Annalisa Caloffi

Place-renewing leadership:trajectories of change for mature manufacturing regions in Europe

The forces of globalisation now impacting on local economies pose threats to the existing paradigm of competences and routines, yet simultaneously offer opportunities to integrate new knowledge and learning. This is particularly pertinent with respect to Europes ‘mature regions’, which are undergoing a major economic restructuring by trying to shift from traditional manufacturing activities to hybrid activities that comprise a combination of manufacturing and a higher component of intangible inputs and related knowledge service activities. The objective of the article is to discuss the concept of ‘place leadership’ by looking at how the embedded skills, knowledge and cumulated learning of a place can be used by its institutional infrastructure to identify sustainable growth trajectories. In other words, its aim is to explore how the economic, social, institutional and cultural aspects of places shape the opportunities for upgrading and renovation drawing upon their historical specialisation. The conceptual contribution of the article draws on two case studies, in the West Midlands, UK and in Prato, Tuscany, where we study the processes of decision-making, forms of leadership and ultimately the nature of local leadership.

An Analysis of Regional Policies Promoting Networks for Innovation

The diffusion of system-based innovation policies calls for the development of an appropriate evaluation framework. Such a frame requires a careful definition of the unit of analysis and evaluation, since evaluation based on the sum of individual additional results cannot assess appropriately the emergence of system effects. Moreover, it requires experimenting with new tools for measuring the relational effects of the new policies. The paper aims to contribute to this challenge, proposing an analysis of the inner structure and the organization of regional innovation systems in terms of network relations, and considering its results for their potential contribution to the evaluation of innovation policies in a systemic perspective. The empirical application focuses on a set of policies implemented by the Tuscany Region in Italy. It highlights that the same policy intervention may lead to the emergence of different relational architectures connecting the world of research and that of production, depending on the different relational context (technological/sectoral and territorial) in which they are grounded. These two aspects—the structure of the relations and the context in which they develop—must be carefully combined in order to identify the effects of policies aimed at promoting innovation.

District internationalisation and trans-local development

The fast rise of ‘made in China’ in international markets has raised concern among industrial districts in Italy and elsewhere. The challenge comes from a rich variety of factors of development, including local entrepreneurial and public resources. Building on results of fieldwork research on specialised towns and industrial clusters in Guangdong (China), and on investigations of Italian industrial districts, we consider the classification, along various axes, of both the business reactions from agents of districts facing the challenge and their systemic outcomes in terms of local developmental capacities. In particular, delocalisation and relocalisation outcomes are distinguished. The latter offer positive collective prospects, and are related to district internationalisation strategies and actions, targeting localities and clusters which could develop district-like processes. These relations have a core represented by trans-local public goods. Long-term cluster-to-cluster investments in production and trade joint projects may arise together with and around such a core. They help the growth and variation of division of labour at a trans-local scale. Some general requirements and dynamic aspects in the governance of such public goods are suggested and discussed, with illustration from an Italian-Chinese case of trans-local and cluster-to-cluster strategies.

Shaping regional policy responses: the design of innovation poles

The severe economic effects deriving from the international crisis, in combination with increasing constraints on public spending, bring new challenges for industrial policies. Decision-makers are required to find a balance between short-term measures aimed at counteracting financial distress of firms and loss of employment, and long-term strategies in support of innovation. This is particularly urgent for manufacturing regions, such as the Italian ones, which need to pursue structural change. The paper discusses the new policy tools that some Italian regions are designing in order to promote this goal: the innovation poles. Such poles are being designed and implemented in a number of major Italian regions, mostly through a top-down identification of specific technological and territorial targets. Drawing on the evolutionary and local development literature, the article stresses the importance of a preliminary scouting process in order to identify appropriate policy targets, and applies it to an Italian case study. In so doing, close attention is paid to the shape and extent of existing patterns of cooperation on innovation, so as to find out where the insertion of policies in favour of networking might be fruitful and desirable.

Industrial policies in a Marshallian-based multilevel perspective

ABSTRACT Drawing on a multilevel framework of Marshallian external economies, we present a perspective on the foundations of enterprise policies across different levels of government. In so doing, we add complexity to the traditional approach to industrial districts, which often disregards the role of supra-local policies. The argument is based on the idea that the main task of policy-makers is not just to provide generic public goods for communities of people defined by administrative boundaries, but also to support the provision of public goods that strengthen the competitiveness and innovative capacity of social and productive systems functioning at various territorial scales, from that of compact centres of industry to the nation-state and beyond. We apply this multilevel framework to the interpretation of the Italian enterprise policies.

The Emergence of Intermediary Organizations: A Network-based Approach to the Design of Innovation Policies

Book synopsis: Though its roots in the natural sciences go back to the early 20th century, complexity theory as a scientific framework has developed most rapidly since the 1970s. Increasingly, complexity theory has been integrated into the social sciences, and this groundbreaking Handbook on Complexity and Public Policy has brought together top thinkers in complexity and policy from around the world. With contributions from Europe, North America, Brazil and China this comprehensive Handbook splits the topic into three cohesive parts: Theory and Tools, Methods and Modeling, and Application.

Regional policy mixes for enterprise and innovation: A fuzzy-set clustering approach:

The paper identifies different regional policy mixes, ranging from the more minimal to the more proactive or entrepreneurial and verifies their diffusion in the Italian regional enterprise and innovation policies. The empirical analysis is based on an original database containing every enterprise and innovation programme that has been implemented in Italy from 2007 to 2013, and is carried out by means of fuzzy-set clustering techniques. The results show the existence of remarkable heterogeneity, partly reflecting the well-known North-South divide, with some regions adopting minimal policy mixes and other regions adopting different types of proactive mixes.

Forms of Industrial Development in Chinese Specialized Towns and Types of Challenges to European Manufacturing SMEs: An Italian Perspective

This insightful book shows how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from some of the traditionally less dynamic peripheral economies of the ‘old’ EU – namely Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain – have responded to the twin challenges of globalisation and industrial restructuring. Through a series of unique case studies the contributing authors discuss how these economies, and in particular the SME sector, can be transformed.

Cognitive distance in public procurement and public–private partnerships: An analysis of the construction sector:

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are understood as collaborative devices that can be used to achieve both efficiency and innovation. For this potential to be realized, however, some significant obstacles to effective collaboration must be overcome, such as the cognitive distance that often separates public and private agents. In order to deepen our understanding of the collaboration problem, this article assesses the size and characteristics of cognitive distance by looking at agents operating in the construction industry in Italy and Slovenia. Our analysis detects the presence of different types of cognitive distance in different socio-economic contexts, suggesting that cognitive distance is not simply the outcome of individual intentionality but also of social context. We argue that there is constructive room for policies supporting the efficiency and diffusion of PPPs that will facilitate the emergence of context-specific intermediaries to smooth the progress of collaborative work.

The Story of Cluster as a Cross-Boundary Concept: From Local Development to Management Studies

The chapter explores in an original manner the evolutionary trajectories of the cluster concept over time through the application of analytical tools coming from the realm of bibliometric analysis and social network analysis. In particular, we build on a previous work (Lazzeretti et al. J Econ Geogr 14(1), 21–43; 2014) to observe the evolution of the cluster literature alongside two main dimensions: (1) publication outlets and (2) paper keywords. Our analysis confirms the interdisciplinary character of the cluster concept, with the presence of publication outlets from different research fields. However, the contribution of management and innovation studies increases over time. The longitudinal analysis of the keywords confirms this trend and reveals that the cluster literature is evolving from economic and sociological-related issues to management-related topics, where innovation and firm performance are the leading issues.