TECNOLOGIE DIROMPENTI NEI DISTRETTI INDUSTRIALI. Un’indagine euristica tra Biella e Reutlingen/ Disruptive technologies in the textile industrial districts: A heuristic study in Biella and Reutlingen

Abstract

This article investigates how digital technologies are reshaping industrial districts through a comparative analysis of the Biella textile district in Italy and the Albstadt-Reutlingen textile cluster in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Using a mixed-methods approach combining financial data, cluster reports, and qualitative analysis, the study explores changes in productivity, governance, and knowledge codification over the fifteen years (2018-2023). The comparison contrasts a brand-driven, luxury-oriented model (Biella, with Zegna as a lead firm) with a technology-intensive, B2B-oriented cluster (Reutlingen). By explicitly linking theory and exploratory data, the article contributes to the literature on industrial districts and global production networks by offering a grounded framework for analyzing how digital infrastructures, outsourcing policies, and knowledge codification may reshape local industrial systems within a data-driven economy. The research hypotheses presented at the end of the text concern possible causal chains, identifying scientific variables that follow the theoretical framework in relation to the adaptive responses of the districts under study.

Keywords:

Disruptive Technologies; Industrial Districts; Global Value Chain; Big Tech; Digital Ecosystems.