CORDIS Archive

EIMS Studies
Patterns of Innovation in Italian Industry

Abstract

This report investigates the relationships between industrial structure and patterns of innovation, on the basis of an empirical study of Italian industry. A variety of technological and economic data on 6,839 firms the CNR -ISAT survey on innovation are used. The data refers to the 1981-1985 period.

Main Findings:

Three broad aggregations of sectors have been identified:

Technology users and traditional sectors
In house innovators
Investment intensive sectors

The main findings are as follows:

• No significant relationship between firm size and all other technological and economic variables has been found at the level of the three major sector aggregations.

• A positive and significant assocation between total innovation cost and investment has emerged for all three major aggregations of sectors.

• The association between fixed investment in machinery and innovative investment is higher in the case of Technology users and Investment intensive sectors as the reliance on outside sources of embodied technological change is greater.

• For in-house innovators the complementary relationship between disembodied and embodied forms of technological change is much stronger than in other sectors.

• Productivity is weakly positively associated to total innovative activities and investment in fixed capital in the three major aggregations.

Empirical studies and the Community Innovation Survey (CIS)