Distretti tecnologici e sistemi regionali di innovazione. Il caso italiano
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Il Mulino

Volume 18

Distretti tecnologici e sistemi regionali di innovazione. Il caso italiano

By Valeria Miceli Il Mulino - Dicember 2010

Innovation, an essential key concept for successful enterprises, requires the cooperation of local areas and of the therein contained expertise. Innovation promotion policies tend to be more and more concentrated on different levels: continental, national and regional. Technological Districts (DT), introduced by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) in the early years of this century, are one of the cooperation areas between the national government and the regional authorities. MIUR's renewed attention to DTs gives the opportunity to re-examine them in the light of a new and systematic analysis. This is the scope of this book, which tries to answer a series of questions: how and why were the Italian DTs established? Is it correct to call them districts, or should they be re-arranged under a new category? Are the existing 29 districts successful, and, if so, to what extent? The purpose if this volume is to help the national legislators to take into consideration national monitoring both in advance, as suggested here, at mid-time and afterwards in order to ensure consistent criteria and comparability of results as well as to single out the initiatives that deserve to be supported. When public resources are scarce there is no room either for ineffective policies or for across-the-board subsidies. The resources need to be concentrated where they can be more productive. Evaluation becomes an essential process and making it carefully provides help in the identification of the more deserving DTs best equipped for global competition.

 Valeria Miceli is a researcher at the Political Science Dept. of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and a member of the scientific committee of the economic analysis research centre (Cranec) of the same University. She is now a visiting member at the Centre for Financial Analysis and Policy (CFAP) of the Cambridge University (UK).