Rereading industrial districts through the lens of entrepreneurship

Abstract

This paper analyzes the link between industrial districts and entrepreneurship, building a bridge between the literature on entrepreneurship and the literature on industrial districts. Drawing a distinction between generic entrepreneurship and selective entrepreneurship leads us to acknowledge that a close association between industrial districts as a whole and entrepreneurship is only well-founded if we are speaking of the generic definition of the latter. Burt's theory of structural holes and its application to industrial districts enables us to identify two different types of industrial district, one featuring a high degree of density or closure (P-clusters), the other a high degree of brokerage or (selective) entrepreneurship (SV-clusters). The framework proposed here also suggests a novel interpretation of the transformations that industrial districts of the first type have undergone under the pressure of globalization.

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