Meeting on LOCAL DEVELOPMENT – EDITION 2016

Places, networks and actors of change. Digital manufacturing, alternative finance, new territorial scenarios

From 21 to 23 November 2016, Prato Textile Museum, Italy

The conference is a forum promoted since the 1991 in Tuscany (Italy) for exchanging ideas and results, between academics and practitioners, on national and international perspectives of local development, industrial districts and clusters, and related themes. The 2016 will host a Session on the “New manufacturing and local development”, organized in collaboration with the “Makers” project, the University of Birmingham, the Fondazione per la Ricerca e l’Innovazione, the University of Florence and the University of Venice. The session will present the Makers project, focussing in particular on the perspectives of manufacturing recovery led by systems of SMEs, like those typical of the Italian industry, in face of the present-day challenges. These include the effects of the long economic crisis, the relation with Industry 4.0, the trends of re-shoring and near-shoring in the global the value chains, the innovation processes supported by the exchange of knowledge with universities, the identification of new jobs. Guidelines for public policies and private investment strategies will be discussed considering also the increased uncertainty in market horizons, technological trajectories, and institutional structures.

Chair and introduction: Marco Bellandi, University of Florence.