Crescita e competitività delle imprese locali

The work contains the results of an empirical survey on the growth and competitiveness factors of Vicenza companies. The research maps the governance, competitive and economic-financial data of more than 2,000 manufacturing companies over a period of 5 years (from 2003 to 2007), with the aim of identifying the “paths of quantitative growth” pursued by local companies and to investigate which of them have combined operational or dimensional growth with an internal qualitative development of their organization and, in particular, thanks to which mechanisms. The data collected through database, questionnaires and interviews were treated with the Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) technique\ r\ n. The SOM technique has made it possible to identify six clusters of businesses, an expression of as many paths\ r\ n of growth and development followed by local businesses.