ABSTRACT
Alfred Marshall, initiator of the concept of industrial district, asserted that “when an industry has (thus) chosen a locality for itself, it is likely to stay there long: so great are the advantages which people following the same skilled trade get from near neighbourhood to one another. The mysteries of the trade become no mysteries; but are as it were in the air” (Marshall, 1890, p. 465). The principles laid out in this seminal work are quite popular nowadays in scientific and industrial policy circles aiming to foster the competitiveness of territories. This approach, based on promoting cooperation and the circulation of knowledge between firms, universities, and research centers, on a local scale and around innovative projects, builds on two empirical observations. First, economic activities, in particular those of high technological intensity, are strongly concentrated geographically (Patel & Pavitt, 1991; Audrestch & Feldman, 1996). Second, firms located in particular zones are more productive and innovative that those located in other zones (Breschi & Lissoni, 2001). An abundant literature grew out of such observations around the generic term cluster (Porter, 1990), seeing territorialization as a key condition for innovation network performance (Beaudry & Breschi, 2003). However, a less often quoted argument of Marshall seemed to moderate his vision: “every cheapening of the means of communication, every new facility for the free interchange of ideas between distant places alters the action of the forces which tend to localize industries” (Marshall, 1890, p. 468). Territorial embeddedness could here become a constraint and competing forces could potentially act in the direction of dissociating innovation from the territory.
