It was in the firm conviction that innovation holds the key to improving Italy’s competitiveness that several members of Aspen Institute Italia’s “Italian talent abroad” community formed a working group. The group’s efforts translated into a White Paper that has since led to the launch of a concrete project dedicated to start-ups.
The project aims to promote the spread of mentoring in Italy, a training methodology that provides innovative enterprises with the ability to establish a medium- to long-term “guided learning” relationship through tutors. This solution would help foster the growth of start-ups in a market such as that prevailing in Italy, which still presents a number of obstacles for young businesses.
The first meeting with up-and-coming entrepreneurs, held in late 2012 in Bologna, appears to have yielded very promising results. The following interview granted to the Aspen Italia website team gives an account of this experience as related by Monica Beltrametti (Vice President of the Xerox Research Center Europe) and Stefano Scarpetta (Deputy Director for Employment, Labor and Social Affairs at the OECD), who, along with their colleagues Luigi Boaretto (Director, Mining Chemicals Africa Strategy at BASF) and Andrea Goldstein (Senior Economist at the OECD Development Center), were the instigators of this initiative.
What was the reason you assembled a group of start-ups in Bologna to come face-to-face with experts?
Monica Beltrametti
The whole idea came out of a group discussion on innovation we had within Aspen Italia’s “Italian talent abroad” community about a year ago, which led to our White Paper on “Innovation as the key to making Italy more competitive”. This work was then followed up with the vital involvement of the Italian Minister for Education Francesco Profumo, focusing on strategies to cultivate the country’s human capital and possible solutions to improve financing for Italian start-ups that exhibit strong innovation potential.
What sort of role does mentoring play in fostering innovation?
Monica Beltrametti
Well, it was precisely to implement the ideas generated by the working group that we decided to start with mentoring, by which I mean a medium- to long-term relationship between those managing innovative start-ups, who receive the benefit of guidance, and a mentor, who acts as a guide. So we organized a meeting open to innovative businesses in Bologna, relying on support from the Emilia-Romagna region’s Spinner Project. We asked start-ups to pitch their business idea in front of an audience of experts. In fact, in order to help boost the country’s competitiveness, such talent needs to be trained and nurtured. The Emilia area is particularly rich in entrepreneurship, with around 800 new innovative enterprises specializing particularly in IT, the biomedical field and the green economy. The feedback from the event has been very positive, and our impression is that the presentations given by the start-ups were of a very high standard.
Turning to another issue faced by start-ups, namely finance, how do you go about helping innovative businesses to access credit?
Stefano Scarpetta
Innovative start-ups find it very difficult to access credit in Italy – and not just in the current economic climate. The thing is, mentoring and finance are closely linked. Mentoring can transform an innovative idea into a working venture. But to get it up and running you need funds, and unfortunately Italy’s venture capital system – which is a linchpin in the support of young innovative start-ups in other countries – is inadequate. This is because a market suited to nurturing a start-up and optimizing its investments is often lacking.
In addition, Italy spends very little on research and development: 1.2% of GDP compared with an OECD average of between 2-3%. This penalizes investments in the kind of intangible capital that is essential for the competitiveness of businesses and the country. Young start-ups – if supported – could give a boost to innovation. One need only consider that, in the United States, 20% of patents are generated by start-ups, whereas in Italy, the ceiling is 5%.
Are there any possible solutions to overcome the current limitations of the Italian system?
Stefano Scarpetta
In our view, one solution would be to create a fund that allows strategic support in putting together a business plan to be combined with financial support for the early operational stages of a start-up, or for implementing the suggestions made by mentors. This model of financing and management support has proved successful in other countries, including the United Kingdom and France. One of the issues we are tackling is how to create such a fund. Initially, there could be public funding capable of attracting private partners. In any case, this is a long-term project. In the meantime, we plan to extend the initiative to other regions, tapping into local strengths around the country. The idea of mentoring is not entirely new in Italy and such networks already exist. Given the greater-than-anticipated response elicited, this pilot project has shown that the demand for such initiatives in Italy is very high indeed.
