The Italian system of innovation: the gradual transition from a weak “mission- oriented” system to a regionalised learning system

The various studies conducted in the past on the performance of the Italian innovation system have almost inevitably underlined the weakness of the Italian R&D systems. Its main salient feature is the poorly performing, insufficiently developed, and scarcely organised block of activities related to Scientific and Technological Research (STR). The failure of the Italian system in promoting basic science and technology development in high-tech sectors is not just “institutional” and it does not involve only the public sphere. In fact, it cannot be limited to the issue of the structural inefficacy of the Italian complex of public institutions delegated to support STR programmes (Universities, centralised authorities at ministerial level, and government funded public centres). On the contrary, it involves also the business sector, namely, the private system of R&D in-house laboratories. Although Italy was a late industrialised country, it did not make any serious effort to overcome its backwardness by establishing new modern institutional forms at the frontier of the most advanced research1 (either within the public system of basic research or in any high-tech sector.) As an inevitable result, Italy is still very backward in high-tech sectors. It failed during the past in the development of any sustainable capability in high-tech sectors such as aerospace, nuclear energy, computer technologies and superconductors, telecommunication and bio-technologies. These are advanced sectors which require a