ABSTRACT
Have we emerged from the period of growth linked to a system of economic regulation of the Fordist type, and are we now entering a period in which flexible specialization will become more important? In more basic terms: are small firms the future of developed economies? This issue generates heated debate. Questions are asked about the role of small firms in the comparative industrial growth of different countries, about their capacities of adaptation to market fluctuations and technological change, about their emergence in the developed economies and their capacity to respond to the problems of less developed economies. However, the renewed interest shown by researchers in groupings of small firms, and in the dynamism of these groups, does not lead us automatically to conclude that this new object of research is a new social object as such. Even if we suppose that the development of nonconcentrated systems of industries is the future of the economies of developed countries, it should be remembered that this was also a large feature of their past, as it is of their present: if there is a renewal going on, it is perhaps as much in the fact that we are currently concerned with improving our understanding of the working of these firms as in the fact that they are evolving and developing.
