ITALY

For Italy, one of the Moderate innovators, innovation performance is below the EU27 average and the rate of improvement is also below that of the EU27. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in Finance and support and Economic effects and relative weaknesses are in Human resources, Firm investments and Linkages & entrepreneurship.

Over the past 5 years, strong growth has come from Human resources and Finance and support which have been the drivers of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from strong growth in S&E and SSH doctorate graduates (12.8%) and Broadband access by firms (29.8%). Performance in Firm investments has not improved and performance in Innovators and Economic effects has worsened, in particular due to a decrease in New-to-market sales (-7.8%) and New-to-firm sales (-5.3%).