In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the spatial dimension of economic activities. The concept of competitiveness has reached an incredible importance between academicians and practitioners. However, local competitiveness remains an elusive concept. The main objectives of this paper are two fold: first, to define the concept of local competitiveness in an ecological perspective; second, to present a scoreboard useful to evaluate cluster competitiveness. A case study on seven different clusters in Emilia Romagna is presented in order to test the scoreboard and show how it helps to understand local competitiveness and define local policies.

The concept of local competitiveness is grounded on the notion of ecology of value (Arthur, 1996; Iansiti and Levien, 2004; Pilotti and Rinaldin, 2004; and Ganzaroli and Pilotti, 2006). Taking this perspective it is possible to claim that cluster competitiveness depends on the capacity to leverage on the firms' strategic autonomy and self-determinacy by providing a context of interaction that is socially rich and adapted to sustain the development of intense ongoing relationships. Traditionally, this field of literature refers mainly to long-term, trusted and local relationships as strategic for local systems' survival. On the contrary, the concept of ecology suggests that a matching between these kind of relationships and a high level of strategic autonomy is a precondition to enlarge learning capacity and to prevent trust from diverting into collusion.

The scoreboard is structured in two levels (the micro and the meso-level) and it has the objective to assess the local competitiveness in an ecological perspective. The micro level focuses on the firm and its capacity to learn and to work in a network. It is based on two matrices. The meso-level refers to the role of local institutions in the economic development of the system.

Scoreboard, Emilia Romagna Region, International trade theory, Political Economy, Taxation, Financial management, Cluster policies, Organizational change, Global market, Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs, Global economy, Benchmarking tool, strategic management, Information and Communications Technology.