Methods of Developing Sustainable Competitiveness Indicators for Innovative Industrial Clusters

Abstract

The present article introduces a new system of indicators for assessing the sustainable competitiveness of innovative industrial clusters. The authors reviewed foreign and domestic approaches to monitoring and evaluating industrial clusters and classified them according to assessment type, research level, costs, and effects. Sustainable competitiveness proved to be the most complex characteristic of any cluster. It could be divided into two groups of parameters, i.e. 1) long-term competitiveness and 2) stability as a socio-ecological and economic system. Each group was given a list of indicators for quantitative and qualitative assessment, which included indicators of potential development, organization and management, socio-ecological and economic stability, etc. The research revealed some gaps in the Russian statistics of cluster development, which hinder the information support for monitoring and evaluating the sustainable competitiveness of clusters. As a result, the current databases on the social, economic, and environmental aspects of Russian clusters are fragmented and chronologically incompatible.