Local Systems and the Minor Architecture of Markets

Abstract

This chapter focuses on some crucial issues related to entrepreneurial development in Russia, which emerge from the area studies on the subject. The first section provides evidence on how the administrative regime tends to reproduce conditions that distort the recognition of opportunities, and keeps small businesses in subaltern conditions. The second recalls some differences among the socio-territorial systems in terms of economic complexity and openness to international markets, and points to the ways in which they impinge on the ease of doing business. The third section looks at Russia through Italian lenses starting from the idea that the “Third Italy” of SMEs and industrial clusters may be an unusual but good comparator for reassessing the role of emerging entrepreneurship in local socio-economic systems.