Industrial districts have been viewed in Italy and internationally as a model that combines production flexibility and organizational coordination with location and sociohistorical sediment. TCI member Luciano Consolati of MetaManagement S.R.L. writes that this was sufficient to gain competitive advantage in the static environment of the past. Learning was adaptive and improvements were incremental and singular. The districts were characterized by peculiar headlessness and lack of a decision-making center. Instead, a sum of individual decisions became the widespread policy.
This traditional model is no longer viable. An incrasingly complex competitive environment forces to plan development processes according to the logic of internationalization. A proactive logic is required. Traditional products need to be repositioned and invesments need to be directed to R&D and human resources. Districts and their individual actors must find the will and consent to aggregate and to pursue the general interests of the territory.
Consolati believes that in the "DNA" of the most important and longest established Italian districts there are skills and human resources for economic and technical response. However, if their heritage is to be preserved, now is the time to move "from words to action" in terms of concrete policies for the districts.
Luciano Consolati
consolati @ metamanagement.it
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20 July 2010
