“Division of labour, entrepreneurial sources and regional development: some empirical evidences and one theoretical proposal”,

The paper suggests a theoretical proposal for understanding and addressing entrepreneurial development within a region. It considers as “best practices” for achieving such aim the insights coming from the industrial district (henceforth: ID) model and therefore its key elements are stressed. The paper considers indeed the division of labour exploited by organisations (entrepreneurial sources) in the region as the independent variable for stimulating and modelling regional development since it allows the spread of social capital and human capital between the individuals in these regional networks. Given such theoretical assumptions, the goal of this paper therefore is to analyse such relation between these elements (division of labour, entrepreneurial sources) and the entrepreneurial patterns pursuable by regions. The main outcome of this study is a classification matrix proposing four different types of entrepreneurial development (each of them described via secondary data about some worldwide industrial networks) in which division of labour, human capital and social capital influence considerably the regional entrepreneurial dynamics.