruitment,
to flourish on their own turf. It is a question of favoring talent
and offering talented individuals the context and opportunity
to give full expression to their talent. To achieve this,
competitive clusters deploy fairly traditional HR methods
based around training and mentorship. They try to find ways
to encourage autonomy and allow exploration of new fields in
order to develop an individual’s talent.
But the most interesting practices involve the mobility of
talent. Several competitive clusters have introduced prac-
tices designed to facilitate mobility of talent internal to the
cluster, in order to encourage this talent to express itself, get
to know itself and lead to personal development in other
contexts (private and public).
Putting employees at the disposal of other organizations,
e.g. ‘‘secondments,’’ is an interesting example of this in
practice. It has its basis in French law: namely article 47
of the law of 30 December 2006 which permits research
establishments, colleges of higher education and enterprises
belonging to the same competitive cluster to loan personnel
to each other by way of secondment. A business can therefore
second one or several of its employees to another business,
the latter then becoming responsible for payment of salary,
national and health insurance contributions, etc. The initial
aim of this practice was to respond to cyclical problems and
fluctuations in activity experienced by many businesses.
What is involved here is a collaboration at the heart of the
competitive cluster between companies that exchange and
second personnel on the basis of need or increased activity or
production. What’s more, some businesses have come to the
realization that such measures could actually turn out to be
significant aids in talent management and innovation gen-
erally. This is borne out by the case of Minalogic. This cluster
specializing in nanotechnology in the health and energy
sectors, as well as all aspects of the electronic component
industry, realized that seconding personnel was particularly
well suited to specific time-limited R&D projects, which
allowed them to be innovative at minimum cost and also
to encourage cross fertilization and technological transfer
between public research bodies and SMEs. What has occurred
as a consequence is a drop off in secondment of classic
employees and their replacement by individuals with specific
competencies: individuals with talent.
Similarly, some competitive clusters try to identify and
encourage inter-organizational transferable skills. This is
particularly the case for the Imaginove cluster, which
brings together businesses in the video game, cinema and
333
audiovisual, animation and multimedia sectors. This cluster
has been examining and experimenting with the role of
transferable skills between the different industry sectors
represented within the cluster. These businesses are reaching
out to professions that require similar competencies, but
where the skills may be described differently depending on
the particular specialist area: this is what is meant by
‘‘transferable’’ skills and jobs. What needs to be undertaken
is an evaluation of the transferability of jobs from one
industry sector to another within the same cluster. In total
out of some 250 different jobs identified as existing within
the Imaginove cluster, 11 of them have been identified as
being transferable within the sector (3D animators, softwear
developers. . .). This concept encourages inter-organizational
exchange and cooperation. The aim of the measure, accord-
ing to the cluster director, is to ‘‘attract new talented
individuals and to retain them in the sector by offering them
a variety of different workplace openings which they will
find professionally fulfilling and career enhancing.’’ Learn-
ing by doing is one of the best ways to develop talent.
Talented individuals will then be attracted by career pro-
spects within their own cluster. What is also involved here is
the matter of enhancing new profiles by identifying new
talent in different professional guises amongst cluster mem-
ber organizations. As the cluster director again says, this
process involves the need to: ‘‘allow businesses to see the
career profiles of members of its neighboring industries and
thus increase the field of their investigation when it comes to
recruitment and so have access to different creative fields.’’
Practices Aimed at Retaining Talent
Given that talent is a specific asset particular to a given
individual, ‘‘unleashing’’ and ‘‘exploitation’’ of talent for an
organization is therefore always temporary, and is thus a
precarious resource. The qualities a talented individual pos-
sesses cannot therefore be separated from the person. They
cannot be extracted like a bank of knowledge or professional
know-how. . . Here the real challenge for the competitive
clusters is to retain and keep talent loyal within the cluster,
so that all the member companies can benefit from the
‘‘pollinization’’ effect. We have already examined the idea
that talent needs other organizational contexts in order to
thrive and develop professionally. The competitive clusters
thus find themselves having to deal with the pretty insur-
mountable problem — namely the conflict which exists
between retention and mobility. The competitive clusters
and their members have to learn to let their talent go with no
guarantee as to whether it will ever return. In order to
harness this inter-cluster mobility and ensure retention
and loyalty in the hope that an individual will return to base,
we have noticed the development and emergence over the
past few years of several new forms of cooperation, the aim
of which is to mobilize talent within a space without restric-
tion.
The Cap Digital competitive cluster, which deals with new
technology in the video game, imaging, open-source soft-
ware and multimedia sectors, is a case in point. To encourage
mobility of talent and ensure retention and employee loyalty,
the cluster has developed a workplace environment that
encourages global mobility. The cluster is mostly situated
334
Table 2 Examples of HR Practices Associated With Talent
Management Within Clusters.
Phases Examples of Associated HR Practices
Attraction Promotion of image of cluster
Indication of resources in the area
Organization of international events,
mobilization of local institutional entities
Implementation of collaborative IT and
communications internet platforms
Recruitment Establishment of business employer groups
Certification of recruitment agencies
Identification Initiation of collective innovation projects
Establishment of working groups to focus
on need to identify scarce skills
Development Creation of an environment which enables
professional expertise to flourish
Ensure mobility of talent within the
cluster (secondments, identification
of transferable skills)
Retention/ Ensure inter-cluster mobility of talent
loyalty Offer global career opportunities
in the Paris region. In 2006, the cities of Paris and San
Francisco worked together to promote themselves as ‘‘digital
sister cities’’ — twin cities of digital technology. The mayors
of the two cities signed a ‘‘memorandum of understanding,’’
in other words a partnership in which the two cities com-
mitted themselves to developing joint projects using the
combined resources of their talent in the digital technology
sector. The Cap Digital cluster has been able to benefit from
this partnership in order to improve the training it offers to
the most talented students at local universities, and also
introduce similar improvements for its existing employees.
This program — entitled the ‘‘Digital Pathway Program’’ — has
been introduced in parallel by the Americans as well as the
French. Mobile employees, retain strong links with their
parent organization through weekly video conferences held
every Tuesday. The program also makes similar use of e-
learning platforms. This initiative is particularly pertinent
because it allows talented individuals to blossom and develop
professionally and personally in other organizational and
institutional contexts all the while ensuring their retention
within the cluster.
Table 2 presents a summary of best practice in the area of
inter-organizational talent management within clusters.
D. Chabault et al.
CONCLUSION
As we have set out in this article, inter-organizational man-
agement of talent appears to be fundamental for clusters.
Nonetheless, we need to remember that firms within the
clusters remain in competition with each other. In this con-
text, talent is considered to be a strategic resource to be
fought over. Companies will therefore have their own indi-
vidual systems for locating, attracting and then retaining
these talented individuals. The highly technological back-
ground of the French competitive clusters means that their
members are extremely wary of any sharing of experiences.
To allow talent to circulate freely, therefore, becomes a
strategic question. The flux of R&D collective projects will
depend upon whether the management structures in place
within the clusters are able to convince separate members of
the need to allow free circulation of talent. As a result of
interior mobility within the cluster, this freedom of profes-
sional movement produces a certain ‘‘pollinization.’’ In fact,
talented individuals within clusters tend to be more moti-
vated by their ideas, and their particular projects than by
their company allegiance. These companies need to be aware
of the need to preserve knowledge rather than the need to
retain personnel within their own organizations: project-
based enterprises focus on knowledge retention rather than
worker retention.
This requires a change of culture on the part of companies
involved, who need to accept a certain level of uncertainty in
relation to their talent pool. Similarly, the psychological
contract signed between a company and its employee needs
to be thought through again because the professional career
path of these individuals is not the same as for employees
with a job for life; it needs to be seen more in terms of
internal and external adherence to the cluster.
Many different inter-organizational talent management
practices exist. Given that talent requires different contexts
to be able to blossom, talent management depends more on
the ability of the clusters themselves to identify, attract,
encourage, draw out and develop talent. Therefore it seems
that the key to success in this area is the ability to produce
situations or conditions in which talent is able to find free
expression (infrastructure, a stimulating workplace environ-
ment, proximity to other similarly talented individuals. . .).
Given that this seems to be the case, measures to retain
talent therefore need to be seen in a much more global
context.
Talent management 335

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
This article is inspired by the articles of David G. Collings and
Kamel Mellahi, ‘‘Strategic Talent Management: A Review and
Research Agenda,’’ in Human Resource Management Review,
2009, 19, 304—313; and of Robert E. Lewis and Robert J.
Heckman, ‘‘Talent Management: A Critical Review’’ in Human
Resource Management Review, 2006, 16, 139—154, who put
forward a generalist vision of the notion by demonstrating
the manner in which it has evolved. We were also inspired by
an article of Jeffrey Pfeffer, ‘‘Fighting the War for Talent is
Hazardous to Your Organization’s Health,’’ Organizational
Dynamics, 2001, 29 (4), 248—259, which provides a critique
of the notion.
On the issue of talent as a source of competitive advan-
tage for companies, we refer the reader to C. Ashton and
L. Morton, ‘‘Managing Talent for Competitive Advantage,’’
in Strategic Human Resource Review, 2005, 4 (5), 28—31,
and J. M. Cohn, R. Khurana and L. Reeves, ‘‘Growing Talent
as if Your Business Depended on It,’’ in Harvard Business
Review, 2005, 83 (10), 63—70. We also highly recommend
M. B. Arthur and R. Defillippi, ‘‘Live and Let Learn:
A Project Based Approach,’’ Management, 1998 (July),
60—65.
In relation to discussion of the notion of talent in the
context of clusters, we recommend the article by Stephen B.
Adams, ‘‘Growing Where You Are Planted: Exogenous Firms
and the Seeding of Silicon Valley,’’ Research Policy, 2011, 40,
368—379.
Finally, in relation to additional information on French
competitive clusters and the management project process,
we refer you to the article by Ludivine Calamel, Christian
Defélix, Thierry Picq and Didier Retour, ‘‘Inter-organizational
Projects in French Innovation Clusters: the Construction of
Collaboration,’’ in International Journal of Project Manage-
ment, 2012, 29, 48—59.

Denis Chabault is senior lecturer of strategic management in Paris Sud University. His teaching and research
interests include cluster management, innovation and business strategy. He has published numerous articles in
academic journals (Tel.: +33 6 63 04 33 74; fax: +33 2 47 36 10 11; e-mail: denis.chabault@u-psud.fr).

Annabelle Hulin is senior lecturer of human resources management at the Institute of Management and
Admnistration at University François-Rabelais. She has published articles in academic journals and chapters
in books. Her main interests are knowledge transfer, skills management and diversity management
(e-mail: annabelle.hulin@univ-tours.fr).

Richard Soparnot is professor of strategic management and dean of research at Escem School of Business and
Management. His teaching and research interests include business strategy, change management, organizational
learning and change capacity. He has published numerous books and articles in academic journals such as Journal
of Organizational Change Management and Journal of Change Management (e-mail: rsoparnot@escem.fr).