According to the definition on the top of page 4, the term denotes a R9 cluster led by a public research organisation, which is rather specific and I doubt it applies to the six case studies outlined in the paper.
The conceputal framework (figure 1) is very similar to the 'cluster initiative performance model' in the Cluster Initiative Greenbook (Solvell et al., 2003), adding the hypothesis that there might be an interaction between policy context and management and being somewhat more narrow on the elements included.