Guest editorial: Industrial Districts: towards the future

• Published in: Competitiveness review Vol. 32; no. 5; pp. 641 - 646
• Main Authors: Hervas-Oliver, Jose-Luis, Boix, Rafael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bingley Emerald Publishing Limited 15-11-2022; Emerald Group Publishing Limited
• Subjects: Digital technology; Digitization; Fast fashion; Handbooks; Industry 4.0; Innovations; R&D; Research & development; Social capital; Social networks; Italy; Spain
• ISSN: 1059-5422; 2051-3143; 1059-5422
• DOI: 10.1108/CR-09-2022-189

Introduction The notion of Industrial District (ID) was introduced by Alfred Marshall in the Principles of Economics (1890) and reintroduced a hundred years later by Giacomo Becattini (1979) in the main body of scientific literature. Since the 1990s, the notion of the Marshallian Industrial District (MID) has diffused rapidly in the scientific economic literature in English (Figure 1). After 2012, there was a slight decline in the number of articles each year in English, especially after 2020 (see Figure 1). Since 2009, and during the Great Recession, the conversation introduces, as relevant topics in the most cited works, references to globalization, outsourcing, partner location, Chinese immigration in Prato and others. Starting during the 2019–2020 period, the notion of ID is reinvigorated through many different emerging sublines of inquiry that constitute promising new research avenues, such as digitization (Hervás-Oliver, 2021; Bettiol et al., 2021; De Propris and Bailey, 2020), place-based innovation policies (Hervas-Oliver et al., 2019; Boix-Domenech et al., 2019; Bellandi et al., 2021a), multinationals (Belussi, 2018; Hervás-Oliver et al., 2021) and scholars start to pay more attention to sustainability (Chaminade and Randelli, 2020). Since 2021, the debate has discussed new phenomena, such as agri-food systems and fast fashion. The notion is also boosted by a series of new annual meetings named Rethinking Clusters [2], held initially at Firenze, Padova and Valencia and which moves to Japan in 2022, where the concept is at the forefront of discussions, reflections and a lively academic conversation. [...]the conversation on IDs is continuously strengthened by incorporating new perspectives that established fine-sliced sublines of inquiry that entice a deep capillarity of the construct.