Jean-Marc Zuliani

The Toulouse Cluster of On-board Systems: A Process of Collective Innovation and Learning

Abstract Analysis by product or by type of activity is becoming less and less pertinent when characterizing the production organization of industrial clusters and local productive systems. In numerous regions and metropolitan areas, the way that economic activities are based geographically reveals relationships which go across different sectors of activity, on the basis of the similarity of skills required. At Toulouse, on-board systems, mainly sets of equipment composed of electronic and computer components integrated into an aircraft, a satellite or an automobile, were first developed on a sectorial basis before becoming progressively the subject of transverse skills and knowledge between the different industrial sectors (aeronautics, space, automobile electronics). Today this system is tending to consolidate on the basis of positive externalities such as the sharing of common subcontracting of information technology services, the collaboration of industrial firms with engineering science institutions, the circulation of personnel within the local labour market. To this must be added a strong institutional input which is manifested by the addition of an “on-board systems” section to the Competitive Cluster “Aeronautics and Space” common to the Midi-Pyrenees and Aquitaine regions. In the case of Toulouse, the “on-board systems” activities form the basis of a local organization of these high-technology activities into a local skills system.

The Decentralisation of Airbus Production and Services

Airbus has been multisourcing production since the first rollouts in the late 1970s, spawning clusters of suppliers around its locations in Bristol, Hamburg, Madrid and Toulouse. Moreover, both the A380 project and globalisation of the aircraft market pointed up the need and value of outsourcing. This paper analyses the outlook for supplier clusters in Toulouse and elsewhere based on Airbus thinking and practices before identifying the ingredients of successful outsourcing.

Hub Firms and the Dynamics of Territorial Innovation: Case Studies of Thales and Liebherr in Toulouse

The principal objective of this paper was to offer an approach to the notion of hub firms using concepts from the economy of proximity. It shows that the specificity of the hub firm lies in its ability to combine technical and relational skills, allowing early involvement with, for example, an aircraft manufacturer in order to take part in the design and production of systems or sub-assemblies. A particular characteristic of the hub firm is the way it develops linked organizational and geographical proximities which this article analyses in detail. In particular, such firms demonstrate the capacity to establish different types of organizational proximity based on whether they are co-ordinating with the architect-integrators or with sub-contractors, proximities sometimes reinforced by a temporary geographical proximity. When hub firms co-ordinate with industrial or scientific partners, which help them to conceive and master particular sets of skills, they often forge links based on geographical proximity in order to develop the innovations necessary for the acquisition and master of these in-house skills. These theoretical arguments are then tested in the cases of the hub firms Thales Aerospace and Liebherr Aerospace in the Toulouse aeronautical complex.