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Clusters are becoming an increasingly popular concept in the last years which is reflected in a growing number of clusters support policies and initiatives on EU, national and regional level. It is widely accepted, that clusters can contribute to the improvement of competitiveness and innovativeness of the regional economies. Recently, however, not only clusters are gaining importance, but mainly related variety, defined by Boschma as ‘industrial sectors that are related in terms of shared or complementary competences’ (2007). Related variety is a key concept of creating regional smart specialisations because of its positive impact on regional development. We claim that cluster potential identification tool can still be one of the most effective tools for identifying related variety and specialisation within it on the micro level. The literature review shows several methods, that are widely used to identify cluster potential, among them exist such as: case studies, concentration analysis and input-output methods. This papers presents new approach that may be used to find related sectors cooperating together not only between regions, but also within the region. The approach seeks for the real functioning cooperation links, not only existing sectors in given proximity. Finding these links will allow to identify related sectors that are exchanging knowledge through value
chains. At the end of the paper authors present the verification of the model on the base of the
agrifood industry in Poland.
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