Investigating the factors affecting the Performance of industrial clusters in Guilan province using Gray Dematel

Today, development through cluster innovation plays a pivotal role in economic and industrial policies of developed countries. On the other hand, identifying the main factors of success in clustering and defining indices is one of the most important planning steps for the development of industrial clusters; and without understanding the key factors of the cluster, its future cannot be planned. The main objective of this research is to identify the factors affecting the success of Guilan industrial clusters despite the uncertainty in experts' opinions. For prioritizing the factors effective on cluster success, 48 primary ones which are influencing business clusters were extracted from research literature. Then, by applying Delphi method and after three steps, the 48 factors were converted to 28 ones and categorized in six sections using clustering. Finally, the effects of these factors were analyzed using the gray Dematel method. The results of the analysis showed that environmental, geographical, and performance evaluation factors were the most important ones in the success of business clusters in the province.