In this seminar, the participants examined what were identified as the major areas requiring action to enable Italy to face the new and increasingly impelling global challenges. The three areas singled out were: innovation policies, tangible and intangible knowledge-system infrastructure, and education models conducive to promoting employment and competitiveness.
In an extremely “fragmented” socio-economic system, predominantly made up of small- and medium-sized enterprises that are finding it more and more difficult to get their businesses off the ground, to grow and to innovate, it was felt that the first priority must be to redefine the strategic role and mission of the country’s public administration. Given that, for the first time since the post-World War II period, a policy is underway of cutting expenditure on public services, accompanied conversely by an increase in demand and the expectations of citizens, the creation of further opportunities will necessarily depend on a single fundamental premise: the ability to innovate.
The participants suggested that, within the public sector, decisive efforts must be made to retrain staff and restructure financial resources. Whilst, on the one hand, the prevailing formal legalistic culture will need to open itself up to an infusion of scientific and technological expertise, on the other, the inevitable reduction of resources that will characterize the years ahead calls for a major rethink in terms of a shake-up of public spending and organizational restructuring. Indeed, it was stressed that a rapid response, the optimization of the management of available resources and an efficient distribution of funds will be far from sufficient if not adequately backed up by “indirect” measures, including expenditure savings and the seeding of new markets and industrial opportunities.
Embarking on a systemic improvement in the energy efficiency of public buildings could, for instance, not only generate employment and innovation, but also yield significant cost savings, whilst sectors traditionally associated with squeezes on current expenditure, such as health, could become major priority areas for investment. Given the rapid move away from closed to open systems, and in a competitive scenario that is increasingly less to do with individual firms or institutions and more about entire territories, it was felt that alongside R&D investment, new technologies (such as ICT), interconnectivity and the interplay between the university/research and business spheres, other factors will also gain increasing importance, including public procurement, innovation systems capable of involving the demand-side actors and end-users to a greater degree, as well as demand-side, user-driven and creativity-driven strategies, characterized by a more collective approach and a “technology for social purposes” paradigm.
Also considered to be of key importance by the participants was the question of assessing the efficacy of public expenditure in the fields of research and innovation, which all too often is not only quantitatively modest, but also poorly thought-out in terms of meeting actual demand (a case in point being the various dedicated public funds for southern Italy) and producing concrete results. The participants thus stressed the need for public executives, firstly, to put in place effective ex-ante evaluation mechanisms (aimed at identifying projects that are worthy of funding via, for instance, peer-review systems), and secondly, to monitor their results on an ongoing and systematic basis.
Having regard to the fact that Italy is characterized by a low stock and poor deployment of human capital, emphasis was placed on the need to improve the country’s tangible and intangible infrastructure, seen as also necessary to help new talent emerge and increase returns on investment in knowledge. In this respect, there was consensus on the crucial importance of focusing attention on the recognition of merit and improving selection processes, such as through the widespread adoption of reliable standard tests (modeled along the lines of the international SAT tests or those used at the Scuola Normale in Pisa) to assess actual performance levels at the various stages of education.
Finally, it was proposed that universities should be given greater decision-making autonomy and freedom (for instance, in selecting lecturers and in determining remuneration arrangements), whilst at the same time being made more accountable. Consequently, there was a perceived need for a transparent mechanism which – through rules, international criteria, independent external evaluations, student work plans, public disclosure activities, and so on – is capable of triggering a credible process of “natural” selection and competition for the recognition of excellence and the allocation of funds. One particular proposal that was supported by the participants, geared to improving connections between the academic sphere and local business, was the introduction of a pilot project for “knowledge exchange labs” or “industrial paideias”, that is, facilities to be located as a matter of priority in lagging industrial areas, and aimed at bringing together complementary know-how, technologies and people. With a view to ensuring community mobilization, subsidiarity, an international outlook, as well as encouraging participation, it was suggested that such a project should envisage preliminary negotiations with trade unions or consultation between local authorities and trade unions and employer groups (so as to prevent or resolve situations of industrial unrest), the joint presence and functional integration of classrooms, laboratories and accommodation facilities, a negotiated process for integration within any given network, and the making available of research data subject to proven growth or efficiency improvements.