INNOVATION AND COMPETITIVENESS GO VIA UNIVERSITIES

There is a widespread opinion that the Italian productive system has a presumed low capacity for innovation. Firms are too small to invest in research, there is little investment in R&D functions in relation to the GDP, and the presence of Italy in cutting edge sectors is low. Actually, perhaps all of this is a cliché. Innovation of development (and not only incremental) is actually the daily commitment for thousands of small and medium enterprises. This has to be the starting point if we want to foster the encounter between the productive fabric and centres for innovation, but research policies very often pursue models of success that are not easily applicable to the Italian situation. The major universities in the English-speaking world, with close links to the world of business and supported by private funding, are certainly more sensitive to orienting research towards results for application. The effective encounter between universities and the centres for industrial production in Italy is not as linear. For Italian firms, the stimulus for innovation mostly takes place locally, thanks to particularly efficient structures such as the hubs of networks and of the exchange of knowledge, but which are too marginally with respect to research poles.