Local Systems’ Strategies Coping with Globalization: Collective Local Entrepreneurship

The paper aims at investigating the possible trajectories of regional clusters (industrial districts or local systems) in order to depict feasible strategies to cope with globalization. Same relevant stylized facts on the new structure of global market are presented in order to illustrate the new competitive framework small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) must face. The concept of “complete productive process” is introduced to characterize the special setting necessary for the survival of the regional systems of SME. A local cluster needs to coproduce values, capabilities and institutions: its very identity. Since local systems are essentially “cognitive systems”, they need to go global not as a single firm but as a system. To accomplish this difficult task, they must resort to a collective and cooperative behaviour. To fill this gap, we suggest the concept of “collective local entrepreneurship” as a reference point, a device to anchor the strategic pragmatism necessary to regional clusters to cope with globalization. The renewal of the local “ecosystems” within the international networks (at all different levels) appears to be a general objective. A strong public-private partnership emerges as a strategic commitment. In this perspective emerge the potential dynamics of the conclusive four evolutionary trajectories, which the regional clusters are called upon to deal with