Many of the insightful writings on clusters identify the role of entrepreneurs as key agents in the formation of firms and clusters. This thesis argues instead that local entrepreneurship is not ceased once firms and clusters are established; local entrepreneurship is about the continuous (re)creation of both businesses and clusters in global spaces. Global spaces for local entrepreneurship emphasises how firms collectively become an agent of continuous renewal. Firms enact an organising context materialising in networks that stretch relations and collaborations according to the issues being dealt with. These networks are localised but are extended beyond the geographical boundaries of clusters. One important example of this, which is in focus in this doctoral thesis, is that firms operating in clusters often interact with actors whom they have met at international trade fairs (ITFs). ITFs are those attractive events that individuals, firms and institutions attend temporarily to exhibit and trade products in foreign and national markets. This thesis is based on the work contained in a cover and five papers. Each paper contributes to the research objective and questions brought forward in the thesis cover. The empirical evidence has been mostly drawn from several case studies conducted in the Lammhult cluster in Sweden. The findings show that firms build their organising contexts in order to stretch the reach and accessibility to local and non-local actors; they jointly co-create potential opportunities. The organising contexts are mapped in networks using three proximity orders. The empirical findings report three types of situations in which there is a potential opportunity for continuous renewal. By emphasising the opportunities that can be originated when a business is not realised or when a new or improved product or process has not been generated yet, this thesis aims to stimulate a theoretical reappraisal of global spaces for local entrepreneurship. With the conceptual development of global spaces for local entrepreneurship, we put forward the idea that such spaces enhance an ability to renew firms and clusters. The underlying reason is that local entrepreneurship is centered on the social interaction between individuals, firms and/or institutions; it materialises in intended and unintended dialogical situations when there is a commitment to the continuous renewal of firms and clusters. Such dialogical situations carry with them an opportunity for co-creating new businesses, new products and new processes.

Many of the insightful writings on clusters identify the role of entrepreneurs as key agents in the formation of firms and clusters. This thesis argues instead that local entrepreneurship is not ceased once firms and clusters are established; local entrepreneurship is about the continuous (re)creation of both businesses and clusters in global spaces. Global spaces for local entrepreneurship emphasises how firms collectively become an agent of continuous renewal. Firms enact an organising context materialising in networks that stretch relations and collaborations according to the issues being dealt with. These networks are localised but are extended beyond the geographical boundaries of clusters. One important example of this, which is in focus in this doctoral thesis, is that firms operating in clusters often interact with actors whom they have met at international trade fairs (ITFs). ITFs are those attractive events that individuals, firms and institutions attend temporarily to exhibit and trade products in foreign and national markets. This thesis is based on the work contained in a cover and five papers. Each paper contributes to the research objective and questions brought forward in the thesis cover. The empirical evidence has been mostly drawn from several case studies conducted in the Lammhult cluster in Sweden. The findings show that firms build their organising contexts in order to stretch the reach and accessibility to local and non-local actors; they jointly co-create potential opportunities. The organising contexts are mapped in networks using three proximity orders. The empirical findings report three types of situations in which there is a potential opportunity for continuous renewal. By emphasising the opportunities that can be originated when a business is not realised or when a new or improved product or process has not been generated yet, this thesis aims to stimulate a theoretical reappraisal of global spaces for local entrepreneurship. With the conceptual development of global spaces for local entrepreneurship, we put forward the idea that such spaces enhance an ability to renew firms and clusters. The underlying reason is that local entrepreneurship is centered on the social interaction between individuals, firms and/or institutions; it materialises in intended and unintended dialogical situations when there is a commitment to the continuous renewal of firms and clusters. Such dialogical situations carry with them an opportunity for co-creating new businesses, new products and new processes.

Cette thèse porte sur l’étude de la communication orale parmi des locuteurs de langues romanes différentes, dans une situation professionnelle plurilingue. En utilisant la méthodologie et les principes théoriques de l’analyse de la conversation, nous proposons l’analyse d’un corpus audiovisuel, que nous avons réalisé dans trois salons commerciaux internationaux, en France et en Italie. Le but principal de cette recherche est d’étudier une dimension encore peu explorée dans le domaine de l’intercompréhension romane, celle de l’interaction orale plurilingue en situation de communication spontanée. La thèse s’ouvre par un cadre théorique sur la didactique de l’intercompréhension et l’analyse de la conversation et une présentation des données, puis propose trois chapitres analytiques. Premièrement, nous décrivons les spécificités des interactions dans les salons commerciaux – un contexte professionnel qui n’avait pas encore été étudié en analyse de la conversation – en nous appuyant sur des single cases représentatifs des trois corpus. Ensuite, nous proposons une analyse systématique des pratiques explicites et implicites de négociation et renégociation de la langue attestées dans le corpus et du discours des participants sur leurs (in)compétences linguistiques. Enfin, nous nous concentrons sur certains microphénomènes interactionnels caractéristiques de la communication entre locuteurs romanophones : le recours ponctuel à la langue maternelle lors de la formulation de noms propres et de nombres ainsi que lors des recherches de mots ; un type d’hétéro-répétition que nous avons appelé “répétition plurilingue” ; certaines séquences métalinguistiques qui témoignent d’un intérêt des participants envers les langues de leurs interlocuteurs. En nous appuyant sur ces analyses, nous développons enfin une réflexion didactique, fondée sur la notion de compétence d’interaction plurilingue, qui vise à contribuer à l’avancement des études sur l’intercompréhension romane. / This thesis focuses on oral communication between speakers of different Romance languages in a plurilingual professional context. By relying on the methodology and theoretical principles of conversation analysis, I present the analysis of an audio-visual corpus, which I collected in three international trade fairs, in France and Italy. The main goal of this research is to study a dimension which remains relatively unexplored so far in the field of Romance intercomprehension: plurilingual oral interactions in situation of spontaneous communication.The thesis opens with a theoretical framework related to intercomprehension teaching and conversation analysis, and a data presentation, and then unfolds through three analytic chapters. In the first one, I describe the characteristics of interactions in trade fairs – a work context that had not yet been studied in conversation analysis – by relying on single cases from the three corpora. Then, I present a systematic analysis of negotiation and renegotiation explicit and implicit practices found in the data, and an examination of participants’ speech about their linguistic (in)competences. Finally, I focus on some interactional micro phenomena that are recurrent in Romance speakers’ communication: ad hoc use of mother tongue for the formulation of proper names and numbers, and for word searches; a type of other-repetition that I propose to call “plurilingual repetition”; metalinguistic sequences that show the participants’ interest towards the language of their interlocutor. Finally, by relying on these analyses, I develop a teaching-oriented reflexion, based on the notion of interactional competence, which aims to contribute to the progress of the research on Romance intercomprehension.