ABSTRACT
Oneof the resultsmost agreedupon in the large literature on local industrial systems is that their successmaybe attributed to anappropriate combinationbetween cooperation and competition. Accordingly, such a combination has been investigated and explained under a variety of aspects, including socio-cultural environment, technological change and demand conditions (Piore and Sabel, 1984; Becattini, 1991; Saxenian, 1994; You and Wilkinson, 1994). In particular, a key element of this successful combination has been identified in the co-existence between innovation and imitation or, in other words, in a solution of the well-known trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency.1
