Des clusters aux écosystèmes industriels locaux

‪For several decades, researchers and policy makers have been almost unanimous in considering territorial development and local production systems as key concepts. ‪ Some notions have even played a leading role in the literature as well as in local action devices, such as districts, SPL, milieus, clusters, technopoles, and so on. Nowadays, understanding what relationship is at stake between industry and territory requires taking into account the changes that have occurred over time with regard to these local systems and their integration into the global evolution of contemporary economies. The aim of this paper is to assess and illustrate the way localized industrial systems, today most often referred to as «clusters», have grown in complexity and increasingly internalized contextual dimensions of environmental proximity, as well as societal topics related to local and global interactions between stakeholders. The introduction of these two variables is an invitation to go beyond the traditional framework and boundaries of industry and technological innovation, and to renew the local systems approach by applying it to business systems or industrial ecology dimensions.