ABSTRACT
The vast and composite mosaic of local success stories and of dynamic evolutionary trajectories can be explained by diverse elements of territorial capital, endogenous and exogenous, qualitative and quantitative, traditionally functional or relational in nature. The taxonomy of the various components of territorial capital is not only a means to summarize all potential assets that can influence local development. The theory of the milieu innovateur has been paralleled by the international development of wide-ranging analysis of the endogenous factors at the basis of local innovative capacity. Only within the Marshal-lian theories of local districts and milieu innovateur can geographical space become a social space where socio-economic relationships, competences and culture, history and identity merge and thus generate competitive advantages for the local community. The local endowment of specific assets of territorial capital results from the history of the local area, and determines its productive specializations on which a strategic growth pattern is to be built.
