ABSTRACT
For several decades, in many countries and industries, enterprise clustering has offered a competitive alternative to the advantages achieved through a larger scale of production and through the ensuing economies of scale.1 However, the typical uniformity in the growth process of SME systems, experienced during the 1970s and the 1980s in Italian local systems, has now come to an end (Carminucci and Casucci 1997). New diversified and ‘idiosyncratic’ patterns of growth have been observed, and the range of options chosen expands when attempting to draw international comparisons. No common and unidirectional development pattern is valid any longer, and different avenues have been followed to face the new competitive challenges posed by the globalisation of markets and technology. It appears especially useful to remember the insightful remark of the main scholar of the industrial districts (IDs):
… particularly in the Italian experience, the industrial district has often proved to be rather a ‘stage’ in one of the possible different paths of industrialization.2
