Actes du colloque Marché de la recherche regiosuisse & Colloque ...

Regional policies in Northern Italy: A multi-level governance challenge 25– private R&D expenditures are strongly pro-cyclical. When firms budgets are sufferingentrepreneurs cut research expenses (R&I private expenditures aresomewhat proportional to turnover);– the crisis has mostly struck industries producing durable goods as impoverishedconsumers post-pone purchases, but living without new goods teaches consumersa more sober style of life, change priorities. When individual incomes andsavings will be restored, consumers will come back to purchase durable goodsonly if they have become very innovative (i.e. environmental friendly, low consumingof raw materials and energy, generating low urban/social congestion, beingplatform for new quality services).The main challenge is therefore to pass from a focus on ‘fostering innovation’ to anew one more centred on ‘gaining value from knowledge’. This implies a broking andbridging activity addressed to match skills and competences. In Northern Italy wehave different experiences of regional policies addressing these innovation goals.Here we use the Lombardy case as a benchmark for the Northern one, as Lombardyhas attained important outcomes in the field of innovation and the level (and quality)of research structures in the region is consistently high. 6Despite the fact that information is quite widespread, knowledge, on the contrary, issubject to a strong ‘path dependency’. As a consequence, also the final result of thewhole process – the endless spiral ‘information–knowledge–know-how–creativity’ – isspatially concentrated and strongly supported by a specific, many times idiosyncratic,systemic context which scholars are used to call ‘National/Regional innovation Systems’.It is not surprising that regions are becoming more and more important nodes of economicand technological organization in the new age of global, knowledge-intensivecapitalism. We need complex, systemic innovation and a major goal of Northern regionsin Italy is therefore to facilitate, catalyse, and stimulate resources for ‘researchand innovation’ and their organisation in a system.Metadistricts (or diffused clusters) seem to be appropriate tools to address this problemand the privileged field of application of these strategies. While the ‘industrial district’policy aimed at strengthening spatial agglomeration of firms, the new ‘metadistrict’policy embraces the entire supply chain and overcomes the limits of previousexperiences.Four items are fundamental in the definition of ‘metadistrict’ in the recent Lombardpolicy:– multi-sectoriality – first and foremost, the metadistrict has to cover a range of sectorsand disciplines not only along a given value chain, but it should also includeancillary support services;6 Some key figures for the Lombardy region are the following: 9.1 million inhabitants; more than 800000 companies; 2% of the EU GDP and 20% of the Italian one; 28,3% of national export and37,5% of national import. Lombardy alone represents nearly half of the national technological exchangewith foreign countries; it counts the largest number of universities and researcher in Italy(31 000 researchers, of whom 18 000 in private sector industry); it holds 40% of the Italian EPO patents(overall data in the last 10 years).