Looking for regional systems of innovation: evidence from the Italian innovation survey

The empirical target of this article is two-fold: exploring the variety of regional innovative patterns in Italy; and assessing whether innovation systems can be found, and how they operate, at a sub-national scale. The empirical analysis is based on an in-depth analysis of the data provided by the first Community Innovation Survey (CIS). The article shows that the traditional north-south distinction does not give full account of the wider spectrum of regional patterns in Italy. In particular, regional innovative patterns differ not only according to the specific strategies and technological performances of firms, but also according to the relevance of systemic interactions and the presence of contextual factors favourable to innovation. However, proper regional systems of innovation are found only in a few well-defined areas. In most regions, systemic interactions and knowledge flows between the relevant actors are simply too sparse and too weak to reveal the presence of systems of innovation at work.