Abstract

This paper aims to outline the consequences determined by the Third Industrial Revolution on the Italian productive system. The shift to Lean Production changed form and organization of the enterprises, their average size decreased. Furthermore, the territorial distribution of the companies changed, with the productive capacity distributed in a different and more homogeneous way. The industrial geography of Italy changed. Since then, Italy has been no longer divided into three parts (the North-West driven by larger companies, the South driven by State-owned corporations and the North-East with small&medium enterprises) but found itself divided in two: due to processes of path dependence, the «First» and «Third» Italy have shown a trend in converging towards the same model, while the Tyrrhenian South ended up without an autonomous productive system.