Over the last decade, the literature on industrial districts and decentralised business systems in general has aroused an interest that tends to exceed their empirical frequency.
A sequence of factors explains this peculiarity. Initially the interest served to restore faith in the viability of small firms and localised linkages in a world of big firms and global networks.
Later, the gathering number of case histories - from regional examples such as artisan districts and high-tech agglomerations, to examples of organisational decentralisation such as the hollow corporation - helped to illustrate the significance of the institutional and social foundations of economic life.
We learnt that economic success had far less to do with the entrepreneurial virtues of self-reliant rational economic man as postulated by neo-classical economics, than with certain collective foundations such as inter-dependence among economic agents, the presence of business support systems, conventions of dialogue and reciprocity, and, in some localised cases, a culture of social and civic solidarity (see, for example, Aoki, 1988 and Sabel, 1994 on Japan; Trigilia, 1988 and Putnam, 1993 on Italy; Saxenian, 1994 on Silicon Valley; Herrigel, 1995 on Baden Wuttemberg)