ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief introduction to the main ideas drawn from several different schools of thought or approaches, which have accumulated reflections for a dynamic theory of the territorial systems of production and innovation (TSPIs) in a parallel and complementary way, overlapping in some aspects. To articulate the debate on the links between the functional proximity and innovation of the economic actors, it is necessary to explicate the local/global dimension behind any learning process and specific resource building. An initial dimension of the logic is centred on the concept of resilience of the TSPI that is their ability to metabolise change, by adapting their own structure without giving into traumatic modifications. More emphasis is placed on the causal relation between the dynamism of a capitalistic economy and the territorial pattern of development, or industrialisation, to use this school’s specific term. Gremi has been criticised for having merely transposed the ‘black box’ from technology to the spatial context.
