International audience The aim of this article is to broaden the notion of « local productive system » beyond the specific case of « districts » of small firms specialized in traditional products. I use the criterion of the existence of cooperations that coexist with competition relations within a set of firms of a specific place (and sometimes scientific organizations). These cooperations are mainly favoured by the structure of social networks. On the basis of this general conception, it is possible to use the notion of local productive system for analysing different productive forms (technopoles, local subcontracting systems, rare activities with mondial market, etc.).