Valentina De Marchi

Industrial Districts and the Collapse of the Marshallian Model: Looking at the Italian Experience:

In the last 15 years, Italys industrial districts (IDs) have been undergoing profound changes. Based on a number of empirical studies, this article analyzes several phenomena now amply evident in Italian IDs, including globalization and its effects on the firm population of each district and its fabric of interorganizational relationships; the impact of immigration on how the social structure and the production structure mutually interpenetrate; the shrinking reproducibility of the entrepreneurial factor; the diversification of the local production structure; an increased concentration of the turnover and workforce within the districts; and a weakening of the fabric of relations between enterprises. The combined effect of these phenomena has been to dismantle the Marshallian model that once characterized the majority of Italian IDs. Given this picture, the article focuses on the directions now being taken by these districts. By systematizing evidence emerging from existing studies on various single districts, we identify four scenarios.

Cooperation Toward Environmental Innovation: an Empirical Investigation

This paper explores the relationship between firms’ cooperation and their propensity toward environmental innovation. Previous literature has emphasized the peculiarities of such innovations based on their drivers, their positive spill-overs and the importance of regulation to trigger them. This paper contributes to the literature by focusing on the importance of cooperation and of vertical, horizontal and lateral cooperative agreements on environmental innovation propensity. I test these hypotheses through a large scale dataset, the Community Innovation Survey for Spanish firms (PITEC), through the use of estimation techniques that allow to control for possible selection bias. The econometric estimations suggest that environmental innovative firms cooperate on innovation to an higher extent than other innovative firms. Furthermore, cooperation with suppliers, KIBS and universities is more relevant than for other innovative firms, whereas cooperation with clients does not seem to be differentially important.

The Greening of Global Value Chains: Insights from the Furniture Industry

With increasing fragmentation of production between independent firms that are spatially dispersed and are responsible for different steps of the production process, a Global Value Chain approach is employed to examine how ‘lead firms’ shape the green features of upstream activities. Comparative case studies in the Italian furniture industry (Ikea, Valcucine) are used to show that lead firms implement ‘hands-on’ governing mechanisms to improve the environmental performance of their value chain partners — moving away from the market but still avoiding vertical integration — but also ‘hands-off’ mechanisms embedded in standards and design. Two governing approaches to the greening of value chains are identified: standard-driven and mentoring-driven, and these are used to provide some reflections on when we are likely to observe one or the other, and also to develop a future research agenda.

Globalization, Recession and the Internationalization of Industrial Districts: Experiences from the Italian Gold Jewellery Industry

Abstract Globalization and the recent recession crisis are significantly challenging Italian industrial districts (IDs), leading to deep transformations in their internationalization, innovation and organization strategies. With our empirical focus on a single industry (gold jewellery) and a specific country (Italy) and through the theoretical lenses of the global value chain (GVC) approach, the evidence in this article sheds light on the differences in how three IDs within Italys gold jewellery sector (Valenza Po, Arezzo and Vicenza) compete in the global arena. Our comparative analysis reveals striking differences among these districts with regard to their upstream and downstream internationalization strategies in response to two industry shocks: increasing global competition in the early 2000s and the world economic recession of 2008–2009. Our explanation for the varied gold jewellery district responses to these two global crises involves both internal and external factors: (1) structural differences between the three IDs; (2) distinct business strategies; and (3) how these districts are linked to the gold jewellery GVC.

Multinational Firms and the Management of Global Networks: Insights from Global Value Chain Studies

Abstract This paper aims at enriching the literature on international business (IB) studies to include insights from Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis to better explain how MNCs can orchestrate a global network organization. A first important contribution of the GVC literature is that it shifts the focus from single firms to their value chains, providing instruments to study how activities are split and organized among different firms at the industry level, and how MNCs can implement different governing mechanisms within a network-based setting. The GVC literature also highlights that retailers (as global buyers) often act as ‘lead firms’ in shaping the trajectories of global industries, while IB studies have so far focused predominantly on manufacturing firms. A fine-grained analysis of alternative forms of governance characterizing value chains can offer additional elements in explaining how MNCs can manage their network relationships in a global scenario. Finally, through their focus on upgrading, GVC studies suggest that knowledge flows and innovation dynamics taking place within value chains are as important as those taking place within the MNC’s organizational border. We conclude by arguing that these insights can help the IB literature to examine the challenges and opportunities MNCs face in engaging with suppliers and to explain the dynamic evolution of orchestrating global activities at the global level.

Determinants of Market Extension in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services: Evidence from a Regional Innovation System

Several studies have emphasized the role of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in fostering innovation in metropolitan areas and regional innovation systems. Such areas are capable of expressing a strong demand for KIBS and consequently stimulate the rise and growth of KIBS. Despite an abundance of literature on KIBS emphasizing the relevance of spatial proximity to customers, many KIBS develop relationships on a broader national or even international scale. No studies have focused explicitly on this apparent discrepancy as yet. The aim of this paper is therefore to fill this theoretical and empirical gap by explaining the firm-level factors relating to the market extension of KIBS within the framework of regional innovation systems. Our analysis is based on a quantitative study on more than 150 KIBS supplying design or communication services located in the Veneto region (north-eastern Italy), an area that can be described as a regional innovation system. Five variables were considered, that is, size, experience, service standardization, investments in network technologies and relational intensity. Our results confirm that three of these variables, but not service standardization and relational intensity, correlate positively with the market extension of KIBS. Policy implications are also discussed.

Do Global Value Chains Offer Developing Countries Learning and Innovation Opportunities

The role of emerging economies in the global economy via embeddedness in Global Value Chains (GVCs) is increasing, but their ability to become innovation leaders is less certain. The GVC approach stresses that the inter-firm linkages afforded by being part of a chain are crucial for transferring knowledge. However, their impact on the innovation performance of the developing country firms involved in these GVCs remains controversial and requires more research. The present study provides a systematic review of the literature on developing country GVCs to investigate the learning channels used by local firms, both within (firm level, collective level) and outside of these value chains (i.e. external sources of learning), and the extent to which this activity promotes innovation. We use cluster analysis to classify the cases identified in a literature review to propose a novel typology of local GVC innovators: (a) GVC-led Innovators that achieve high levels of innovation, relying mainly on sources of knowledge within the GVC; (b) Autonomous Innovators whose innovation activity is based on external sources of learning; (c) Marginal Innovators, which constitute the largest group and are characterized by low levels of innovativeness and some use of knowledge available within the GVCs, but scarce use of external sources.Le rôle des économies émergentes dans l’économie mondiale via l’intégration dans les chaînes de valeur mondiales (CVM) est croissant, mais leur capacité à devenir des leaders de l’innovation est moins certaine. La présente étude propose une revue systématique de la littérature sur les CVM des pays en développement afin d’étudier les canaux d’apprentissage utilisés par les entreprises locales au sein (au niveau des entreprises et au niveau collectif) et en dehors (les sources externes d’apprentissage par exemple) de ces chaînes de valeur. L’article étudie également la mesure dans laquelle cette activité favorise l’innovation. Nous proposons une nouvelle typologie des innovateurs locaux des CVM: (a) les innovateurs dirigés par les CVM qui atteignent des niveaux élevés d’innovation, en s’appuyant principalement sur les sources de connaissances au sein de la CVM; (b) les innovateurs autonomes dont l’activité d’innovation est basée sur des sources d’apprentissage externes; (c) Les innovateurs marginaux, qui constituent le groupe le plus important et se caractérisent par un faible niveau d’innovation et une certaine utilisation des connaissances disponibles au sein des CVM, mais une utilisation limitée des sources externes.

The Economy of the North-Eastern Italy: Crisis and Evolutionary Discontinuity

If during the 1980s and the 1990s North-Eastern Italy represented a peculiar path to the competitiveness on international markets, in more recent times the ability of this model to face suitably the challenges posed by globalization and the recession has been questioned. In this article, we argue that this crisis entailed a deep transformation in the socio-economic structure of Nort-Eastern Italy, which we read along five dimensions that characterized also the previous model: the main specialization, the characteristics of the proprietorship, the new firm formation, the character of innovation capabilities and the organization in industrial districts. In particular, our analysis suggests a shift from manufacturing to service specializations, the weakening of the importance of familiar resources to the advantage of more complex organizational structures, the move from a model characterized by the formation of diffused yet replicative new ventures to one with less yet innovative ones, the shift from incremental innovations developed through learning-by-doing processes to more radical ones based on an intense R&D effort, and, finally, the transition from the industrial districts paradigm to the global value chains one.

Oltre la visione tecnocratica dell’innovazione: i risultati di una ricerca sulle piccolo-medie imprese

Nel panorama europeo il Veneto si distingue come regione caratterizzata da una elevata propensione innovativa, per quanto occupi una posizione arretrata rispetto alle variabili di input tradizionalmente considerate importanti per supportare i processi innovativi delle imprese. A partire dai risultati di una ricerca empirica sulle piccolo-medie imprese manifatturiere del Veneto, in questo articolo si affronta tale apparente paradosso motivandolo con le specificita dei processi innovativi in questa categoria dimensionale, che rappresenta la gran parte del sistema industriale della regione.

Developing capabilities in new ventures: a knowledge management approach

On the basis of a knowledge management perspective, this paper expands the literature on new ventures’ capabilities by considering how these firms fill knowledge gaps and develop the technological, marketing, management, and ICT capabilities they need to compete. In particular, this paper investigates the role of networks in these dynamics. Although new technology-based firms have great potential to introduce innovative products into the market, they might suffer from more critical knowledge gaps and capability weaknesses than established firms. The results of a quantitative investigation of an original data set of more than 400 Italian new ventures specializing in high-tech industries show that these firms acquire knowledge to support their capability growth mainly through the management of intense relations with multiple external sources of knowledge. In addition, capability development is supported by the variety of founders’ industry experience and the presence of young graduates among the founding team.