Industry 4.0. Transforming local productive systems in the Tuscany region

The current wave of technological change is affecting local productive systems of specialised SMEs, such as industrial districts (IDs), which still characterise important parts of the European manufacturing sector. Dominant and quite restricted approaches to Industry 4.0 paint a bleak scenario for such IDs, suggesting that they might be doomed to decline or to becoming dependent on large technological companies. Instead, the more holistic approach that has emerged in the MAKERS project of Industry 4.0+ illustrates the opportunities that the new technologies can offer to smallscale firms and systems that rely on them, such as IDs, to embark on transformative paths that recombine embedded specialisation with new technologies. The chapter discusses the processes of knowledge recombination that can occur in IDs, followed by some case studies taken from the Tuscany region in Italy, and some policy implications