Italy’s national and international cooperation on R&D: an overview

Purpose: The paper aims at discussing the Italian ability to cooperate with national and international partners. More in depth, given the scarce attitude to collaborate with foreign partners in generate patents, the paper is meant at analyzing the Italian ability to involve in R&D cooperation, in order to detect if the inactivity is due to a lack of financial resources available for research. Design of the study/methodology: The methodology followed involved the elaboration of three composite indicators starting from Business Enterprises R&D Expenditures (BERD), Higher Education R&D Expenditures (HERD), and Government R&D Expenditures (GOVERD) whose data was available in the OECD statistical database. Considering money transfers from industry, government, universities and foreign organizations these indicators have been decomposed and properly reassembled through the use of aggregative composition functions with the aim to compare the Italian performance with that of the countries of Europe 28. Then, the qualitative analysis of data on co-patenting and co-ownerships conclude the discussion. Findings: Despite the higher potential in patenting, data showed a scarce collaboration attitude of Italy at the international level. Moreover, it seems that for firms, collaborations with government and foreign partners are relevant to sustain R&D investment. On the contrary, 2 money transfers among higher education institutions and industry are weak, probably due to national innovation policy which doesn’t stimulate knowledge transfer through partnerships. Government also is well supported testifying the relevance of public –private partnerships to push the national innovation system. Practical implications: The study is an attempt to capture Italian capacity to collaborate with public and private entities at the national and international level. However, the work requires deep investigation in order to detect the causes of a negative performance of international cooperation. Originality: The paper’s originality is an attempt to discuss the potential and limits of Italy with regard to cooperation for innovation generation. Limitations: Limits of the study are connected to the lack of data on national collaboration outputs. Moreover, the sample of countries considered is small due to the low availability of data.