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

Regional policies in Northern Italy: A multi-level governance challenge 27– geographic location – although the concept of metadistrict assumes that oldfashionedlocal boundaries are no longer a key feature, it is still true that a personalrelationship and partnership between enterprises is rooted on a physicalgeographic location and face-to-face connections;– significance – the metadistrict has to operate within industrial and scientific researchareas that are relevant in Lombardy;– leadership – the presence of an industry or market leader in Lombardy who hasthe credential and the capability to represent the sector is another key feature forthe metadistrict.They represent a step forwards with respect to what the national low envisages asindustrial policy. Metadistricts serve the purpose of identifying areas of ‘productiveexcellence’ with a high potential, where to convey public funding in order to reinforcenetworks of actors sharing similar technologies.Furthermore, regional government policy has been oriented to finance networks linkingfirms, universities and/or research centres rather than individual firms.Six clusters – which represent the ‘smart specialisation’ of Lombardy: food biotechnologies,no-food biotechnologies, fashion, industrial design, new materials, and ICT– have been developed and outcomes are quite interesting.In the last open call (2008) 14 million euros have been devoted to fund some 20 projects– suggested by a network of firms (at least 3) jointly with research institutions.An overall number of 86 enterprises plus 11 university departments and 8 researchcentres are the players at work.The main learnings of the metadistricts policy are related to:– the creation of an organisational context where creativity may flourish (and thismeans also that Lombardy system may become attractive for talents);– the creation of long-term, lasting relationships rather than the usual pop-up ofspot knowledge transactions;– the starting–developing–strengthening of a true ‘community of practices’ withinthe different territories, which bring together entrepreneurs and researchers (alwaysremembering that are not organisations which learn but rather people withinthem).The strong emphasis on networking attitude is the natural bridge towards the secondpolicy here explored, i.e. the deliberate and strategically pursued creation of newnetworks of SMEs.3 Aggregation policy: the DRIADE 7 projectThe second policy here discussed is directly devoted to the promotion of aggregation.For small firms – which remain the large majority of Lombard enterprises and afundamental component of its international competitiveness – dimensional growthcannot be opposed to aggregation/cooperation strategies: it is a false dichotomy.Networking may be an appropriate strategy to address a number of different goals: to7 DRIADE = Regional districts for innovation, attractiveness, and dynamism of local economies.