Abstract
This doctoral dissertation is a collection of articles designed to systematically measure and analyze the relationships existing in three foundational phenomena of competitiveness theory: clusters, entrepreneurship, and innovation, here treated in the form of green innovation. The three articles’ contributions answer the research trajectories suggested in the conference "rethinking clusters". The first article in this collection assesses the current and potential technological advantage of green patents of Italian clusters, introducing a taxonomy to identify the characteristics of "green champion" clusters. To complement the patent-based analysis, the second article introduces a green innovation score by recognizing the prevalence of green topics within the websites of firms belonging to a cluster. After that, three possible combinations of factors leading to the diffusion of green innovation emerge from the analysis. The last article relates the measurement of clusters’ presence to that of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and, through an econometric model, identifies the impact of EE elements on clusters’ performance according to their type and life cycle stage.