The Crisis of the Italian Industrial Districts and its New Successful Entrepreneurs: Data and Suggestions of a Search

This article is intended to show the profound changes that have affected the social and productive Italian local development systems over the past two decades, by analysing a component of its productive structure and of its entrepreneurial culture: companies of excellence that emerged from the technical reorganisation of industrial districts and entrepreneurs that lead them. To describe these institutions and stakeholders of development, we will discuss the results of a search on the excellent “Made in Italy” firms. In addition, in the first part of the work we provide a framework for summarising the socio-economic debate on the dynamics of change of Italian local development systems, which serve to understand delays and virtuosity that these businesses have shown in the face of the international financial crisis and recession. Key-words: local development systems; economic and social change; entrepreneurial culture; technical reorganisation of industrial districts.