Knowledge creation, learning and innovation in italian industrial districts

Abstract

Introduction The analysis of industrial districts (IDs) has attract-ed a growing interest in the past decades in differ-ent disciplines. From the seminal contribution ofAlfred Marshall it appeared clear that the fact of be-ing historically localized in a specific industrial siteis advantageous for firms which can benefit fromthe availability of skilled labour forces, knowl-edgeable agents and new ideas that are free ‘in theair’. On one hand, knowledge was conceptualizedas the result of the working of the ID device: a pub-lic good, whose diffusion is due to spill-overs andtechnological externalities. On the other hand, it isthe same mechanism of interaction among co-lo-calized firms that has attracted the attention ofeconomists and sociologists, because the ID modelappears to be a particularly efficient localized sys-tem to stimulate the creation of new knowledge bysome firms, and enforce learning mechanismsamong some proprietary but sometimes open local-ized networks. This article discusses both perspec-tives in depth. It consists of two parts. The first ex-plores the nature of knowledge, and in order to in-terpret the phenomenon of local agglomeration andthe formation of the industrial districts (IDs)