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

Regional policies in Northern Italy: A multi-level governance challenge 31together a range on independent support activities around a particular theme – typesof firms, or industry sectors, or territorial clusters – to provide an ‘ecosystem’ of supportfor innovation.One of the interesting result of international literature on the nexus between innovationand productivity is that growth performance in not based solely on high-tech productionsper se, but it is more likely based on the diffusion of innovation throughoutthe system, allowing the ‘rejuvenation’ of what people regard as low-tech sectors andmature productions.A fundamental consequence of this evidence is that regional policymakers shouldaddress and capture also ‘non innovating’ firms. Almost always they don’t requireleading-edge research outputs (as the DRIADE and SPRING programmes have convincinglywitnessed) but more mature, standardized approach which simply need tobe effectively implemented, allowing SMEs to create more value.For the regional system a fundamental equilibrium should be found out between inhouseinnovation and the appropriation of externally produced knowledge. As a consequence,the enhancement of the ‘absorptive capacity’ of any firm should be stronglypursued at the regional level.There is a wide agreement that the ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy is absolutely inadequateto foster innovation within the territorial context. Different kinds of firms are part of awider, open innovation system in which the interplay between large and small firms,and new and old ones, drive innovation and productivity.An important consequence is that we need to concentrate resources and reach criticalmass: but this implies to select and choose, and this is always very difficult forpolitics. Good discretional, adaptive, evaluated policies are therefore the answer.At the end of this short presentation of some Lombard policies addressing the competitivenessof the regional productive system – through innovation production anddiffusion – we would like to underline three approaches which have proved to be effectiveand successful. We refer to them as: i) the agent-assisted; ii) the peerassisted;and iii) the construction of a community of practice.Within the SPRING programme (see § 4) the TEM response to an undefined willingnessof internationalisation within small firms has proved to be a clear example of thepotential effectiveness of an agent-assisted adoption of new practices (before the‘problem-solving’ answer SMEs need a tailored ‘problem-setting’ phase).The emphasis on firms learning from and with each other is, differently and in a complementaryway, the outcome of a programme such DRIADE (see § 3). Here a peerassistedapproach is at work as the learning mechanism is rooted on the evidencethat adoption can be accelerated by engaging with ‘people like us’, and therefore thepotential for firms in a similar context to act as catalysts and accelerator of adoptionis significant. Through the peer-assisted approach relative advantage perceptionscan be shaped and issue and concern about compatibility can be addressed.This way to learn by networking may also foster the mutual fertilisation of a creativeclimate and a learning climate, helping firms to become more effective in learningfrom external sources.Finally, the metadistricts experience (see § 2) stresses the concept of proximity (withinwhich ‘geographical proximity’ is a very important one) evidencing how it can play