Industrial district type of territorial agglomeration has had an important role in regional growth for many years. However, in recent years, because of the intense and rapidly changing competitive scenario, many of the industrial districts that were previously successful cases are in a critical change situation. Given this loss of competitiveness, these systems are forced to implement a set of improvements in order to boost competitiveness, an issue that affects at the same time the traditional way of conceiving these territorial agglomerations.
Thus the main objective of this research is to analyze the response developed by industrial districts to the changes in the competitive environment, identifying the most significant areas in which they are changing their traditional pattern of operation.
To confirm our theoretical arguments, empirical work has focused on the study of the entire population of Spanish industrial districts.
The results confirmed an evolution of the traditional pattern of industrial district. Concretely, we have detected in recent years an increase in the delocalization of production in industrial districts, as well as a rise in the unit value of their products. Moreover, we have observed an increase of tertiarization and diversification of activities. All these changes have in turn generated greater internal heterogeneity. We believe that this work may contribute to the literature on industrial districts in different ways, since the results give support to the configuration of a new district, less rooted in the territory and more connected to global external networks. In this sense, our research is in line with other previous contributions that warn from various perspectives of the necessary changes required by industrial districts to meet new competitive challenges.