As part of the projects for the diffusion of innovation and technology transfer carried out by AREA Science Park, the issue of relations between companies as a source of competitive advantage has been addressed from different points of view. In the current phase, the pervasive development of Information & Communication Technology offers new tools to support inter-company relationships, reducing transaction costs and expanding the information complexity that can be managed by partners. Industrial districts represent an emblematic case in this regard. On the one hand, the leading companies have re-proposed in their development the strongly decentralized production structure, which represents one of the main reasons for holding up in the face of cyclical market crises and increasing competition. On the other hand, the comparison with competitive globalization imposes a permanent tension on improving efficiency and effectiveness, within the company and in the network of its relationships. The new functioning model of a district system could preserve the prerogatives that made it successful and at the same time be able to move the challenge of competitiveness to a higher level, seeking efficiency and effectiveness in the approach to the market of the entire district, understood as a complex production system. But what are the mechanisms that regulate production relationships within a district and what are the spaces and tools to improve them? These questions, which may concern each district system or complex production organization, have been analyzed in this volume with reference to the Friulian district of the chair, an excellent example of an evolving local production system. The result was an analysis which, first of its kind, offers a new interpretation of district relations which lays the conceptual foundations for assessing the plausibility of the "integrated" district model within it and in the circuits of the global economy.
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