More and more innovative technologies and business plans are formed at interfaces of highly divergent disciplines as a result of an increasing demand for specialized solutions combining different sectors and competence fields. This market driven evolution requires new cross-connections between regional industry clusters that had no, or only a few connections before. But especially in Europe the cluster landscapes have grown very path-dependent and cluster managers still follow traditional concepts. The paper introduces strategies and tools that were designed and proofed within the two-year-project “Cross Cluster Cooperation C3-Saxony” (Germany) co-funded by EU (2014-2015) and also in follow-up sessions rethinking regional industry clusters and their management. The paper describes novel approaches for cross-cluster strategies using three different views on clusters: a) “Cluster Landscape” describing the different clusters in one region, b) “Cluster Network” standing for all organisations in one cluster, and c) “Cluster Management” being responsible for the performance of one cluster. Up to now, cross-clustering processes are only described from the organisational perspective of companies or research institutions initiating cross-sectoral projects, or from a systemic point of view focusing cluster landscapes. The paper brings the discussion to the core of cluster development – the cluster management – and introduces novel approaches as well as guiding principles to trigger and increase cross-cluster performances. The described strategies and tools help ministries and cluster managers to classify current cluster performances and deduce measurements to re-orientate in gridlocked economic situations.