Also Southern Italy bets on start-ups: in the South - from 2013 to 2017 - the number of small innovative companies grew by an annual rate of 82%, more than the national average which stands at 78%. This is one of the most interesting data that emerges from the report "The economy of the Italian regions and the relationship between local administrations and businesses" by I-Com (the Institute for Competitiveness) presented today in Rome on the occasion of the final stage of the Observatory on territory-business relations which in 2017 touched Barilia, Milan and Venice.
The ORTI Observatory – itinerant incubator of virtuous relationships between businesses and local authorities now in its third edition – was held in collaboration with Airbnb, BASF, CAP, Enel, Eni, Exprivia, Terna, TAP and Vodafone and was developed in partnership with Public Affairs Advisors.
Furthermore, in the South, the percentage of start-ups that are characterized by a strong presence of young people in the corporate structure is higher: in the South, this figure reaches 23% compared to a national average of 20%.
If in 2013 there were only 824 start-ups in Italy, at the end of 2017 those registered were 8.381: In the space of just four years, the number of businesses has increased tenfold. Despite the significant growth in the South however, the majority of start-ups continue to be concentrated in central-northern Italy. In particular in Lombardy – where there are 1.955 innovative companies – followed by Emilia-Romagna with 867 and Lazio with 820. However, if we take into account the number of inhabitants of each Region, it emerges that, in percentage terms, the maximum concentration of start-ups register in the Marche, followed by Trentino Alto Adige, with Lombardy third. Last in this particular ranking is Puglia. “The growth of start-ups in the South is a response to the economic and employment crisis which especially affects the youngest”, declared the president of I-Com Stephen of Empoli who supervised the research together with the director of the Institutions Area Gianluca Sgueo. "This positive trend is also the result of the start-up support programs developed by entities such as Invitalia”, he continued from Empoli who, however, also underlined the main critical issues to be overcome: “We need to work in particular on two fronts. First of all on skills, with the need to acquire the right profiles in the right place. To be clear, a researcher cannot be expected to be the commercial director of a company, not even of a start-up. Furthermore, the capital market for small innovative companies is still too dry and not very liquid: the State must encourage the creation of a virtuous and open ecosystem that makes access to finance easier and encourages private investors to bet on innovation".
The South also records good results in terms of agricultural districts: in Italy there are 10, of which 5 in the North, 4 in the South and only 1 in the Central Regions. Different speech, however, for the 137 Italian industrial districts. The lion's share is made up of Veneto and Lombardy - with 25 and 22 districts respectively - while the first regions of southern Italy are Puglia and Campania, with 8 and 7 districts.
However, the study shows that the southern regions invest less than the others in research and development. Their spending in this regard barely reaches 1% while the regions of the North spend 1,6% and those of the Center 1,5% against a national average of 1,4%. In this scenario, nine Regions exceed the Italian average with R&D expenditure values ranging from 1,6% to 2,3% of GDP: the most virtuous is Piedmont with 2,3%, followed by Emilia -Romagna with 1,9% and Lazio with 1,7%. Among the Southern Regions, only Campania records a figure higher than the national average.
Finally, the study also focuses on the degree of digitization of our public administration and on the diffusion rate of so-called open data. The territorial analysis of the data shows that in Italy just under one in three municipal administrations makes information about them available online. It is in border regions such as Valle d'Aosta, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Trentino Alto Adige that the culture of transparency and citizen participation tends to be more widespread – compared to the rest of the country – with percentages exceeding 40% and a peak 59% in the autonomous province of Bolzano. Furthermore, only 34% of Italian municipal administrations allow an entire procedure to be started and concluded electronically, with clearly higher performances in the northern regions. Only Veneto, Tuscany and Sardinia obtain better results than the national average while Molise, Liguria and Puglia are the Regions that do the absolute worst from this point of view.
