Marshallian Industrial Districts Research Articles

Extending the Marshallian industrial districts framework: framing types of multinationals

In this study, we reflect on multinationals and their challenge to the established paradigm of Marshallian Industrial Districts (MIDs). Recently, scholars have begun to show a reorientation of the MID framework towards addressing topics that were not central to the mainstream MID framework, such as multinationals. We elaborate on and discuss the effects of multinationals in districts, a topic that demands further research and theoretical integration. We argue that future research should delve into questions around the development and empirical testing of multinationals in MIDs, proposing new lines of inquiry to strengthen the MID framework.

Are there Marshallian industrial districts in Portugal? revisiting the canello and pavone algorithm

The present study maps and classifies industrial districts in Portugal, identifying the features of specialization and the current capacity of industrialization. It employs an adaptation of the algorithm developed by Canello and Pavone (2016) in 308 Portuguese municipalities based on six phases. In terms of methodological innovation, a new concentration ratio was introduced, making it possible to identify homogeneity in the industrial structure and to consider different sizes of companies, regarding the classification of Industrial Districts. It provides guidelines for policymakers in order to promote cross-fertilized industrial districts, considering the specificities of low-density industrial regions.

Dear old (and misunderstood) districts, let’s look ahead

Food districts seem to be a phenomenon as widespread as they are somewhat little known and misunderstood. After thirty years of collective thinking and practice, we question what districts in the agricultural and rural domain actually are and whether we are yet to produce a scientifically consistent conceptual framework to fully understand them. This article aims to relaunch a debate about this theme, encouraging scholars to refocus their research on it, thereby hopefully prompting policy-makers to revisit and review current policy. How the current conceptual framework develops from Becattini’s interpretation of the Marshallian Industrial District and its impact on policy design and implementation are analysed and grey areas highlighted. Current transitions linked to sustainability and global challenges are explored through the relevant literature, highlighting the changing meaning of some key concepts that are necessary to reframe the district notion. Our conclusion is that a new generation of district is needed, in addiction to a new policy framework, which in turn will require a reframing and more robust conceptualization of what food districts are. We end by analysing some difficulties and caveats to begin to produce a theoretical definition of a new conceptual framework.

Does regional innovation policy really work for Industry 4.0? Evidence for industrial districts

ABSTRACT Industry 4.0 threatens established lock-in paradigms in some districts. In this study, we compare different innovation policies aimed at facilitating Industry 4.0 awareness and its adoption in three Marshallian Industrial Districts (MIDs), asking: ‘What’ types of innovation policies work for Industry 4.0 in industrial districts? And, where they do, ‘how’ are those innovation initiatives designed, developed and implemented for digitizing districts? Using qualitative evidence based on 24 interviews and the review of existing literature concerning Industry 4.0 in three MIDs, results show different mechanisms and approaches for creating awareness and maximizing the diffusion of Industry 4.0 in each district, as a result of each local ‘cognitive structure’. One size-fits-all policies are not realistic for digitization: collective actors leading place-based collective actions that are bottom-up and co-designed with public and private local actors is what works best. For policymakers, this study presents guidance for developing Industry 4.0 in MID settings.

Living innovation machines: modelling innovation in time and space variable-geometry territorial units using machine learning

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the innovative intensity (iMID effect) in the local production systems (LPSs) using dynamic territorial units that modifies their geographical boundaries and specialization over time. The paper is based on the idea that the local communities are the real unit of generation of innovation and that they are constantly changing, behaving like a ‘living innovation machine’. To explore this dynamic relationship, the paper applies the Marshallian industrial district (MID) as an approach to industrial change. Then, it focuses on the Marshallian industrial districts (MIDs) as a type of LPS and asks how the innovation effect changes in MIDs and other types of LPSs when dynamic territorial units are used. The differences in innovation intensity between the different types of LPSs are explained for Spain in the period 1991–2014 using new methods of analysis that combine causal analysis, a variable and adaptive geometry of territorial units and industrial specialization, and machine learning methods. The results show that the transformation of an LPS into another type of LPS does not automatically imply a change in innovative capacity, and the type of LPS of origin continues to be relevant in explaining current innovation processes.

Industry 4.0 in industrial district SMEs: understanding collective knowledge transfer by research and transfer institutes

PurposeThis paper aims to understand the contribution of research and transfer institutes (RTIs) to digitising in traditional Marshallian industrial districts (IDs). This study answers how to digitise small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in IDs capitalising on RTIs? As collective actors, RTIs introduce change in local/regional innovation systems where they are embedded.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses qualitative evidence based on interviews and secondary data analysis on digitising the Vinalopo Footwear district in Spain.FindingsThis paper provides empirical insights about how RTIs perform research and development (R&D) and non-R&D activities to digitise, facilitated by leading firms that frequently engage with RTIs. Subsequently, leading firms interact and diffuse Industry 4.0 within their networks of SMEs. RTIs activate digitising in districts avoiding the manifested reluctance of SMEs to engage with them, capitalising on leading firms’ networks orchestration.Research limitations/implicationsBecause of the chosen research approach, the findings are limited to the chosen setting and method.Practical implicationsThis paper includes implications for policymakers, responding to the paradox of how to activate knowledge transfer from RTIs to SMEs, when the latter are reluctant to use RTIs.Originality/valueThis paper fulfils an identified need to study how to digitise IDs and clusters.

Multinationals’ recruiting in industrial districts

ABSTRACT This paper explains how multinationals source specific tacit and sticky technical knowledge in industrial districts through recruiting. Focusing on the location of the textile-dedicated company ZARA in a footwear-dedicated Marshallian industrial district, we study its recruiting strategy using mixed methods. ZARA recruits district footwear expertise by seeking primarily local workers with strong relational ties and intensive tacit knowledge originating from the best footwear-dedicated local firms that master knowledge on operations and expertise on managing local networks of subcontractors. Good local firms involuntarily benefit newcomer multinationals. The net effect on the district is the result of the tension between poaching and embeddedness and anchoring effects.

Industry 4.0 in industrial districts: regional innovation policy for the Toy Valley district in Spain

ABSTRACT This study is focused on how Industry 4.0 is diffused within a Marshallian industrial district (MID) through collective action. It explains how MIDs adopt Industry 4.0 through collective initiatives for digitization, bypassing many barriers to change through the utilization of a collective project built upon a key feature of MIDs: cooperation. Results from interviews show a real living lab built upon a place-based bottom-up-oriented policy initiative co-designed by policymakers, collective actors and local firms, aimed at facilitating transition into Industry 4.0 in the Toy Valley district in the Valencia region of Spain. The results contribute to the emergent literature on district digitization.

Factors Supporting or Hindering the Place-based Structure of Commons in Local Productive Systems

Recent results on the relationship between external economies and local public goods may be summarised as follows. Marshallian external economies are at the core of paths of development in vital local productive systems, such as Marshallian industrial districts or similar forms. They are partly external to the resources organized by single specialised firms and largely dependent on the embeddedness of the firm in the system and its various forms of division of labour. Exchanges need to integrate the contributions of the specialised producers, but all sorts of difficulties hinder them if a joint access to ‘local’ public goods does not help producers. Markets do not provide for them easily, nor top-down State planning does. Mechanisms and processes of local governance and place leadership, possibly combined with social customs and conventions, are an important support to local integration. The paper comes back to this kernel in the theories of local development, proposing an extended framework of relevant local public goods, qualified as specific public goods, club goods, and place-based common-pool resources, all sharing “commons”-like features. Factors hindering virtuous circles between external economies and specific commons are considered as well, in particular those related to different structures of interests

Planning sustainable development of local productive systems: A methodological approach for the analytical identification of Ecoregions

At the local and regional levels, planning for sustainable development rests on the structural peculiarities of territories following a development model that lays its foundations on the notion of the Marshallian industrial district. Recently, this form of production organization has been recognized as also featuring an organic agricultural sector, where the creation of ecoregions (or bio-districts) emphasizes the territorial dimension of sustainable development. Nevertheless, whilst ecoregions are acquiring substantial relevance at the international level, a comprehensive methodological approach for their analytical identification is still missing, thereby affecting the ability of policymakers to effectively identify territories suitable to enter an ecoregion. The few studies available on this topic adopt a narrow perspective when identifying ecoregions, considering only the dimensions that are strictly related to organic production and ignoring substantial variables that are able to capture the activities and elements that generate positive externalities and feed the economic, social and environmental life of a potential ecoregion. To fill this gap in the literature, this paper makes two innovative contributions. First, the paper discusses the notion of an ecoregion by stressing its relationship with other territorial features (i.e., environmental, social, and economic) that complement the agricultural dimensions. Second, the paper proposes a comprehensive methodological approach for the analytical identification of ecoregions considering not only the biological and agricultural features of territories but also crucial aspects related to their environmental, social and economic contexts. In this regard, the paper develops a new composite indicator – the Ecoregional Vocation Index (EVI) – to assess the vocation of territories to enter an ecoregion. As an illustrative example, the EVI is employed to analyse 29 municipalities belonging to the area of the Bologna Apennines (Emilia-Romagna region, Italy). The results of the analysis provide a ranking that classifies these municipalities from best to the worst in terms of their suitability to belong to an ecoregion. The results are presented and discussed to show how this methodological approach can be generally employed in sustainable territorial planning to support policymakers and other relevant stakeholders in the participatory processes concerning the creation of ecoregions.

Los distritos rurales: un nuevo concepto de desarrollo territorial. Modelos Centro- Periferia en Castilla-La Mancha

El movimiento demográfico y la desconcentración en las áreas urbanas y sus áreas periféricas, conforman, en los últimos treinta años, un proceso distinto de distribución espacial y la definición de un nuevo modelo de asentamiento de la población. Tradicionalmente, eran desplazamientos rural-urbano y la principal razón era la económica. Sin embargo, el proceso más reciente es más complejo y más triangular: movimientos rural-rural y corredores urbanos, el movimiento de la población se realiza de los núcleos más pequeños (periferia) a la cabecera comarcal (centro), la dimensión económica no logra explicar la mayor parte de los desplazamientos, sino que aparecen los núcleos rurales más grandes como concentradores de la población absorbida de los núcleos periféricos, conformando un distrito social frente al tradicional distrito industrial de tradición marshalliana, y que nosotros denominamos como Distrito Rural que se convierte, así, en un nuevo concepto para el desarrollo territorial.

A place-based policy for promoting Industry 4.0: the case of the Castellon ceramic tile district

ABSTRACTDigitization and its impact on regions and clusters remains overlooked in the literature, and constitute this present paper’s goal. How does an industrial district transit collectively to the adoption of new radical changes brought about by Industry 4.0? This study explores the role of collective actors and innovation platforms during the early stages of a pilot policy to stimulate a collective transition of an entire MID (Marshallian Industrial District) into Industry 4.0. We posit that institutional isomorphism and the existent social capital in MIDs is a double-sword phenomenon that can also positively constitute an enabler for fostering change on a collective-basis. Technology transitions, such as Industry 4.0, can be supported and led by collective actors that are central in facilitating the adoption of Industry 4.0 in MIDs, enticing innovative firms to engage in that transition, establishing, legitimizing, and embedding a new set of processes, practices and inter-firm arrangements for digitizing and then promoting imitation: the positive leverage of isomorphism. Thus, MID transition is facilitated through capitalizing on the MID logic of cooperation-competition and isomorphism, by developing and promoting a collective understanding of the new paradigm, building a supportive infrastructure, educating in the new technology and avoiding cognitive inertia.

Radical vs incremental innovation in Marshallian Industrial Districts in the Valencian Region: what prevails?

ABSTRACTThis study’s objective consists of deciphering whether collocation in MIDs, exerts a potential effect on a firm’s discontinuous or radical innovative performance. The study explores and integrates economic geography with innovation literature in order to explore the relationship between Marshalllian Industrial Districts (MIDs) and firm innovation. Specifically, we encompass radical or discontinuous innovation, as opposed to an incremental or imitative one. We build a framework from which MIDs’ effect on discontinuous innovation is approached. Using CIS data in Spain in district and non-district firms in a region, our results show that: (i) collocated firms’ innovative performance is positively related to the District effect, as long as the innovation pursuit is incremental; (ii) collocation in MIDs does not facilitate the pursuit of radical innovation but mainly supports an incremental one, and (iii) district firms show asymmetric capabilities and innovative output, as long as the innovation pursuit is incremental, nor discontinuous. Implications for the MID framework are discussed.

Place-based innovation in industrial districts: the long-term evolution of the iMID effect in Spain (1991–2014)

ABSTRACTThe innovation-Marshallian industrial district (iMID) effect defines the existence of dynamic efficiency in the Marshallian industrial district (MID) in the form of a positive innovative differential compared to the average of the national economy. Cross-sectional analyses have proven the existence of the iMID effect. Nevertheless, these findings do not provide any evidence on the evolution in the iMID effect over a long period and, in particular, when phases of growth, crisis and economic recovery follow one another, as occurred in the world economy around 1990 and 2007. This paper aims at closing this gap in knowledge by measuring the evolution of the iMID effect for Spain for the period 1991–2014. The measurement is made using an exhaustive database of 143,229 patents and by estimating a knowledge production function for the local production systems (LPSs). The results show that MIDs registered the largest number of patents compared to the other LPSs during the time span considered, that the iMID effect is higher for the highest quantiles of innovative intensity, and that MIDs’ innovative intensity has been continuously above the national average, even after the 2007 economic crisis. MIDs are still fundamental for the generation of innovation in the Spanish economy.

Territorial servitization in Marshallian industrial districts: the industrial district as a place-based form of servitization

ABSTRACTThis paper is the first general study of territorial servitization in Marshallian industrial districts (MIDs). It introduces the novel idea of place-based servitization as a form of territorial servitization, which is then used conceptually to reframe the traditional perspective on MIDs, manufacturing places par excellence. Drawing on comparable quantitative data from Italy and Spain for 1991, 2001 and 2011, the paper then provides generalizable empirical evidence about the stylized facts of servitization in MIDs, casting a light on the transition to services of the MID as one model of place-based servitization.

Inclusive growth from an urban perspective: a challenge for the metropolis of the twenty-first century

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses the study of inclusive growth from an urban perspective. It proposes to focus the relationship between urban economic growth and income distribution in cities in which manufacturing production and external demand play a central role. Opposed to the literature that considers economic growth leads to an increase in inequality in income distribution, we present some operative economic tools from Marshallian Industrial Districts theory and from urban economic theory with which to develop an economic strategy for inclusive urban growth, making possible to achieve simultaneously economic growth and improvements in income distribution. An interesting example of a metropolis with a dynamic of economic and employment growth compatible with a reduction in income inequality is provided by Barcelona. This metropolis disposes a Survey of living conditions and habits of the population since 1986 that allows an analysis in terms of inclusive urban growth.

An Evolutionary Analysis of Industrial Districts: The Changing Multiplicity of Production Know-How Nuclei

This paper deals with the evolution of place-based division of labour, considering in particular the dynamics of differentiated pools of knowledge that can be embedded in local production systems such as industrial districts. Drawing on conceptual framework of Marshallian industrial districts, the paper develops a model that links knowledge dynamics to possible tendencies towards either industrial progress, lock-in, transition or decline of such systems. The model is complemented by a related new statistical method that allows us to analyse the evolution of the multiplicity of production know-how nuclei inside industrial districts. The methodology is applied to two cases: the ceramics district of Stoke-on-Trent (UK) and the textile district of Prato (ITA) over the period 2005–2013.

Marshallian Industrial Districts in Italy: the end of a model or adaptation to the global economy?

This paper discusses the Marshallian Industrial District as it was rediscovered and further developed by Italian economists before tracing the main changes in the market and institutional context in the wake of globalization. It then focuses on some of the main transformations that have taken place in the Italian districts since the 1990s. After highlighting the important role still played by the districts in the Italian economy, the paper develops a framework for the evolutionary processes of the Marshallian Industrial District that would allow reproduction of the district in a manner suited to the era of globalisation.

Radical innovation in Marshallian industrial districts

ABSTRACTRadical innovation is under-researched in the geography of innovation. In this paper, the focus is on understanding how radical innovations occur in Marshallian industrial districts (MIDs), a phenomenon mostly overlooked. Using an exploratory and in-depth longitudinal case study methodology in two European MIDs, this paper analyzes radical innovation in MIDs and finds that the introduction of technology-distant knowledge and new firms from different (to the focal) industries are both necessary mechanisms, but not sufficient. Access to leading incumbents’ networks, based on social norms, becomes a crucial social factor necessary for radical innovation to occur in MIDs.

New forms of industrial districts

The industrial district may be seen as a species hosting not only many different cases, but also, more generally, some ideal–typical forms that characterize different historical contexts. The form that, according to previous contributions, seems to emerge in contemporary contexts of advanced economies under globalisation, technological and societal challenges, is the so-called Mark 3 ID. This paper expands precisely on differential features, contexts, and factors of strength and weakness of ID Mark 3. The thought of Giacomo Becattini, in particular his conception of the Marshallian industrial district, is assumed as a central reference point. The Mark 3 ID is discussed in this paper under the frame of such conception of industrial organization and development, centred on place-specific collective capital and specialized small-to-medium sized firms.