Competitiveness Review: Volume 32 Issue 5

Guest editorial: Industrial Districts: towards the future

Jose-Luis Hervas-Oliver, Rafael Boix

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

Jose-Luis Hervas-Oliver

This paper aims to understand the contribution of research and transfer institutes (RTIs) to digitising in traditional Marshallian industrial districts (IDs). This study answers…

Evolving industrial districts and changing innovation patterns: the case of Montreal

Ekaterina Turkina, Boris Oreshkin

This paper aims to investigate the evolution of the phenomenon of industrial districts and explores the broader regional innovation systems that consist of multiple industrial…

SMEs and the regionalization of global value chains: an untold story from the Italian industrial districts

Marco Bettiol, Chiara Burlina, Maria Chiarvesio, Eleonora Di Maria

Within the theoretical framework of global value chains (GVCs), much importance has been given to industrial districts (IDs) and their role as localized manufacturing systems. The…

Chinese microentrepreneurs in industrial cluster in Italy: analysis of the ethnic microenterprises’ performance

Mario Biggeri, Lisa Braito

This paper aims to investigate the distinctive economic and social dynamics of ethnic quasi-enclave industrial sub-clusters and to econometrically analyse the main factors…

Searching for “rare diamonds”? Industrial districts and innovation in Spain and Italy

Rafael Boix-Domenech, Francesco Capone, Vittorio Galletto

This paper aims to test the existence of the so-called industrial district effect on innovation (iMID effect) in Spain and Italy and to compare the intensity of this effect…

Territorial servitisation in Italian industrial districts: the role of technological and professional KIBS

Edoardo Baldoni, Lisa De Propris, Dimitri Storai

This paper aims to analyse to what extent Italian industrial districts (IDs), with their traditional manufacturing specialization, experimented a territorial servitisation process…

On the road to Industry 4.0 in manufacturing clusters: the role of business support organisations

Wojciech Dyba, Valentina De Marchi

This paper aims to explore the role of business support organisations (BSO) in overcoming barriers to the adoption of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies, especially in disseminating…

Strategic collaboration in agro-industrial clusters: territorial dynamics within the dairy industry in Uruguay

Pablo Galaso, Adrián Rodríguez Miranda

Inquiring about the patterns of interaction within clusters can provide a valuable insight into the cooperation and competition strategies followed by firms. However, such…

The role of network relations and previous knowledge in the ACAP of low-tech intensity clusters

Fernando Antonio Ribeiro Serra, Julio Araujo Carneiro-da-Cunha, Leonardo Vils, Carlos Ricardo Rossetto

The mainstream research on knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity (ACAP) in clusters was conducted in high-technology industries in developing countries. However, low…

Cross-border acquisitions and technological spillover: evidence from European regional clusters

Elisa Sabbadin, Ivan De Noni, Fiorenza Belussi

Relying on mergers and acquisition transaction-level data set and adopting a more region-specific approach with a focus on industry-region pairs, this paper aims to examine how…

Footwear cluster’s decline in the South of Brazil: the transformation of a supercluster

Janaina Ruffoni, Renato de Castro Garcia, Alessandra Roehrig

This paper presents an empirical contribution to the literature on cluster evolution, highlighting the decline phase. The analysis focuses on the footwear sector in Rio Grande do…