ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the structure of a Multilevel Neural Network, with a particular emphasis on dominant innovative factors of the small and medium sized enterprises in two local industrial systems located in the Northeast Italy: the evolutionary district of Montebelluna and the relatively static district of Maniago where leadership is quite limited. The industrial districts of Northeast Italy represent an original means for the generation and transfer of information and knowledge through the activities of the firms, based on communication, trust and co-operation among the firms themselves. Local industrial development was influenced by the embedded community identity, which produced flexible, non-conflictual and co-operative arrangements among new entrepreneurs, new skills and a new spatial organisation of labour, which shared the same “moral values” and “way of life”. An orientation towards growth and innovation should be assumed due to the particular system of relations which exist in the area, the dominant, but incomplete, system of learning and knowledge.
