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Industrial Districts in Italy

From a study conducted by the European Commission it emerged that Italy ranks sixth in the world for entrepreneurial inclination.
This propensity, along with the need for greater flexibility in a context of rigid labour regulations, have formed the basis for the extraordinary number of very small firms and self-employed individuals that have fostered the creation of an integrated localised development model nowadays known as the "industrial district".

According to ISTAT, there are just under 200 of these industrial districts, wich are - legally codified under Law 317 of 1991 and its implementating provisions.
The district model consists of a high concentration of small and medium-sized, generally artisan, businesses specialised in the manufacture of a specific item and grouped together in the same territorial area.
Within the same district, companies establish close relationships which contribute to the creation of the competitive success typical of this production method: on the one hand strong competition stimulates product innovation; on the other hand, proximity and a high level of specialisation allow for a continuous transmission of knowledge.
This makes not only for a high level of flexibility, but also enables the economies of scale typically found in large companies to be achieved through productive integration.

The success that district products enjoy on the international market, however, is also due to a great capacity for innovation and the constant pursuit of product improvement favoured by competition between firms in the same district and interaction on research and training between district networks and universities throughout the territory.

These synergies have rendered competitive even sectors commonly considered technologically under-developed (the textile sector is a case in point).

It should not be surprising then that it is, above all, through the "networking experience" of its industrial districts, that the Italian entrepreneurial system is today pursuing its own strategies for internationalisation.

Precisely to that end the Ministry of Productive Activities has decided to boost promotional activities with a package of measures for the creation of new Italian industrial districts in the principle countries involved in the strategies for the internationalisation of small and medium-sized Italian enterprises (SME): Russian Federation, Romania, Croatia, Morocco and Tunisia.

There are actually many cases of Italian industrial districts directly operating abroad.
The most well known, and by no means the only example, is that of Timisoara, the Romanian industrial district specialised in the textile and leather goods sectors, where over 1,200 Italian firms are located.

In Tunisia a new industrial district is growing - "Carthago Fashion City" - that intends to reproduce the entire textile production chain, while in Russia household appliance and wood centres are developing respectively at Lipetsk and Moscow, in addition to a confluence of footwear factories between Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

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