The need of collaboration among SMEs and improving governance has been perceived by the European Commission and by individual countries that promote since some years new organizational transformations of industrial-service systems into sustainable networks. The proposed paper is intended to address: How a manager of an individual SME, aiming to join an existing cluster, can evaluate a cluster that could be a “collaborative environment” for his small business; which main characteristics of the cluster governance have to be analyzed; which network structures appear to be preferable with a mutual profit? To help the manager to answers to these questions, the proposed work establishes a Cluster Reference Framework (CRF) structured in three dimensions: (i) the types of SME clusters; (ii) the types of governance (management) committee; (iii) the different ways of creating a network of small businesses, depending on whether or not there is a promoter or an independent will.