Industrial district as a source of knowledge creation and regeneration: the role of competencies in the Belluno eyewear district's growth

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the industrial district can be defined a source knowledge creation and regeneration. Consequently, it is important to clarify the correlation between industrial district and knowledge according to the economic literature. The second part focuses on a concrete case study. In this regard, the object of study concerns the Belluno eyewear district with a brief reference to the Luxottica path of growth, that will be analysed more in detail in the fourth chapter. The focus on the Belluno industrial district allows to understand in the third chapter the role of the intra-district flows of knowledge, which allow firms to improve the process of innovation and obtain competitive advantages. This enable to comprehend the idea of the industrial district as a cognitive system and how the processes of knowledge formation and dissemination take place, allowing this local system to become a driver for the local innovation. In this perspective of analysis, the industrial districts can continue to operate as local innovation systems, only if they are able to efficiently manage the flows of knowledge inside their socio-economic environments. The last paragraph of this chapter concerns the potential economic effects that the Coronavirus, the global epidemic that has spread from the first part of 2020, could have into the global value chains. In the last part, it is underlined how the vertical integration of Luxottica has played a key role in its development and in the improvement of its productive skills and competencies. In particular, within this chapter it is also taken into consideration the process of delocalisation in China: a strategic approach that has favoured to improve the productive capacity of Luxottica and increase its degree of vertical integration. At the end of the chapter, on the basis of the current economic and health crisis because of the Covid-19, are taken into considerations the potential changes that the global disease could create on the Luxottica’s value chain.