From the industrial district to the innovative milieu: Contribution to an analysis of territorialised productive organisations

The interest shown in territorialized productive organizations does not simply account for a geographical phenomenon but above all highlights the territorial dimension of development and innovation processes. In the wake of the work done on Italian industrial districts, numerous studies have been conducted that have made it possible to identify similar forms of localized productive organizations. The aim of the present paper is to attempt a synthesis of the way in which these territorialized productive organizations work. To do so, we shall select two concepts: the localized production system and the milieu. The fundamental question is then to identify which logic influences the way a localized production system works: the milieu-actuated territorial logic or the functional logic, which corresponds to industrial organization of an hierarchical natur