Compétitivité territoriale, milieux locaux et apprentissage collectif : une contre-réflexion critique

In a globalising economy, territories and not just firms increasingly find themselves in competition with each other. In fact, differently from the case of countries, cities and regions compete, on the international market for goods and production factors, on the basis of an absolute advantage principle, and not of a comparative advantage principle ; this means that no efficient, automatic mechanism may grant each territory some role in the inter-national division of labour, whatever its relative performance. Therefore, weak and lagging territories ? in terms of competitiveness of the economic fabric, internal/external accessibility, quality of the human and environmental factors, internal synergy and learning capability ? risk exclusion and decline to a larger extent than in the past. Particularly in the present techno-economic phase, witnessing the increasing importance of knowledge factors, of immaterial elements linked to culture, taste and creativity, the innovative utilisation of the existing stock of codified knowledge and technologies requires greater investments in tacit knowledge, human capital, management and organisation, co-operation and networking ; in a word, it requires conditions that are rare and not at all ubiquitous. Classification JEL : R11, F22, F15