ABSTRACT
Both the economy and territory are experiencing a period of profound and rapid change. We are confronted with the explosion of structures (political, social, economic and territorial). And we are witnessing the increasing complexity of relationships between the local and the global dimensions (internal networks vs. external networks). New world visions are taking shape. Man is discovering new representations of the world in which everything is accelerating thanks to the techniques and technologies of communication, production and distribution. The innovative milieux are, by definition (Camagni,1992), successful territorial spaces. Their proliferation in the last 25 years are the best proof of this. Nonetheless, the changes which are taking place, global by nature, pose a certain number of major threats to which the innovative milieux must know how to respond and must respond, in order to guarantee their continuity and to avoid the negative effects of entropy and the loss of identity (Bramanti, 1994), which could lead to their actual death. These factors are behind the interest in a comparative analysis, which aims to study the models of response adopted by the different milieux, centred on their ability to change their internal structure and not just to modify strategy or performance (Gremi IV).
