Network Impresa 4.0: continuità o riconfigurazione dei sistemi regionali dell’innovazione?

Abstract

The public and scientific debate regarding the Italian Industry 4.0 policy has so far been captured by incentive-based measures, overshadowing measures to support the dissemination and transfer of knowledge. The "Impresa 4.0 Network", from 2017, aims to create network infrastructures based on (semi-)public organizations to foster information dissemination and collaboration. In the context of a highly regionalized development model such as the Italian one, it seems reasonable to ask to what extent the composition and structure of formal networks attributable to this policy have entailed a substantial continuity or discontinuity with respect to the peculiarities of a given regional innovation system and may, as a result, vary in relation to the characteristics of a specific local institutional structure. The objective of this contribution is to map the networks formed from the intermediaries identified by the Impresa 4.0 Network project in the regions of Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. Where the choice of these two regions comes from the tradition that identifies limited firm size as a characteristic of north-central regions.  Thanks to the techniques of social network analysis, it was possible to derive some useful evidence for interpreting the territorial configuration of networks, further supported by the documentary analysis regarding the most recent regional policies on the subject. Each region seems to have selected a particular level of intermediaries envisaged by the policy to elaborate a new institutional layer, on which to invest in order to preserve the distinctive features of its regional governance.