CORDIS Archive

Newsletter on innovation from the European Commission's Enterprise DG

	INNOVATION IN ITALY
		Recreating traditional strengths (part 1)
		The backbone of Italy's innovative industry is small companies, generally working together in clusters focused on individual towns. Often these clusters date back decades and even centuries, with traditional crafts reinventing themselves to keep ahead of technological progress down the years.

taly is made up of 20 regions, and it is at regional level that much of the decision-making which affects business is made. This level of regional autonomy reflects Italy's short history as a unified country, and the long-standing differences between the north and south of the country are as apparent in an examination of innovation policy as in other fields.

Italy performs relatively poorly on the European Innovation Scoreboard, with no indicators above the EU mean on the 2002 Scoreboard(1). Areas of significant concern are the positions on business R&D expenditure and the number of high-tech patent applications, both well below the EU mean and falling further behind. However, when we recall that currently the Scoreboard predominantly measures technological innovation, it is apparent that the strengths of Italy's traditional and craft-based industries are not fully reflected in these measures.

In regional terms, the Scoreboard shows that innovative capacity - as with most Member States - is concentrated in just a few regions, with Lombardy (centred on Milan), Piedmont (Turin) and Lazio (Rome) the leading regions. One bright spot is the level of employment in medium- and high-tech manufacturing, with Piedmont and Lombardy amongst the top eight regions in the European Union. However, even Italy's strongest region, Lombardy, comes out below the strongest regions of the majority of other Member States.

When elected in May 2001, the new government made economic growth a key priority, including improving Italy's innovation competence, and set ambitious targets for administrative simplification. One of the first moves was to reorganise the structure of government so that the ministries responsible for education, and for universities and research were amalgamated. Today, the main ministries with responsibilities in the innovation field are the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) and the Ministry of Productive Activities. Although measures to support industry are the primary responsibility of the Ministry of Productive Activities, the situation is complicated through the devolution of competences to the regional authorities. Regions now have much greater ability to set their own innovation and industrial policy priorities, although they operate with restricted finances.

In recent years, a number of tax incentives have been introduced at national level to encourage firms to innovate, in particular tax deductions for investment in new machinery and training of staff. Simplifying the process of starting a company also makes it easier for entrepreneurs. One-stop shops for those planning to launch manufacturing firms now operate in over two-thirds of Italian municipalities. These assist entrepreneurs to complete all the administrative processes needed to create or relocate a company, or transfer its ownership, within set time limits. The one-stop shops represent a major improvement n the old division of responsibilities.

(1) See http://trendchart.cordis.europa.eu/Scoreboard2002/index.html