Kick-starting this national roundtable event was the observation that the question of the competitiveness of Italian firms in global markets can be summed up in the indisputable if somewhat simplified proposition that while exports alone are not enough to get by on, they are nevertheless vital for survival. It was noted that the longstanding issue of the internationalization of Italian SMEs has been a subject of public debate for decades, in parallel with the escalation of globalization and the technological revolution. With the onset of the global economic crisis, this challenge was evidently weighed down by even more complex and taxing uncertainties, such as to call into question the very structure of the Italian production model, its capacity to withstand the risk of decline, and its ability to adapt and compete in the new world economic order.
It is within this increasingly multi-centric scenario liable to accelerated transformations that SMEs – or more properly national “interfirm networks” – now operate, undoubtedly paying the price for the many structural dysfunctions that characterize the Italian system in its engagement with foreign markets, but demonstrating its resilience against the shockwave of the crisis. Indeed, despite the forecasts of those who, even recently, predicted that the production specialization of domestic firms would be rendered virtually obsolete, Italy’s trade surplus net of energy products remains the fifth largest in the world. In addition, in the face of diagnoses decrying an alleged overly narrow focus on low- to medium-low-tech sectors, between 1994 and 2013, the relative weight of traditional industries within the said trade surplus fell from 74% to 30%.
These figures were seen as testament to the competitive resilience of Italian exports in absolute terms, as well as to a sound – all-too-often ignored – ability to adapt to the new challenges of global markets. Clearly, however, this resilience and adaptability do not alone satisfy the inescapable need to make greater and much improved efforts to raise the overseas business presence of Italian industry. On the contrary, the current situation seems as if it could be summed by describing Italy as “a major export country with a low level of internationalization”.
It was suggested that this characterization is only ostensibly paradoxical, and that an analysis of certain competitive disadvantages exogenous to the Italian production system (which have come to structurally affect its trade performance in terms of both imports and exports) goes a long way towards explaining the situation. In this regard, those in attendance pointed to several “push factors” (including, among many possible examples, the uncertainty and complexity of the regulatory environment, the extent to which bureaucracy impacts on the ease of doing business, and the tax system) as well as “pull” factors (the Italian genius loci, together with a number of dynamic institutional players such as SIMEST – a development finance institution promoting the activities of Italian businesses abroad, and the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti – a specialized lender to the Italian public sector). Both sets of factors were viewed as combining to make internationalization an issue that concerns far more than just exports, affecting the very growth model of the country, market dynamics (including the domestic market), and the ability to “conquer the world” with tangible and intangible products.
The participants remarked that when the issue is framed in this manner, it veers from the particular to the more general and encompasses the totality of national industrial policy in a European and global context, with all that this entails in terms of a strategic vision for Italy, and the setting up or refinement of institutional mechanisms (including market intelligence gathering capabilities, the circulation of information, demand analysis, oversight, management support, and service delivery) for firms that are in the process of internationalizing.
Finally, it was observed that lurking in the background – although pivotal, especially in the midst of an ongoing economic crisis – is the issue of access to credit. This was singled out as an area in which Italy appears to be suffering the consequences of its lack of a large banking institution with a global presence that could perform today – albeit naturally in a different and more up-to-date manner – the useful function once served by the country’s national interest banks, which played such a major role in Italian economic history during the twentieth century.