Corporate Statecraft

A New Definition

Research Question

Research Manifesto

• Non-state actors influence how norms are created and institutions are shaped. The most common image of this is political lobbying (whether regulated or not). However, drawing on insights from the sociology of law and institutional theory, I argue that firms and other private actors can influence the development of institutions simply through their economic behavior—whether they are aware of it or not. This dynamic is analogous to the role of custom, natural law, and norm entrepreneurship observed historically. I aim to refocus attention on this often overlooked mechanism and examine it in contemporary settings.
  
  
• Polyarchy and diffused entrepreneurship go hand in hand. The stagnation of the political order corresponds to a stagnation of the economic order, leading to less economic mobility and reduced social innovation. Business and technological innovation can still occur in such environments, but they may not uplift everyone. A culture of competition is needed to improve general welfare. Contestability (contendibilità) is key to ensuring that power remains dispersed and open to challenge.
  
  
• Technological revolutions can enable regions to escape path dependency. Incremental innovation tends to reinforce path dependency, potentially increasing the divide between thriving and declining regions. By contrast, the creative application of truly disruptive technologies might allow a region to break from its established trajectory and undergo transformation. This proposition asks under what conditions a major technological shift (such as AI) can help a region overcome historical lock-in.
  
  
• The best ecosystem strategy is often no strategy at all. Preliminary observations across the cases suggest that regional and industrial ecosystems often emerge not from centralized design but from the excellence and catalytic effect of a key actor—a firm, university, or civic institution that succeeds in its domain and, through that success, reshapes its surroundings. In these settings, bottom-up capability building, imitation, and network formation frequently drive self-sustaining trajectories of innovation and renewal. This proposition does not deny the role of industrial policy; rather, it clarifies that public frameworks are most effective when they focus on building enabling infrastructures—both material and immaterial—rather than directly intervening in firms’ strategies or investment decisions. Infrastructure in this sense encompasses the educational, technological, civic, and institutional foundations that allow talent, capital, and ideas to circulate freely, creating the conditions for entrepreneurial breakthroughs and long-term adaptability.
  
  
• "Uncharted" entrepreneurship fosters regional economic resilience. An over-embedded region—one dominated by a specific industrial sector or even a single company—can benefit from what I term uncharted entrepreneurship. Uncharted entrepreneurs introduce novel business ideas into a region that already possesses some compatible capabilities (for example, leveraging a strong local work ethic, as seen historically in places like Valdagno or Pittsburgh). By defying the social pressure to conform to the dominant economic order, these actors create opportunities for diversification and resilience. In economic sociology, this phenomenon resonates with the concept of institutional entrepreneurship and the paradox of embedded agency, whereby change agents emerge from within a tightly knit system.