The new marshallian districts and their process of internationalisation

The industrial district model represents a specific form of agglomeration of local firms; however it is characterized by a multiplicity of possible evolutionary patterns of growth, innovation and learning. In the last century, some old districts have declined, whereas others have grown and changed and new districts have emerged. Many authors have tried to interpret this dynamic process, focusing on evolutionary pattern of industrial districts. In this debate, globalization has played a central role, and it is considered one of the hardest challenges for the industrial districts model, in both developed countries, and developing countries. Today many districts have evolved into complex systems with flexible boundaries. These systems are able to affect international markets and in turn they are influenced by the position occupied by some firms in the district within global subcontracting chains. The modern industrial districts are based on a mix of localized learning and external dynamic learning (due to a process of exploration and scanning of external knowledge). The role of proximity seems to have become less relevant because technological development and globalization has fostered the creation of long relationships by encouraging knowledge offshoring and/or the born of global subcontracting chains. On the contrary, the role of organizational proximity (e.g. knowledge spillovers realized within the same organization located in different sites) is becoming increasingly important. This process is strengthened also from the role of small multinational firms, recently emerged in some industrial districts, activating a process of internationalization. Therefore, the old Marshallian industrial district model is strongly changing due to the phenomenon here depicted. This work, using an ample data base of provided by the Italian Institute Tagliacarne of about 1000 small and medium size firms located in 12 Italian industrial districts, and other empirical pieces of research, studies the heterogeneous impact of globalisation on some important Italian districts.