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The purpose of this paper is to provide an updated picture of the emergence of specific firms, cities and sectors of excellence in one of the best performing industrial areas of China: Guangdong Province.

The paper focuses on a single province‐case study and zooms on its leading territories, sectors, firms and policies. Geographical areas, industrial sectors and firms are defined “of excellence” according to their contribution to the overall industrial performance of the province.

High industrial performances are not equally spread in the province. They involve specific sectors (such as electronics), areas (Pearl River Delta) and even specific firms (particularly Chinese‐owned and SOEs). This picture is in line with the recent policy objectives (support to ODI by national companies, indigenous innovation, national and local champions, restructuring of SOEs) and with the history of preferential industrial development policies.

Given the concentration of industrial excellence in the province, there is a need to further investigate the leading actors. Given the persistent policy practice to encourage excellences (areas, sectors and firms), there is a need to further investigate the linkages between provincial/local policies and performances. The empirical test on the existence of a causal link between policies and performances of specific territories and sectors is left for further research.

While much of the existing literature concentrates on the impressive industrial growth of China as a whole, the paper stresses the degree of concentration of such growth and the importance of focusing on specific leading actors in order to fully understand the industrial development of the country.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the case of selective industrial policies for the automotive industry in Thailand.

Founding on previous literature and official government documents, the authors describe the implemented policies, dividing them into four phases according to the main trend they followed. The authors suggest results the policies have or have not reached by analyzing the current state of the sector.

The main point is that selective policies implemented in the country were successful in helping the development of the sector as a whole, contributing to the role of Thailand as main actor in the international market. However, such policy initiatives were not able to solve some of the main issues of the automotive sector in the country related to local development, such as the technology dependence on foreign (mainly Japanese) firms and the weakness of local suppliers.

The authors frame the development of the automotive sector in a twofold perspective: on one hand, the international/exogenous factors and, on the other hand, the role of policy. The authors interpret the effects of selective industrial policy under the lens on both evolution and growth of the sector per se and on the enhancement of local capabilities. The work shows that the results do not go in the same direction.

The aim of this paper is to emphasize the role of the place of origin in overcoming the information asymmetries that characterize in particular “experience” and “credence” goods.

After having summarized the role of the country‐of‐origin (COO) in facilitating producers to effectively communicate to consumers the quality of their products, the article presents two case studies: the Chianti Classico wine from Tuscany (Italy) and the tea industry in Guangdong (China).

Both wine and tea have strong links with their place of origin. The two case studies show that business excellence depends not only on firms' strategy, but also on the territory where firms are located. In the case of Chianti Classico, the territorial brand plays a strategy role for product promotion, while Guangdong seems to be less effective in allowing consumers to perceive, and therefore to appreciate, the tea quality at the international level. This makes it possible to draw from the Italian case some indications that could be applied to the Chinese case but also to other productions in the world where the link with the territory is not sufficiently valorized.

Despite the impossibility of drawing general conclusions from case studies, the two selected ones can be considered as emblematic of two different territorial strategies that over time led to two different results. This could be the starting point for policy makers aimed at valorizing the importance of territory for increasing business excellence.

The analysis suggests that connecting the products to their territory of origin can help firms communicate to consumers the quality of their items. The country of origin can be a powerful tool to reinforce a corporate brand, but of course it means admitting that the competitive advantage of a firm is also the result of collective public or private actions devoted to create and communicate a positive image of a specific locality. This implies a joint effort of firms and policy makers.

The paper underlines the similarities between two apparently very distant products, wine and tea. To appreciate such a similarity makes it possible to identify success factors of one sector that can be used to overcome the weaknesses of the other. The indications that arise from the analysis can also be the basis to re‐define the strategy of several other “credence” goods that require the provision to consumers of tools facilitating their process of quality appreciation of products.

This paper aims at providing a new point of view in the comparison between the sectoral specialization of Italian firms and that of companies of some emerging countries, both apparently concentrating on so‐called traditional sectors. What is argued in this paper is that, even if belonging to the same product category, goods produced by Italian and emerging countries' firms differ strongly in terms of quality, and that the competitive advantage of the Italian companies is mainly based on their capacity of exporting “intangible‐intensive goods”.

The study is based on the comparison between Italian and a selected group of emerging countries' (Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam) exports of fashion‐related goods to the American market by means of a new index, called the RUPD (revealed unit price differential). The index is based on the comparison between the average export prices of Italian and of the selected emerging countries' fashion goods (at a five‐digit level). The RUPD “reveals” ex post how much more a consumer has been shown to be willing to pay for a specific good in comparison to another good sold on the same market, belonging to the same category and produced in another country (or group of countries). If the RUPD is calculated using sufficiently disaggregated data (at least at the four‐ or five‐digit level) we can hypothesize that such an index can actually reflect how different consumers perceive a product in comparison with another one, implicitly considering it as non‐homogeneous and non‐substitutable.

The analysis of RUPDs between Italy and the selected emerging countries shows that most Italian fashion goods are sold on the American market at much higher prices. The relative weight of sectors with higher RUPD has been rising over the years, with a growing number of products showing an increasing unit price differential between Italian products and those from emerging countries. Furthermore, many sectors maintain a high RUPD for the whole period considered (2000‐2009). This allows the authors to argue that in these fashion sectors American consumers perceive substantial differences between Italian and emerging countries' goods that are primarily intangible.

Relevant insights can be drawn by adding to the analysis the evolution of market shares. The final part of the article presents a first exercise in this direction that seems to suggest interest for further analysis.

The analysis carried out in this article suggests that one way to face growing competition with emerging actors is not just to move towards high‐tech sectors. Even if operating in traditional sectors, Italian firms still offer excellence goods that are appreciated in international markets. For this scenario to be sustainable in the future, there are three suggested strategies: to continue to invest in R&D and innovation (also and especially in times of crisis) in order to maintain high levels of excellence; to strengthen marketing capacities (quality differentials have to be perceived and appreciated by consumers); and giving great importance to the utilization of the available intellectual property rights protection tools, since intangible‐intensive goods are particularly easy to imitate.

In the last few years, companies in highly industrialized countries have been seriously threatened by high competitive pressure coming from firms in new emerging countries. For this reason, many observers suggest that firms in advanced countries should reposition their production towards high‐tech sectors. The analysis carried out in this article suggests that a different perspective can originate different results, on the basis of which different strategies can and should be pursued in order for firms – even if operating in traditional sectors – to maintain a competitive advantage in international markets.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between medium‐large firms' industrial performance, territorial factors and local development policies.

The paper is an empirical econometric investigation based on a panel dataset of county‐level data, carried out in the Guangdong Province for the period 2000‐2008.

Results suggest a positive and significant relationship between policies at the local level and business performance. The most important determinants of industrial performance appear to be development zones and specialized towns – on the policy side – as well as the presence of urban areas, investment in innovation and FDI. Given the complexity of the relationships, further research is called for in order to build more evidence for this and other Chinese provinces.

The analysis confirms the initial hypothesis that business excellence can be influenced by the specific characteristics of the territories where firms are located, among which there might be government policies aiming at local development and encouraging a better business environment.

Relevant to the policy‐making process, results suggest that business excellence should not be viewed as only a matter of business strategies. It can be a result of territorial excellence and effective local development policies.

In the international debate there are very few papers testing the relationship between policies and industrial performances in China. Even fewer explore this relationship at the local level. This paper offers a unique county‐level perspective and in‐depth view on local industrial policies.

Technological entrepreneurship concerns the transformation of potentially viable technological opportunities into successful businesses. Absorptive capacity is argued to be essential for this transformation, since it can facilitate the prediction of new technology trends and the assimilation and application of new knowledge to produce new commercial outputs. The investigation of the relationships between absorptive capacity, technological entrepreneurship and their impact on Guangdong technology firms' performance is the purpose of this study.

In this aim a positive causal chain from absorptive capacity to technological entrepreneurship and from this latter to performance is tested through a mediation analysis, which uses an ordinary least squares regression‐based path analytical framework for estimating indirect effects on a sample of 113 Guangdong technology‐based firms.

Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that greater absorptive capacity leads to greater technological entrepreneurship, which in turn leads to greater performance. Therefore evidence is provided about both the mediating role of technological entrepreneurship and the role of absorptive capacity as its antecedent in relation to Guangdong‐based technology firms' performance.

A relevant but somewhat neglected relationship is examined using an integrative model in the Guangdong context. Moreover the study uses direct measures of absorptive capacity as a capability and provides a firm‐level operationalization of technological entrepreneurship. In so doing it also adopts state‐of‐the‐art analysis techniques and highlights the relevance of investments in soft factors for Guangdong technology firms' path towards excellence.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the development strategies of two Chinese global players in the high‐tech sectors.

The paper adopts a case‐study approach on Huawei Technology Co. Ltd (Huawei) and Jing‐Hua Optical and Electronics Co. Ltd (JOC).

While Huawei's first strategic decision was that of becoming a leader on the domestic market, the key choice for JOC was that of acquiring a European firm. However common features emerge: persistent investment in R&D, strategic collaboration with universities and presence of government supporting policies, even though the case studies suggest the existence of thresholds for firms to access the benefits of government policy.

The results pave the way for more general discussions on the emergence of champions of excellence in China. They reinforce the idea that Chinese industrial development is built on non‐conventional catching‐up processes at the country, local and firm level. They confirm that in order to fully catch the success of national Chinese champions the role of government policies should be better investigated.

Results highlight the importance of R&D investment and technology transfer also for SMEs in high‐tech sectors. As for policy makers, the practice of official institutional recognition – a well experimented form of rewarding used in China – might be an effective way to stimulate virtuous imitative processes.

The comparison of these two global players is itself original. Moreover there is a valuable attempt to understand from a national champion's perspective the importance of supra‐firms factors such as collaboration with other institutions and government policies.