Entreprises industrielles et sociétés de services aux entreprises : une proximité physique est-elle nécessaire ?

Our article aims at ascertaining the necessity of physical proximity between industry and business services by analyzing the situation of industrial territories with respect to business services. A comparative statistical analysis carried on the different regions in metropolitan France shows that operational services are relatively well developed but knowledge intensive business services under-developed in French industrial territories. We may ask if a co-location of clients and service providers is necessary on each particular industrial territory. A literature review on location factors of business services focused on factors influencing the constraint of physical proximity to clients leads to the conclusion that such factors generally strengthen physical proximity to clients for operational business services whereas they do not have unequivocal influence as for knowledge intensive business services. For the latter, other forms of proximity than co-location seem to be determinant and physical proximity should be considered as complementary rather than substitutable to remote interactions. Our automotive industry study of knowledge intensive business services location emphasizes that physical proximity to industrial clients is more important than metropolitan effects in industrialized territories where there are only medium-sized cities, such as the Franche-Comte region.