ABSTRACT
In Schumpeterian ontology, entrepreneurs personalize economic change by their capacity
to create and exploit new production or market opportunities. Beyond an individual action,
entrepreneurship is also perceived as a collective innovation process embedded in territor-
ialized institutions, actor relations and evolutionary pathways. Widely investigated since
the 1980s, the Silicon Valley model has played a large part in carrying out and legitimizing
this ontology through idealized visions of it. At the same time, it has become a reference of
territorial competitiveness advocated by the current policy discourses and practices.
