ICT in Industrial Districts: An Empirical Analysis on Adoption, Use and Impact

The aim of this study is to analyse the main determinants of the adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the relationship between ICT and the patterns of innovation in an Italian industrial district. The analysis is carried out on a database of 118 textile enterprises located in Biella, a well-known industrial district specialized in medium to high quality woollen yarns and textiles, that have been interviewed following a structured questionnaire. On the whole, the rate of adoption and use of ICT in Biella is rather low and this confirms the results of other studies on industrial districts that are specialized in traditional sectors. Nevertheless, our analysis also shows that considering ICT as a general technology may be misleading. Instead, it is useful to disentangle the different ICT; in particular, there are significant differences between IT involving production, administration and logistic processes and the communication technologies (CT). Moreover, on a smaller sample of 50 firms we have tested the hypothesis that adoption and use of ICT may positively influence innovation. In this case, we find that different types of innovations, for instance, product, process and organizational innovations, are influenced by very different variables.