Abstract

Services and local development are relevant topics for current political and economic debate in Italy. New patterns are recently arise in links among industrial districts, services economy and economic development. The present article reports the remarks, presented as a short interview, made on the topic by Giuseppe De Rita and Riccardo Varaldo. In this short interview the authors discuss some relevant points on the future of the local development including the importance of industrial districts for the recovery of the Italian economy within the innovative context of markets globalisation and the recent legislative reforms concerning this sector. The results are on particular attention to new organisational forms of industrial districts and SMEs clusters. In particular, they deal with the evolutionary pattern of industrial districts, designing a desirable path of their development in which production specialization ranges from the traditional manufacturing sector to the tertiary one and the immaterial economy.