Internationalisation strategies in italian district-based firms:Theoretical modelling and empirical evidence

The internationalisation pattern of district firms in the last decades can be viewed -as envisaged by traditional theory- in terms of exploitation of both firm and territorial advantage to expand into foreign markets. Rapid and intense internationalisation processes represent a means for cluster-based firms to exploit the advantages of being located in a cluster and the resulting positive externalities (skilled and specialized labour, specialized services, access to a sort of "collective international knowledge", easy access to information on the internationalisation strategies of main local competitors) on a larger scale. The contribution of district firms to export flows has increased rapidly throughout the last twenty years in different countries (Putnam, 1993; Ffowcs, Williams, 1997), but it has reached an impressive level in nations like Italy where the density of districts and similar territorial networks is high and dated: in fact, almost two thirds of Italian exports stem from districts (Fortis, 1998). The Italian case also highlights the role of the local system in the "international since the beginning" attitude of firms. In fact, most "born global" Italian firms are located in industrial districts (Zucchella, Maccarini, 1999). Similar empirical evidence is reported by Sopas (2001) in Portugal and Brown & Bell (2001) in New Zealand. The relevance of location-specific factors in the born global firms phenomenon is evident also in the case of high tech districts (Saxenian, 1994; Torrisi, 1998), where it is possible to observe a geographic concentration of businesses involved in advanced technologies and related services. Moreover, information technologies may provide an innovative and powerful tool for establishing and enforcing connections (information, explicit knowledge, etc.) between distant locations, thus permitting the creation of networks among different districts (Ganzaroli, 2002). The above considerations not only provide strong arguments to support the role of local systems in firms' internationalisation, but they also indicate the district in itself as an emerging research subject in the international business agenda. In fact, the district or local cluster may represent not only a "facilitating environment", but also a subject capable of its own collective internationalisation process. In these recent years local systems have shown their ability to transfer their structure to foreign markets, thus generating similar local systems in foreign countries, in a sort of district spin-off or district internationalisation (Majocchi, 2000). These factors outline the relevance of geographic co-location and district formation for the fast and intense internationalisation processes of the players involved. More recently, the capacity of geographic co-location in itself in determining such effects seems to have weakened in favour of more firm- or business -specific factors. In particular, there is empirical evidence about the role of a deep niche orientation on export intensity performance and on early and fast internationalisation processes (Zucchella, Maccarini, 1999; Zucchella, 2001 e 2002). Many firms belonging to districts evidence a global niche orientation, thus it may be appropriate to try to separate the effect of business-specific factors from the effect of location-specific ones, in order to understand -if possible- the effective role of geographic co-location on internationalisation patterns. The purpose of this paper is to verify the relevance of both business-specific factors (niche orientation in particular) and location-specific ones (location in a district) on a set of international performance measures (export intensity, geographic scope, time, adoption of alternative foreign market entry modes). The results are grounded on an empirical survey conducted on a sample of 271 international firms and aim at contributing to a better understanding of the actual main drivers of international performance, with particular emphasis on the comparison between business-specific and location-specific ones.