One year after the first edition, the big names in Italian and international technological innovation meet again in the Veneto region, in the splendid setting of Castelbrando in Cison di Valmarino. the aegis of Ambrosetti – The European House devotes a second forum to the topic.
But at what stage is technological innovation in Italy, in the face of legislation that is still too complicated (despite the digital agenda approved by the Monti government, an important first step for startups) and a culture that is perhaps not yet so marked by new and investing in ideas and risk? The Ambrosetti community has published the TITT (Technology, Innovation and Technology Transfer) report which shows that the USA is still the leading country of the global innovation system while Asia climbs the rankings with China growing in terms of output indicators, South Korea and Singapore which are confirmed as world reference centers, e new protagonists who forcefully appear on the international scene such as Israel, Chile and Brazil.
Europe confirms itself between ups and downs: some countries are absolute leaders, such as the Scandinavians who invest more than 3% of their GDP in innovation, and others modest or moderate, such as Italy, which in the ranking of innovative capacity drawn up by the Commission The EU is still below the European average. In fact, the beautiful country of the past does not seem too much projected towards the future: startups and spinoffs are still terms unknown to most e therefore it is not surprising that investments in innovation are only 1,26% of GDP, while the EU-27 average is 2%, Finland is at the world top with 3,8% and in percentage terms only Greece is worse than us (0,6%).
In absolute terms, just to give an idea, Italy invested in R&D in 2011 (OECD and Eurostat data) the total figure of 19,2 billion euros, in the presence of 302,6 billion in the USA, 115,7 in China, 103,6 in Japan, or even 70,5 in Germany and 39,5 in France. The scarce innovative capacity is part of a more general systemic difficulty of the economy of the boot, which in real terms saw its GDP grow between 2000 and 2012 by only 0,4% (1,4% the average for OECD countries) , While per capita income has decreased by 0,2% since 2000 and the purchasing power of citizens by 6% in the same period (Istat data). Not to mention that total productivity (Tfp: Total Factor Productivity) recorded the worst performance among the main industrialized countries in the decade 2000-2010: it is the only one (along with 0,1% in Spain) to drop, and it does so by 0,5 .0,3%, while France and Germany are at +0,6 and +1,2%, the USA at 3,1% and South Korea at +XNUMX%.
Few investments in a sick economy (perhaps for that very reason?), yet ideas are not lacking. The real problem therefore, according to the report of the Ambrosetti forum, is precisely that good ideas struggle to translate into substantial innovation and GDP points, as demonstrated by the low patent density (12 patents per million inhabitants, 67 in the Eurozone, 123 in Japan) and the decreasing values of R&D-intensive exports (from 9% in 2000 to the current 6,8% ).
Finally, the Italian innovation system is less and less "open", or less and less inclined to attract foreign investments: patents registered in collaboration with foreign inventors are few (13,5% vs 24,5% in the UK); only 12,1% of companies that innovate declare that they cooperate with research institutions/external companies; And the system "loses funds" EU: in the VII Framework Program for Research and Technological Development Italy recorded a financial return percentage ratio between European budget support and Community innovation funding of just over 60% compared to 85% recorded by Germany, 78% by Spain and 183% by Estonia.
Attachments: report titt 2013.pdf
