COMPETITIVENESS OF TOURISM INDUSTRY IN KAZAKHSTAN - Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges - page 20

• entrepreneurial cooperation, work productive specialization, collec-
tive infrastructure, service specialization;
• the increased ability to negotiate collectively with suppliers of inputs
and components;
• the development of new models, production processes and organiza-
tions;
• the exchange of technical and market information; and
• consortiums for buying and selling goods and services, as well as
joint marketing campaigns.
Interaction and synergy arising from joint actions lead to competitive
advantages over the isolated actions of companies (Nordin, 2003).
PORTER'S CLUSTER THEORY
In 2004, the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan in his Address to the
People of Kazakhstan emphasized the importance of defining priorities
for diversification of the Kazakh economy and further development of
the country based on the analysis of the country's competitive advantages
and identifying the most promising subregional and regional clusters. Al-
though so far the efforts to create clusters in the countries of the former
Soviet Union were not successful, 3 the decision was made to implement
a pilot project on organizing a tourism cluster in Almaty city and Almaty
oblast, which was prepared by representatives of the Center for Marketing
and Analytical Research, the tourist community, and leading tour opera-
tors in cooperation with experts from the American consulting company
“J.E. Austin Associates Inc.” headed by an outstanding economist, Mi-
chael Porter. They recommended diversifying Kazakhstan's economy by
focusing on the development of seven clusters with tourism being one of
them.
National competitiveness was put on the agenda by the President of
Kazakhstan in 2005. In the same year, the World Economic Forum includ-
ed the country in the Global Competitiveness Report. In 2011-2012, Ka-
zakhstan's rank in the WEF rating list was 72 (out of 142 countries), 6 while
in 2005-2006 it was 61 (out of 117 countries). In 2005, an assessment
of the Kazakhstan business environment using Porter's diamond model
was presented at the conference “Kazakhstan competitiveness and cluster
development” (Porter, 2005), where the role of SMEs in cluster develop-