Territorial policies for industrial renaissance and innovation

Industrial districts, cities, and other local reproductive systems should be considered still as a fundamental structure of multiscale policies of industrial development in contemporary Italy. However the challenges brought about by the present phase of globalization, multiplied by the effects of the last international economic crisis and the following recession, give to the prospects of industrial development a more dramatic meaning, which is referred here as the need of industrial renaissance. Discontinuities in local innovation and internationalization processes should be managed, and new and traditional production systems helped to find a lease of good life in Italy. In this context the local level of the industrial economies and policies, though fundamental, becomes clearly more dependent on processes which take place on larger territorial scales. The paper tries to illustrate what are some of the requisites for effective combinations of different scales of industrial processes and policies in contemporary Italy, focussing in particular to the national level.