144.2
The «Italian Paradox» in the High-Tech Industries
As it is well known, Italy is under-specialised in the high tech industries and, during the last decade, has recorded disappointing performances in these sectors. In particular, the innovative capacity of Italian firms is quite low. 1) Patenting is below the European average: 7.4 patents per million of inhabitants in Italy vs 19.6 per million of inhabitants in the EU. 2) Furthermore, despite being the fourth largest economy in the EU in terms of GDP, Italy is only sixth for high-tech applications to the European Patent Office.
However, Italy has a potential in these industries, which has not been fully exploited yet. In fact, it ranks third amongst European countries for the number of high tech firms and for added value. Moreover, the percentage of employment in high-tech and medium high-tech sectors on the total of workforce (8.1%) is similar to the European Union average.
On the basis of this data, how can the Italian Paradox be explained? I will try to answer this question focusing on two aspect of the “Italian case”: 1) the weakness of its National system of innovation and 2) the territorial unbalances of its economic development. In fact, according to the 2013 European Innovation Scoreboard – which gives a comparative assessment of the strength of EU27 Member States’ innovation systems – Italy ranks only fifteenth in Europe in terms of innovative capacity. Furthermore, Italy is characterized by a high degree of internal diversity. So national averages do not render the internal complexity and diversification of the economic development of a “regionalized form of capitalism” as that of the Italian case. To corroborate this thesis, I will present the results of an analysis carried out on the Italian geography of innovation.