Knowledge, Social Capabilities and Innovation in the Modern Industrial District

The aim of this research is to analyze the key role that knowledge, Social Capabilities and innovations play in the transfer and diffusion of tacit knowledge in an industrial district and how this creates new knowledge and innovation. The study is also focused on a measure of Social Capabilities within a district using a composite indicator and we investigate the effective role of these inputs in stimulating innovative activity in an industrial district performance. The analysis, measuring Social Capabilities, requires data collection using a questionnaire designed to obtain information which permit the development of qualitative and quantitative indicators. In contrast with the neoclassical production function, where economic growth depends only on traditional resources such as capital, labour and technology, which is an exogenous datum, in the cognitive approach we must consider the residual variables of Social Capabilities and knowledge. These, in fact, represent the key variables to understand the recent structural changes and competitiveness of an industrial district. In this work, the peculiarity of knowledge rests on Social Capabilities or social abilities to increase the process of the accumulation of knowledge and of the network broadening.