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Margherita RUSSO

Professore Ordinario
Dipartimento di Economia "Marco Biagi"

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Pubblicazioni

2023 - Regionalisation and cross-region integration. Twin dynamics in the automotive international trade networks [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Alboni, Fabrizio; Sanginés, Jorge Carreto; De Domenico, Manlio; Mangioni, Giuseppe; Righi, Simone; Simonazzi, Annamaria
abstract

The paper analyses the changes that occurred over 25 years in the geography of trade in automotive parts and components. Using the Infomap multilayer clustering algorithm, we identify clusters of countries and their specific trades in the automotive international trade network, we measure the relative importance of each cluster and the interconnections between them, and we analyse the contribution of countries and of trade of components and parts in the clusters. The analysis highlights the formation of denser and more hierarchical networks generated by Germany's trade relations with EU countries and by the US preferential trade agreements with Canada and Mexico, as well as the surge of China. While the relative importance of the main clusters and of some individual countries change significantly, connections between clusters increase over time.

2023 - The search for topics related to electric mobility: a comparative analysis of some of the most widely used methods in the literature [Articolo su rivista]
Alboni, Fabrizio; Pavone, Pasquale; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Identifying the topics addressed in a corpus is one of the primary concerns of automated text analysis. This paper aims to contribute to the comparative analysis of various methodologies. Specifically, a comparison is made of the results obtained by applying the most prevalent topic identification techniques to the same corpus. The analysis is conducted on a large database of original text created from an e-mobility newsletter. To evaluate the outcomes of the methodologies, two criteria are used. First, the semantic coherence and similarities of the various methods are assessed. The second step involves processing the degree of association between the topics identified by the various models.

2022 - Agents and artefacts in the emerging electric vehicle space [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Alboni, Fabrizio; Bonifati, Giovanni; Carreto Sanginés, Jorge; Pavone, Pasquale; Simonazzi, Annamaria
abstract

After COP 21, the targets for reducing CO2 emissions have boosted the commitment of governments and companies to developing alternative technologies for the mobility of people and goods. Electric vehicles are at the heart of this transformation, which is profoundly affecting the characteristics of agents and artefacts. The aim of the paper is to identify the relevant domains of this transformation, and to identify what characterises the space of the agents and artefacts of the electric vehicle and their interactions, as oriented by the public policies promoted by the various countries. The paper presents the results of a multidimensional textual analysis of the news published in English by electrive.com, a daily newsletter covering a wide range of relevant information on developments in electric transport in Europe and beyond. These results are a preliminary step for the analysis of the social, economic, organisational and technological changes related to sustainable mobility.

2022 - Automotive Value Chains in a Brave New World [Altro]
Russo, Margherita; Alboni, Fabrizio; Carreto Sanginés, Jorge; De Domenico, Manlio; Mangioni, Giuseppe; Righi, Simone; Simonazzi, Annamaria
abstract

The pandemic and electrification are shaking the foundations of the auto industry

2022 - Data and detailed results- LEARNING ONLINE: REMOTE TEACHING AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ ENGAGEMENT [Banca dati]
Russo, Margherita; Alboni, Fabrizio; Morlini, Isabella; Pavone, Pasquale; Sartori, Laura
abstract

Database and detailed results of the paper LEARNING ONLINE: REMOTE TEACHING AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ ENGAGEMENT, published by Statistica Applicata- Italian Journal of Applied Statistics, 2022

2022 - Database elaborated in the paper "Agents and artefacts in the emerging electric vehicle space" [Banca dati]
Russo, M.; Alboni, F.; Bonifati, G.; Carreto-Sanginés, J.; Pavone, P.; Simonazzi, A.
abstract

DATABASE elaborated in the paper Agents and artefacts in the emerging electric vehicle space published in Int. J. Automotive Technology and Management, 2022

2022 - Learning online: Remote teaching and university students’ engagement [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Alboni, Farizio; Morlini, Isabella; Pavone, Pasquale; Sartori, Laura
abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on many dimensions of living and working conditions, and uncertainties about the developments that we shall still face in the near future. This paper analyses the implications of a forced overnight push to online teaching. Drawing upon an online survey conducted during the 2020 lockdown by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, this article describes students’ living and studying conditions revealed by a large set of open and closed questions. The survey provides significant information on the students’ real off-campus conditions, crucial data for the multidimensional analysis by combining non-parametric multivariate analysis of closed questions with textual analyses. It offers important indications about the most useful tools for inclusive teaching across thematic areas and highlights the main difficulties that emerged during the lockdown. Reflections on advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses in the innovative learning environment set up overnight are offered at a policy level.

2022 - Mapping regional strengths in a key enabling technology: The distribution of Internet of Things competences across European regions [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Caloffi, Annalisa; Colovic, Ana; Pavone, Pasquale; Romeo, Saverio; Rossi, Federica
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) can trigger innovation processes across all sectors of the economy. However, this potential is not available to all regions. As with other ena-bling technologies, the competences required to develop IoT solutions are numerous and varied, ranging from hardware to software and related services, and are often pro-vided by different companies. To map the application potential of these technologies across European regions, we use textual analysis to identify the NACE codes associat-ed with five main IoT domains. We identify clusters of regions characterised by differ-ent mixes of competences in IoT technologies and we discuss the policy implications of our findings at both European and regional levels.

2022 - The Changing Shape of the World Automobile Industry: A Multilayer Network Analysis of International Trade in Components and Parts [Working paper]
Russo, Margherita; Alboni, Fabrizio; Carreto Sanginés, Jorge; De Domenico, Manlio; Mangioni, Giuseppe; Righi, Simone; Simonazzi, Annamaria
abstract

In 2018, after 25 years of the North America Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the United States requested new rules which, among other requirements, increased the regional content in the production of automotive components and parts traded between the three partner countries, United States, Canada and Mexico. Signed by all three countries, the new trade agreement, USMCA, is to go into force in 2022. Nonetheless, after the 2020 Presidential election, the new treaty's future is under discussion, and its impact on the automotive industry is not entirely defined. Another significant shift in this industry – the accelerated rise of electric vehicles – also occurred in 2020: while the COVID-19 pandemic largely halted most plants in the automotive value chain all over the world, at the reopening, the tide is now running against internal combustion engine vehicles, at least in the announcements and in some large investments planned in Europe, Asia and the US. The definition of the pre-pandemic situation is a very helpful starting point for the analysis of the possible repercussions of the technological and geo-political transition, which has been accelerated by the epidemic, on geographical clusters and sectorial spe-cialisations of the main regions and countries. This paper analyses the trade networks emerging in the past 25 years out of this turmoil in a new analytical framework. In the economic literature on international trade, the study of the automotive global value chains has been addressed by using network analysis, focusing on the centrality of geographical regions and countries while largely overlooking the contribution of countries' bilateral trading in components and parts as structuring forces the subnetwork of coun-tries and their specific situations in the overall trade network. This paper focuses on such subnetworks as meso-level structures emerging in trade network over the last 25 years. Using the Infomap multilayer clustering algorithm, we are able to identify clusters of countries and their specific trades in the automotive international trade network and to highlight the relative importance of each cluster, the interconnections between them, and to analyse the contribution of countries and of components and parts in the clusters. We draw the data from the UN Comtrade database of directed export and import flows of 30 automotive components and parts among 42 countries (accounting for 98% of world trade flows of those items). The paper highlights the changes that occurred over 25 years in the geography of the trade relations, with particular with regard to denser and more hierarchical network generated by Germany’s trade relations within EU countries and by the US preferential trade agreements with Canada and Mexico, and the upsurge of China. With a similar overall variety of traded components and parts within the main clusters (dominated respectively by Germany, US and Japan-China), the Infomap multilayer analysis singles out which components and parts determined the relative positions of countries in the various clusters and the changes over time in the relative positions of countries and their specialisations in multilateral trades. Connections between clusters increase over time, while the relative importance of the main clusters and of some individual countries change significantly. The focus on US and Mexico and on Germany and Central Eastern European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) will drive the comparative analysis.

2022 - The World to Come: Key Challenges for the Automotive Industry [Articolo su rivista]
Simonazzi, Annamaria; Carreto Sanginés, Jorge; Russo, Margherita
abstract

The automotive industry is going through a paradigm change that will affect the entire supply chain and have the potential to redraw the boundaries of the sector, redefine the key players and sourcing practices, and affect the relative advantage of countries and regions, reshaping existing industrial geographies. We address the issue of the reorganisation of the global value chains in the face of various challenges: new, large markets opening up and new, aggressive competitors emerging; an increasingly unpredictable global geopolitical context, translating into the forging and undoing of trade agreements; the reorganisation in value chains induced by new digital technologies; the redefinition of what a "car" is, determined by electrification, autonomous driving, and new mobility. These simultaneous changes impact upon the geographical location of the industry, the distribution of power within the value chains and between incumbents and new players entering the industry (from energy firms and power utilities to battery producers and big tech monopolists), with obvious consequences for the distribution of production and employment across countries and within manufacturing and service sectors.

2022 - What do we learn by applying multiple methods in topic detection? A comparative analysis on a large online dataset about mobility electrification [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Alboni, Fabrizio; Russo, Margherita; Pavone, Pasquale
abstract

Identifying the topics covered in a corpus is one of the central issues in automatic text analysis. The objective of our paper is to contribute to the comparative analysis of different methods. In particular, we compare the results obtained through the use of the most common methods for topic identification, applied to the same corpus. The analysis is performed on a large original textual database created from an e-mobility newsletter. To compare the results between the methods, we refer to two criteria. First of all, the semantic consistency of the different models is evaluated by applying the UMass score and Pointwise mutual information. Secondly, the degree of association between the topics identified by the different models is processed using a heat-map and Cramer's V.

2021 - Addressing societal challenges through the simultaneous generation of social and business values: A conceptual framework for science-based co-creation [Articolo su rivista]
De Silva, Muthu; Gokhberg, Leonid; Meissner, Dirk; Russo, Margherita
abstract

The paper focuses on a key uniqueness of the simultaneous generation of social and business value - across science, technology and society - involving academics, businesses, policy makers, innovation intermediaries, NGOs and citizens that share and integrate assets in developing solutions to address economic and societal challenges. By contrasting with a broad literature using the term ‘co-creation’ to denote close working relationship between actors, the paper outlines a conceptual framework explaining how the diversity of agents involved, their motivations and goals, and incentive structures in which they operate impact on science-based co-creation. This multidimensional perspective is discussed with regard to the scope of innovation, reach and types of values that are generated, and the distinctive features to be considered when both social and business value are at the core of collaboration. Policy implications to support science-based co-creation are discussed with regard to the rationale for public interventions and the critical dimensions of policy implementation and assessment. It highlights that policy design aiming at supporting societal challenges through co-creation should address mechanisms to integrate tangible and intangible inputs, define suitable operational models and enhance specific capabilities and practices.

2021 - Annexes_What do we learn on innovation policies from contact tracing apps? Evidence from Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, Spain [Banca dati]
Russo, Margherita; Cardinale Ciccotti, Claudia; De Alexandris, Fabrizio; Gjinaj, Antonela; Romaniello, Giovanni; Scatorchia, Antonio; Terranova, Giorgio
abstract

Data source of the paper published by Economia & Lavoro

2021 - Evidence-based portfolios of innovation policy mixes: A cross-country analysis [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Pavone, Pasquale
abstract

In the past decade many papers have discussed innovation policies in terms of their design, assessment and impact. Drawing on those contributions, the ECOECD STIP Compass suggests a detailed taxonomy of innovation policies with regard to their themes, target groups of beneficiaries and instruments. Implemented with a web platform, that taxonomy has promoted an extensive collection of information on innovation policy initiatives across OECD member countries. Using the STIP dataset, in this paper we employ that taxonomy to identify the innovation policy mixes by referring to all the dimensions encompassed in each policy initiative, i.e., themes, targets, instruments. The evidence-based multidimensional analyses yield a typology and set of topics of innovation policy mixes that we use to conduct a cross-country analysis of innovation policy portfolios. Although the results of the cross-country analysis are statistically significant, caution is necessary when using them because of three main fragilities of the current version of STIP Compass: the absence of information on innovation policies at subnational level; the classification of the largest group of target beneficiaries, i.e. innovation intermediaries; the quality of some information essential for enhancing the analysis. The proposed navigation of the STIP Compass data is freely accessible online.

2021 - La dimensione sistemica del successo (o insuccesso?) nell'uso dei dati nella pandemia da COVID-19. Risultati dall'analisi comparata relativa alle app di tracciamento in nove paesi OECD [Working paper]
Russo, Margherita; Cardinale Ciccotti, Claudia; De Alexandris, Fabrizio; Gjinaj, Antonela; Romaniello, Giovanni; Scatorchia, Antonio; Terranova, Giorgio
abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public attention turned to contact tracing apps as a possible solution to the spread of the virus. Many countries have moved in this direction, adopting contact tracing apps, while respecting personal data protection and, for EU countries, adhering to a number of fundamental principles: voluntariness, interoperability, regulatory coverage, purpose specification, minimisation, transparency, protection, security, and timeli-ness. In spite of timely public policy efforts, tracking apps have not been a success in many countries, and today, when their use could be of great importance, it seems appropriate to open a reflection on the success and unsuccessfulness of a public policy that has resolutely supported the use of digital technologies for public utility purposes. This working paper proposes a comparative analysis of nine OECD countries: Australia, Korea, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, Spain. It outlines the specific factors in each country's public policy that made the use of tracking apps possible, in terms of policy design in terms of objectives, instruments, public procurement selection criteria, re-sources and the context in which the policy was implemented. The working paper concludes with three lessons learned from the comparative analysis: the privacy paradox, the choice of a public interest technology, and the systemic interweaving that the implementation of a public policy must take into account to enhance the effectiveness of a public interest action.

2021 - Mapping the distribution of Internet of Things competences across European regions [Working paper]
Russo, Margherita; Annalisa, Caloffi; Colovic, Ana; Pavone, Pasquale; Romeo, Saverio; Rossi, Federica
abstract

Digital transformation is a key strategic issue for countries and regions aiming to boost economic growth, job creation, technology development and innovation. With a focus on the Internet of Things (IoT) the paper maps the potential of IoT technologies across European regions, using textual analysis applied to the description of companies’ activities. Results identify three categories of regions (IoT leaders, co-designers and suppliers) capturing their potential to harness opportunities in IoT, based on the variety of IoT competences that are present. This mapping can support regional policies, particularly in the context of smart specialization strategies building on IoT systems.

2021 - Mexico’s Automotive Industry: A Success Story? [Working paper]
Carreto Sanginés, Jorge; Russo, Margherita; Simonazzi, Annamaria
abstract

In less than three decades Mexico’s automotive industry has gone from a minor role to the 7th world producer of automotive vehicles. The Mexican experience is part of the more general case of the “integrated peripheries”. As in the general case of “integrated peripheries”, its development cannot be accounted for separately from the developments occurring in its core country. Unlike the core-periphery literature, however, our analysis emphasises that the various clusters of cores and integrated peripheries are not alike. In the case under study, the core has been systematically lagging behind the main transformations pioneered by its competitors. The paper traces the evolution of the Mexican automotive industry, emphasizing the difficulties faced by a late-comer country in developing an independent industry, and the importance of policy choices as well as the macroeconomic context in affecting its development. NAFTA represents the culmination of an integration process that has profoundly transformed the structure of the Mexican automotive industry, deepening its dependence on the US market. While there is no doubt that it has contributed to the spectacular growth of the Mexican auto industry, whether it also increased its resilience or, rather, its dependence is still an open question. This issue is particularly relevant in view of the transformations that are taking place in the automotive sector and in the geopolitical scenario. The end of NAFTA and the advent of USMCA, the entry of powerful competitors into the global market, the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles entail risks and opportunities. The lens of the centre-periphery relationship can help to understand the present integration of North America and its future direction.

2021 - New business models for public innovation intermediaries supporting emerging innovation systems: The case of the Internet of Things [Articolo su rivista]
Rossi, Federica; Annalisa, Caloffi; Colovic, Ana; Russo, Margherita
abstract

In several countries, governments have assigned to public innovation intermediaries (PIIs) the mandate to support the digital transition, by facilitating the development and adoption of new digital technologies on the part of firms and other organisations. This new mandate requires PIIs to upgrade their business models, moving beyond their traditional involvement in firms’ technology upgrading and university-industry knowledge transfer, toward supporting the creation of new innovation systems around the emerging digital technologies. To understand how PIIs are reconfiguring their business models to support the digital transition, we study four cases of PIIs operating in the United Kingdom and France, whose mandates include providing support for firms and other organisations in the implementation of new digital technologies, focusing in particular on the Internet of Things (IoT). We show that, despite their differences, all four PIIs have substantially reconfigured their business models in similar ways in order to fulfil these mandates. Both the formal legitimacy arising from their policy mandate, and the knowledge resources and informal legitimacy they have developed, have played a decisive role in their ability to orchestrate the development of innovation systems around IoT.

2021 - Public innovation intermediaries and digital co-creation, [Working paper]
Rossi, Federica; Colovic, Ana; Caloffi, Annalisa; Russo, Margherita
abstract

The emerging digital technologies pose new challenges to innovation intermediaries. In this chapter we build on a case base of evidence on selected public intermediaries in France (pôles de compétitivité) and in the UK (digital catapults), to argue that public innovation intermediaries, which carry public policy mandates, have a specific role to play, particularly in the context on the emerging, complex, and yet not fully commoditised set of technologies underpinning the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. In particular, we reveal that by connecting a plurality of actors on the demand and supply side, public innovation intermediaries facilitate co-creation of complex technological solutions, and that in doing so, they create both social and economic value. The goals of examined co-creation activities revolve around finding highly innovative solutions to complex problems triggered by the digital transformation. The co-creation initiatives that we study take place at the national level, but their outputs have broader impact on the activities of the parties involved. Our evidence suggests that, when co-creating a complex technological solution, the intermediary is involved in two complementary, often intertwined, but distinct processes that bring together organisations that demand technology and those that supply technological solutions. On the demand side, the intermediary helps the organisation looking for a technological solution (a large company, an SME, or a municipality) to articulate their demand, and eventually find it as well. We call this ‘demand-led’ co-creation. On the supply side, the intermediary brings together a system of technology providers (large companies, SMEs, universities and public research organisations) able to devise, develop and implement a technological solution to match the needs of the organisation on the demand side. We call this ‘supply-led’ co-creation. The intermediary is present from the beginning to the end of the co-creation processes, with its activities extending beyond co-creation processes to ensure post-project continuity between the involved actors. Among demand-led co-creation processes, we identified at least two different approaches devised by Catapults and Pôles de compétitivité - the development of an open challenge, and the development of a proof-of concept. On the supply side, we noted the creation of the so-called ‘groupement’ of SMEs by pôles de compétitivité, whereby the pôle facilitates the creation of a value-chain that is able to respond to complex demands of organisations looking for technological solutions. Our study shows that public intermediaries are able to play their unique role in co-creation processes thanks to several factors: the legitimacy they have to act as intermediaries, as they are endowed with public mandates; the presence of long-term public funding that enables intermediaries to be perceived as neutral agents, to gain reputation and trust over time; the networks of trusted experts on whom they can rely to successfully complete their mission; a well functioning evaluation process that spurs intermediaries to act effectively and efficiently and to be responsive to demands from their stakeholders.

2021 - Rights, commons, and social capital: The role of cooperation in an italian agri-food supply chain [Abstract in Rivista]
Giovannetti, E.; Bertolini, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

The paper discusses the relationship between Commons, Social Capital, and sustainability in terms of resources used, tools available, and goals to be achieved. The conceptual framework differs from the traditional one, which considers Commons and Social Capital as different resources. The paper considers Commons and Social Capital as homogeneous assets defined by the rights related to the access, use, and reproduction of collective resources, material or immaterial, which are essential to reduce the difference between private and social costs in the economic processes. This approach derives from a definition of sustainability as a private and social responsibility in reproducing all the resources used in the life processes, minimizing the waste caused by their exhaustion and loss of fertility. The paper refers to the model of Commons by the school of Elinor Ostrom to explain the nature and role of Social Capital and to observe it in different units of analysis, with particular attention to the forms of cooperative enterprise. The last part of the work outlines field research on the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain as a natural laboratory to test the theoretical hypotheses.

2021 - The socioeconomic impact of seismic events on animal breeding A questionnaire-based survey from Central Italy [Articolo su rivista]
Pagliacci, Francesco; Luciani, Cristina; Russo, Margherita; Esposito, Fulvio; Habluetzel, Annette
abstract

This paper investigates the socioeconomic impact of two large earthquakes (1997 and 2016) that occurred in Central Italy on the agricultural sector, and in particular on animal husbandry. Through a questionnaire-based field survey, involving 55 farm holdings located in Umbria (Assisano district), this work points out: i) the farmers' perception of the damage suffered with regard to residential buildings, agricultural facilities and animal husbandry activities; ii) the interventions carried out in the emergency phases; and iii) the reconstruction phases, as experienced by the farming households. Major vulnerabilities of these agricultural holdings have emerged: small-scale family-based farming, increased householders average age, little on-farm and off-farm diversification, persisting economic marginalisation. Recall and perception of the impact of the earthquakes in the Assisano district - direct damage and reconstruction interventions - are compared with the perception in the nearby mountainous area of the Marche Region, largely affected by the 2016 earthquake. In both areas, the experienced earthquakes have not acted as triggers for agents' mobilisation and change. Rather, the situation calls for a drastic, farsighted change of development policies by national and regional governments and for a convinced prompting for holistic local “building back better” initiatives.

2021 - The systemic dimension of success (or failure?) in the use of data and AI during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-country comparison on contact tracing apps [Working paper]
Russo, Margherita; Cardinale Ciccotti, Claudia; De Alexandris, Fabrizio; Gjinaj, Antonela; Romaniello, Giovanni; Scatorchia, Antonio; Terranova, Giorgio
abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public attention turned to contact tracing apps as a possible solution to the spread of the virus. Many countries have moved in this direction, adopting contact tracing apps, while respecting personal data protection and, for EU countries, adhering to a number of fundamental principles: voluntariness, interoperability, regulatory coverage, purpose specification, minimisation, transparency, protection, security, and timeliness. In spite of timely public policy efforts, tracking apps have not been a success in many countries, and today, when their use could be of great importance, it seems appropriate to open a reflection on the success and unsuccessfulness of a public policy that has resolutely supported the use of digital technologies for public utility purposes. This working paper proposes a comparative analysis of nine OECD countries: Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, Spain. It outlines the specific factors in each country's public policy that made the use of tracking apps possible, in terms of policy design with respect to: objectives, instruments, public procurement selection criteria, resources and the context in which the policy was implemented. The working paper concludes with three lessons learned from the comparative analysis: the privacy paradox, the choice of a public interest technology, and the systemic interweaving that the implementation of a public policy must take into account to enhance the effectiveness of a public interest action.

2021 - The systemic dimension of success (or failure?) in the use of data and AI during the covid-19 pandemic. A cross-country comparison on contact tracing apps [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Cardinale Ciccotti, Claudia; De Alexandris, Fabrizio; Gjinaj, Antonela; Romaniello, Giovanni; Scatorchia, Antonio; Terranova, Giorgio
abstract

During the Covid-19 pandemic, public attention turned to contact tracing apps as a possible solution to the spread of the virus. Many countries have moved in this direction, thereby adopting contact tracing apps while respecting personal data protection. EU countries also adhered to a number of fundamental principles: voluntariness, interoperability, regulatory coverage, purpose specification, minimisation, transparency, protection, security, and timeliness. In spite of timely public policy efforts, tracking apps have not been a success in many countries, and it seems appropriate to open a reflection on the unsuccessfulness of a public policy that has resolutely supported the use of digital technologies for public utility purposes

2020 - Be (and have) good neighbours! Factors of vulnerability in the case of multiple hazards [Articolo su rivista]
Pagliacci, Francesco; Russo, Margherita
abstract

For any given territory, disaster risk is a function of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The conceptual frameworks for these dimensions are largely debated in the scientific studies, focusing on spatial and temporal references and on system perspective of risk assessment. Despite broad in their scope, the analytical frameworks proposed to analyse policy programmes to reduce risk generally miss that risk indicators should be grounded on geographical and spatial features of the neighbouring territories and not only on communities' behaviour, and their resilience, as the paradigmatic solution in front of system events in areas prone to natural multi-hazard. The definition of "community" and of "neighbourhood" that are relevant for risk assessment cannot be simply defined in terms of absolute size of population or economic activity of individual local units under analysis or of the formal aggregation provided by jurisdictional agreements on specific functions. The paper presents an empirical analysis on spatially-lagged data in Italy, which was massively hit by adverse natural events in the last decade. It suggests to focus on social and material vulnerability, by using the comprehensive indicator at municipality level elaborated by the Italian Institute of Statistics. At the municipality-level, the analysis shows a positive correlation between multi-hazards, on the one hand, and spatially-lagged exposure and vulnerability, on the other. Thus, conditions in neighbouring municipalities would matter in prioritizing policy interventions aiming at mitigating hazard impacts, reducing vulnerability and enhancing communities' resilience. The definition of significant neighbouring spaces opens to a conceptualization of vulnerability grounded on a relational perspective in the creation of collective goods. This could enhance more effective Disaster Risk Reduction programmes.

2020 - Covid-19 and UNIMORE students: how the emergency changes the study and the university experience [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Alboni, F.; Colombini, S.; Morlini, I.; Pavone, P.; Sartori, L.
abstract

The research report presents the results of the online survey conducted by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia on the living and study conditions of students in the period 8 April - 2 May 2020. The online survey was answered by 20% of students: an adequate participation rate to capture some significant differences between courses of study. The aim of the survey is to overcome the Covid-19 emergency with greater awareness, analysing the living and study conditions of the students and looking for the most useful tools for inclusive teaching and study that contribute to giving each student the possibility to proceed in their own study and life path in the best possible way. The questionnaire, the survey tools and the results that emerge from the multivariate analysis are presented, both for the closed-answer questions and for the openended questions, on which textual analysis techniques have been applied. The different tools and methods are presented to emphasize the specificity of the dataset, which presents a different level of variability of the answers in the different thematic areas. The report concludes with a series of considerations that we offer to the Unimore community to support the discussion on what we have learned and continue to learn thanks to the voice of the students. It is now clear that the exit from the emergency will be a gradual process. The students' point of view, which we gather from this survey, will be really valuable to plan next year's educational activities and services for students, in order to offer a high quality teaching that responds to different needs and study contexts. Further developments of the analysis may concern other in-depth studies on specific teaching methods (distance and in-presence) and on the evaluation of the living and working conditions of teaching and technical-administrative staff. The basic idea is to read, through the Covid-19 emergency lens, the essential dimensions to improve the quality of teaching highlighted by the empirical survey.

2020 - Covid-19 and UNIMORE students: how the emergency changes the study and the university experience [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Colombini, S.; Pavone, P.; Alboni, F.; Sartori, L.; Piscitelli, G.
abstract

Questo rapporto di ricerca presenta i risultati della prima rilevazione di monitoraggio online delle condizioni di vita e di studio degli studenti di Economia e Istituzioni dei Distretti industriali (2019-20) di Unimore (rilevazione on line del 21 marzo 2020). Il monitoraggio on line, che si svolgerà periodicamente fino alla fine del corso (lezioni e esami) è un esperimento di collaborazione che mira a superare l’emergenza covid-19 con maggiore consapevolezza e strumenti per praticare una didattica e uno studio che contribuiscano nel dare a ciascuno studente la possibilità di studiare e procedere nel proprio percorso di studi e di vita nel migliore dei modi. Vengono presentati il questionario, gli strumenti di rilevazione e i risultati che emergono da una prima elaborazione dei dati. Il rapporto si conclude con spunti per la prossima rilevazione e proposte per allargare la rilevazione. Le specifiche proposte didattiche e di studio che sono emerse anche grazie al primo monitoraggio non sono presentate in questo rapporto: sono in continua evoluzione e sono condivise con gli studenti nella piattaforma online del corso.

2020 - Covid-19 e studenti UNIMORE: come l’emergenza cambia lo studio e l’esperienza universitaria [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Alboni, F.; Colombini, S.; Morlini, I.; Pavone, P.; Sartori, L.
abstract

The research report presents the results of the online survey conducted by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia on the living and study conditions of students in the period 8 April - 2 May 2020. The online survey was answered by 20% of students: an adequate participation rate to capture some significant differences between courses of study. The aim of the survey is to overcome the Covid-19 emergency with greater awareness, analysing the living and study conditions of the students and looking for the most useful tools for inclusive teaching and study that contribute to giving each student the possibility to proceed in their own study and life path in the best possible way. The questionnaire, the survey tools and the results that emerge from the multivariate analysis are presented, both for the closed-answer questions and for the openended questions, on which textual analysis techniques have been applied. The different tools and methods are presented to emphasize the specificity of the dataset, which presents a different level of variability of the answers in the different thematic areas. The report concludes with a series of considerations that we offer to the Unimore community to support the discussion on what we have learned and continue to learn thanks to the voice of the students. It is now clear that the exit from the emergency will be a gradual process. The students' point of view, which we gather from this survey, will be really valuable to plan next year's educational activities and services for students, in order to offer a high quality teaching that responds to different needs and study contexts. Further developments of the analysis may concern other in-depth studies on specific teaching methods (distance and in-presence) and on the evaluation of the living and working conditions of teaching and technical-administrative staff. The basic idea is to read, through the Covid-19 emergency lens, the essential dimensions to improve the quality of teaching highlighted by the empirical survey

2020 - Gli studenti EIDI al tempo del coronavirus. Risultati della rilevazione online del 21 marzo 2020 [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Colombini, S.; Pavone, P.; Alboni, F.; Sartori, L.; Piscitelli, G.; Di Santo, E.
abstract

Questo rapporto di ricerca presenta i risultati della prima rilevazione di monitoraggio online delle condizioni di vita e di studio degli studenti di Economia e Istituzioni dei Distretti industriali (2019-20) di Unimore (rilevazione on line del 21 marzo 2020). Il monitoraggio on line, che si svolgerà periodicamente fino alla fine del corso (lezioni e esami) è un esperimento di collaborazione che mira a superare l’emergenza covid-19 con maggiore consapevolezza e strumenti per praticare una didattica e uno studio che contribuiscano nel dare a ciascuno studente la possibilità di studiare e procedere nel proprio percorso di studi e di vita nel migliore dei modi. Vengono presentati il questionario, gli strumenti di rilevazione e i risultati che emergono da una prima elaborazione dei dati. Il rapporto si conclude con spunti per la prossima rilevazione e proposte per allargare la rilevazione. Le specifiche proposte didattiche e di studio che sono emerse anche grazie al primo monitoraggio non sono presentate in questo rapporto: sono in continua evoluzione e sono condivise con gli studenti nella piattaforma online del corso.

2020 - Indagine sulle condizioni di vita e di studio degli studenti di UNIMORE al tempo del coronavirus [Banca dati]
Russo, Margherita; Colombini, Sara
abstract

Vengono resi disponibili i dati e i metadati relativi alla rilevazione online condotta dall'Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia sulle condizioni di vita e di studio degli studenti ai tempi del coronavirus. All'indagine (rilevazione on line nel periodo 8 aprile-2 maggio 2020), ha risposto il 20% degli studenti: un tasso di partecipazione adeguato per cogliere alcune significative differenze tra corsi di studi. L'indagine è un esperimento di collaborazione che mira a superare l'emergenza Covid-19 con maggiore consapevolezza e strumenti per praticare una didattica e uno studio che contribuiscano nel dare a ciascuno studente la possibilità di studiare e procedere nel proprio percorso di studi e di vita nel migliore dei modi. La presentazione dei risultati è disponibile nel DEMB WP172/2020 http://merlino.unimo.it/campusone/web_dep/wpdemb/0173.pdf

2020 - Multidimensional Clustering of EU Regions: A Contribution to Orient Public Policies in Reducing Regional Disparities [Articolo su rivista]
Pavone, Pasquale; Pagliacci, Francesco; Russo, Margherita; Righi, Simone; Giorgi, Anna
abstract

This paper applies multidimensional clustering of EU-28 regions with regard to their specialisation strategies and socioeconomic characteristics. It builds on an original dataset. Several academic studies discuss the relevant issues to be addressed by innovation and regional development policies, but so far no systematic analysis has linked the different aspects of EU regions research and innovation strategies (RIS3) and their socio-economic characteristics. This paper intends to fill this gap, with the aim to provide clues for more effective regional and innovation policies. In the data set analysed in this paper, the socioeconomic and demographic classification associates each region to one categorical variable (with 19 categories), while the classification of the RIS3 priorities clustering was performed separately on “descriptions” (21 Boolean categories) and “codes” (11 Boolean Categories) of regions’ RIS3. The cluster analysis, implemented on the results of the correspondence analysis on the three sets of categories, returns 9 groups of regions that are similar in terms of priorities and socioeconomic characteristics. Each group has different characteristics that revolve mainly around the concepts of selectivity (group’s ability to represent a category) and homogeneity (similarity in the group with respect to one category) with respect to the different classifications on which the analysis is based. Policy implications showed in this paper are discussed as a contribution to the current debate on post-2020 European Cohesion Policy, which aims at orienting public policies toward the reduction of regional disparities and to the enhance complementarities and synergies within macro-regions.

2020 - Public innovation intermediaries and digital co-creation. Research contribution to the OECD TIP Co-creation project [Altro]
Rossi, Federica; Caloffi, Annalisa; Colovic, Ana; Russo, Margherita
abstract

The emerging digital technologies pose new challenges to innovation intermediaries. In this chapter we build on a case base of evidence on selected public intermediaries in France (pôles de compétitivité) and in the UK (digital catapults), to argue that public innovation intermediar-ies, which carry public policy mandates, have a specific role to play, particularly in the context on the emerging, complex, and yet not fully commoditised set of technologies underpinning the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. In particular, we reveal that by connecting a plurality of actors on the demand and supply side, public innovation intermediaries facilitate co-creation of complex technological solutions, and that in doing so, they create both social and economic value. The goals of examined co-creation activities revolve around finding highly innovative solutions to complex problems triggered by the digital transformation. The co-creation initiatives that we study take place at the national level, but their outputs have broader impact on the activities of the parties involved. Our evidence suggests that, when co-creating a complex technological solution, the intermediary is involved in two complementary, often intertwined, but distinct processes that bring together organisations that demand technology and those that supply technological solutions. On the demand side, the intermediary helps the organisation looking for a technological solution (a large company, an SME, or a municipality) to articulate their demand, and eventually find it as well. We call this ‘demand-led’ co-creation. On the supply side, the intermediary brings together a system of technology providers (large companies, SMEs, universities and public research or-ganisations) able to devise, develop and implement a technological solution to match the needs of the organisation on the demand side. We call this ‘supply-led’ co-creation. The intermediary is present from the beginning to the end of the co-creation processes, with its activities extending beyond co-creation processes to ensure post-project continuity between the involved actors. Among demand-led co-creation processes, we identified at least two different approaches devised by Catapults and Pôles de compétitivité - the development of an open challenge, and the development of a proof-of concept. On the supply side, we noted the creation of the so-called ‘groupement’ of SMEs by pôles de compétitivité, whereby the pôle facilitates the creation of a value-chain that is able to respond to complex demands of organisations looking for technolog-ical solutions. Our study shows that public intermediaries are able to play their unique role in co-creation processes thanks to several factors: the legitimacy they have to act as intermediaries, as they are endowed with public mandates; the presence of long-term public funding that enables interme-diaries to be perceived as neutral agents, to gain reputation and trust over time; the networks of trusted experts on whom they can rely to successfully complete their mission; a well functioning evaluation process that spurs intermediaries to act effectively and efficiently and to be respon-sive to demands from their stakeholders.

2020 - Regional structural heterogeneity: evidence and policy implications for RIS3 in macro-regional strategies [Articolo su rivista]
Pagliacci, F.; Pavone, P.; Russo, M.; Giorgi, A.
abstract

In the future of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy, a critical feature is how to capitalize on the current Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialisation (RIS3), introduced in the 2014-20 programming period as an ex-ante conditionality for accessing European Structural Investment Funds. As a contribution to the current debate, this paper frames the socioeconomic comparative analysis of EU regions, considering subnational structural similarities, and referring to population, labour market and the sectoral composition of the economy. Principal component analysis and cluster analysis are performed on 31 input variables, returning 19 different types of EU regions. With an application to the EU macro-regions, the paper supports policy planning in macro-regions as a meso-level of interventions for the future Cohesion Policy.

2020 - The Future of the Automotive Industry: Dangerous Challenges or New Life for a Saturated Market? [Working paper]
Simonazzi, Annamaria; Carreto Sanginés, Jorge; Russo, Margherita
abstract

The automotive industry is undergoing a radical transformation. New social, technological, environmental and geopolitical challenges are redefining the characteristics of a saturated market, opening new scenarios while offering opportunities for the entry of new players. These challenges are bound to trigger reorganization of the global value chain between old and new suppliers and car makers and their suppliers, affecting the distribution of employment, the regionalization of production and the dynamic evolution of the comparative ad- vantage of nations. In this paper we address the issue of the reorganization of global value chains in the face of these challenges. The analysis will compare the relative position of core and peripheries in the North-American and European macro-regions, focusing on Mexico, which represents a significant case study for analysis of the impact of the digital transformation on the domestic value chain in an “integrated periphery”, and of trade agreements on the location policies of big multinationals. The dependency of the Mexican automotive industry on the strategic decisions of global players is considered a factor of great vulnerability, especially in a context of rapid change in the patterns of consumption, technologies and international trade agreements. For Mexico, as for European producers in the integrated and semi-peripheries, the main challenge in the near future will be posed by the radical transformation the industry is going through in electrical and autonomous-driving vehicles, which sees regions and players out- side the traditional automotive clusters in the lead. The transformations taking place are bound to change the global structure of automotive production. The rise of new competitors from the emerging economies and would-be entrants from other sectors, competing in mastering the new digital and software technologies, threatens the established structure of the industry. The pandemic has led to a spectacular acceleration in the process of change, while heighten- ing uncertainty about future developments. This is why the governments of leading countries are joining in the race, wielding carrots and sticks in support of their industries and in the endeavor to encourage risk-taking and investment in research and innovation, step up e-vehicle production while providing for the necessary infrastructures, and guarantee their companies a place in the new industry

2020 - Why do we need science-based co-creation? [Working paper]
De Silva, Muthu; Gokhberg, Leonid; Meissner, Dirk; Russo, Margherita
abstract

For many years the transfer, exchange and collaboration of knowledge and technology between academia and industry have been discussed as an important means of generating commercial value. The underlying rationale for such collaborations is that knowledge and technology from academia lead to firms’ competitive advantage. What has received less attention in the literature, so far, is a science-based collaborative approach for addressing societal challenges. In particular, we focus on collaborations among different actors - ranging from academics, businesses, policy makers, intermediaries and society - who devote shared resources, competences and capabilities in developing unique solutions to economic and societal challenges. The specific domain of a such process - that demands thinking beyond the knowledge transfer or creation expected to produce business value - is framed as “co-creation”. This paper outlines a conceptual framework by capturing the heterogeneity of science-based co-creation and its determinants. In the paper, the concept of co-creation is positioned in the various strands of innovation literature which refer to collaboration across different domains, highlighting the uniqueness of co-creation. We suggest focussing on a distinctive character of co-creation: the production of both business value and social values that emerges with different forms of innovation, reach and prominence. While business value has its own metric in a monetary scale, when society is considered, metrics should refer to the many different dimensions that have been impacted on, leading to many social values (in plural). The paper highlights research gaps to further our knowledge on co-creation and suggests policy implications to support effective mutual interactions across science, technology and society.

2019 - Conflict and participation in bargaining at company level: the Lamborghini case [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Pavone, Pasquale; Cetrulo, Armanda
abstract

In the last 50 years, the nature and quality of industrial relations in Italy have changed considerably. The national bargaining process has been severely weakened and, in the past decade, the social dialogue between parties has been questioned on several occasions. Based on an original corpus of texts documenting bargaining at company level over 50 years within Lamborghini (which was acquired by the Audi VW group in 1998), in this article we analyse the core issues of the debate between the parties, and the very ways in which the debate takes place. Combining techniques of automatic text analysis and reading of individual documents, we obtain a periodisation of the issues at the heart of corporate bargaining that contribute to a discussion of the key elements characterising the virtuous circle of company development and quality of industrial relations.

2019 - Detecting multidimensional clustering across EU regions. Focus on R&I smart specialisation strategies and on socio-economic and demographic conditions [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pavone, P.; Pagliacci, F.; Righi, S.; Giorgi, A.
abstract

This paper applies multidimensional clustering of EU-28 regions to identify similar specialisation strategies and socioeconomic characteristics. It builds on an original dataset where the EU-28 regions are classified according to their socioeconomic and demographic features and to the strategic priorities outlined in their research and innovation smart specialisations strategy (RIS3). The socioeconomic and demographic classification associates each region to one categorical variable (with 19 modalities), while the classification of the RIS3 priorities clustering was performed separately on “descriptions” (21 Boolean categories) and “codes” (11 Boolean Categories) of regions’ RIS3. Three techniques of clustering have been applied: Infomap multilayer algorithm, Correspondence Analysis plus Cluster Analysis and cross tabulation. The most effective clustering, in terms of both the characteristics of the data and the emerging results, is that obtained on the results of the Correspondence Analysis. By contrast, due to the very dense network induced by the data characteristics, the Infomap algorithm does not produce significant results. Finally, cross tabulation is the most detailed tool to identify groups of regions with similar characteristics. In particular, in the paper we present an application of cross tabulation to focus on the regions investing in sustainable development priorities. Policy implications of methods implemented in this paper are discussed as a contribution to the current debate on post-2020 European Cohesion Policy, which aims at orienting public policies toward the reduction of regional disparities and the enhancement of complementarities and synergies within macroregions.

2019 - Digital transformation in the automotive supply chain: a comparative perspective [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

This chapter addresses the dynamics of the ongoing digital transformations in the automotive industry in China, Germany, Italy and Japan, building on the results of empirical analyses prepared for the OECD project ‘Digital and Open Innovation’. Several dimensions are examined, according the availability of comparable information across the different sources, aiming to understand the rationale of the different paces of change of digital transformation in the various segments (and different size of companies) of the supply chain across countries, and understanding its implications, if any, for innovation policy. Although the automotive supply chain has a digitalization level greater than in other manufacturing industries, there is no alignment of digital transformation along the many specializations within the automotive supply chain and across countries. The chapter highlights the implications of interrelationships in the global value chain in which those countries are located and discusses implications for innovation policy with regard to systemic changes in related systems of transport infrastructures and renewable energy production: their path of development is strongly affected by the rhythm at which electric vehicles will be produced

2019 - Digital transformation in the automotive supply chain: China, Germany, Italy and Japan in a comparative perspective [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

A wide literature on digital transformation in manufacturing and services has explored its impact on long term changes in labour demand and skills and on productivity and growth. A new perspective on the ongoing digital transformation has been prompted by Oecd to highlight specific metrics needed to assess its impact on the economy and society and to support innovat on policies. Drawing on these contributions, this paper aims to shed light on the impact of digital transformation on the reorganization and relocation of the various segments of the automotive supply chain. In particular, it will focus on the effects generated by different paces of adoption of digital technologies in this supply chain, with regard to both the various segments and the various sizes of companies, in different countries. The causes of this heterogeneity will be discussed and the implications for the full impact of the ongoing transformation will be considered in relation to industrial and innovation policy in Europe. The paper addresses the issue by reviewing empirical evidence on the automotive supply chain, which includes the most advanced manufacturing and service companies that are now adopting digital technologies. Evidence from case studies in the automotive industry in China, Germany, Italy and Japan will help in identifying the main challenges of digital transformation for European countries, which will involve a strongly interrelated supply chain both within and outside Europe.

2019 - Digital upgrade in the automotive supply chain in Mexico: issues and challenges [Working paper]
Carreto Sanginés, J.; Pavone, P.; Russo, M.; Simonazzi, A.
abstract

The ongoing digital transformation poses diverse challenges to the automotive sector. While the process of digitalisation will lead to technical and organisational changes across and within the global value chains, the ongoing changes in the trade agreements spurred by the Trump administration may change the location advantages of previous plants and their specialisations. In addition, investment in the electric car may offer first-mover advantages in markets, while requiring the re-organisation of the value chains. Mexico, ranked in 2018 as the seventh producer at world level, is an important case study for several reasons: among these, its cost advantages, its privileged access to the US market, that attracted many OEMs from Europe, Asia, the US, and its role in the prospective regionalization of world trade. By using interviews to automotive suppliers, experts and business associations of the automotive industry, the paper aims at providing a first outline on issues to be addressed in an analysis looking at how these changes are affecting opportunities for the OEMs in their value chains based in the Mexican automotive system.

2019 - Innovation intermediaries and performance-based incentives: a case study of regional innovation poles [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Annalisa, Caloffi; Rossi, Federica; Righi, Riccardo
abstract

A growing number of innovation policies rely on publicly-funded innovation intermediaries to provide knowledge-intensive services to firms, particularly small- and medium-sized ones. The performance of innovation intermediaries is often assessed using indicators that need to be closely aligned with policy objectives to be effective. However, this alignment is difficult to achieve and is often overlooked in practice. We analyse the relationship between performance indicators and the behaviour of intermediaries by examining a case study of innovation intermediaries funded with public resources in Tuscany, Italy. The intermediaries implemented actions that allowed them to achieve their performance targets rapidly. However, due to a misalignment between indicators and policy objectives, these actions were not entirely consistent with the latter. After reviewing the literature on this key issue, we build on our findings to suggest how to design performance indicators that can induce intermediaries to more effectively support the achievement of policy objectives.

2019 - Innovation Poles in Tuscany 2011-2014 [Banca dati]
Righi, Riccardo; Russo, Margherita; Caloffi, Annalisa; Righi, Simone; Rossi, Federica
abstract

The database "Innovation Poles in Tuscany 2011-2014" collects data on innovation intermediaries, funded through a regional policy intervention, in the Italian region of Tuscany. It has been developed in the research project "Poli.in Analysis and modelling of innovation poles in Tuscany" (www.poliinovazione.unimore.it), co-funded by Tuscany's Regional Administration and University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. Publications using the present data set are available at www.poliinovazione.unimore.it. The dataset has been already elaborated in - Russo, Margherita, Annalisa Caloffi, Riccardo Righi, Simone Righi, Federica Rossi «Multilayer Network analysis of innovation intermediaries’ activities». In G. Ragozini, M. P. Vitale (eds.), Challenges in Social Network Research, Lecture Notes in Social Networks, © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31463-7_12 - Russo, Margherita, Annalisa Caloffi, Riccardo Righi, Simone Righi, Federica Rossi. 2016. «Multilayer Network analysis of innovation intermediaries’ activities: methodological issues and an application to a regional policy programme», In Blue Sky Forum: Posters Gallery-Innovation Metrics. Ghent, Belgium. http://www.oecd.org/sti/blue-sky-posters.htm. - Russo, Margherita, Annalisa Caloffi, Federica Rossi, Riccardo Righi. 2018. «Innovation intermediaries and performance-based incentives: a case study of regional innovation poles». Science and Public Policy, 46(1), 2019, 1–12 https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scy028. FOLDERS: - folder edges: data on the edgelist in .csv, .dta, .xlsx - folder nodes: data agents in .csv, .dta, .xlsx - folder “graph” : RDS file network in igraph

2019 - Innovazione tecnologica e organizzazione del lavoro: il ruolo del sindacato nel caso Lamborghini [Articolo su rivista]
Cetrulo, Armanda; Russo, Margherita
abstract

In recent years, discussion on technological change and the future of work has become central to policy and academic debates. However, the so-called «Industry 4.0» paradigm is rarely dropped within an in-depth analysis of the processes of work organization and interaction of the social actors within a productive organization. In this work, we propose a case study on the historical evolution of Lamborghini’s bargaining on some specific issues related to the introduction of new technologies, such as the work organization and the training of workers, through a detailed study of the document base already used in Russo et al. (2018, 2019) and several interviews to trade union representatives. Our analysis confirms the dual nature of the process of technological innovation, outcome of the negotiation between the ownership of the company and the workers, and underlines the need to look carefully at the role of industrial relations at the corporate level to understand the direction of the changes under discussion today.

2019 - Is a Policy Mix More Effective Than Individual Policies for SME Innovation? An Exploratory Analysis [Articolo su rivista]
Annalisa, Caloffi; Freo, Marzia; Ghinoi, Stefano; Rossi, Federica; Russo, Margherita
abstract

The provision of public funds to private firms for the purchase of services, particularly knowledge-intensive ones, has received so far little attention from the evaluation literature (Bakhshi et al., 2015; Bruhn et al., 2018 are notable exceptions). These interventions aim to help SMEs to access a variety of knowledge and competencies required for innovation, which are not available within the firm (Vossen, 1998; Storey, 2003). The implicit assumption is that SMEs primarily suffer from constraints on their financial resources, rather than on their capabilities. After receiving the subsidy, SMEs should be able to identify the services they need, as well as the suppliers that can best provide them. However, it is well known that SMEs, may not only lack the financial resources to invest in innovation, but also the capabilities to identify the competences and services they need, or the right suppliers that can provide them (Fontana et al., 2006; Ortega Argilés et al., 2009). Subsidies for the purchase of knowledge-intensive services address the former problem, but not the latter. As discussed by Shapira and Youtie (2016), to help SMEs increase their awareness of their needs and how to address them, they could be provided with complementary services, such as technology and innovation advisory services. This study presents an exploratory empirical analysis focused on two interconnected regional innovation policy interventions implemented in Tuscany (Italy). We adopt a propensity score matching approach applied to the case of multiple treatments, as proposed by Lechner (2002a, 2002b). In particular, we compare three different treatments: (i) the use of innovation vouchers for the purchase of knowledge-intensive services; (ii) the reliance on an intermediary’s technology and innovation advisory service; (iii) the combination of the two treatments, i.e. the use of innovation vouchers for the purchase of knowledge-intensive services with guidance from the intermediary. While policy mixes have been advocated as a response to complex problems (Flanagan et al., 2011; Cunningham et al., 2016), very little empirical evidence is available about the comparative effectiveness of policy mixes with respect to that of the single policies in the mix (Martin, 2016), and no other studies consider the particular combination of innovation vouchers and advisory services. This exploratory study captures an aspect that lies at the core of the policy mix literature, namely that the mix cannot be considered as the simple sum of the single instruments that are included in it (Magro and Wilson, 2013), but it can facilitate the emergence of synergies and complementarities among them.

2019 - La filiera della componentistica automotive in Emilia-Romagna [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Pentucci, Pier Paolo
abstract

Il capitolo presenta la struttura della filiera automotive in Emilia-Romagna (imprese e domini di specializzazione), le caratteristiche delle imprese rispondenti al questionario 2019, e la comparazione delle tre edizioni dell’Osservatorio in Emilia-Romagna (2017-2019). Le osservazioni conclusive indicano spunti di approfondimento della ricerca empirica.

2019 - Multi-hazard, exposure and vulnerability in Italian municipalities [Banca dati]
Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

The dataset includes data on multiple hazards (earthquakes, landslides, and floods) across Italy (data by municipality) and the results of the Multi-Hazard Index and of the cluster analysis, elaborated by: "Pagliacci and Russo (2019), 'Multi-hazard, exposure and vulnerability in Italian municipalities'. In: Resilience and Urban Disasters, edited by Kamila Borsekova and Peter Nijkamp, pages 175-198 Edward Elgar Publishing." It also returns data on exposure (total population) and social and material vulnerability of the Italian municipalities.

2019 - Multi-hazard, exposure and vulnerability in Italian municipalities [Capitolo/Saggio]
Pagliacci, Francesco; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Disaster risk is a function of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. These dimensions may show large heterogeneity also at a very local level. This work uses updated statistics on natural hazards (earthquake, landslide and flood hazards) at a municipality level in Italy in order to tackle the issue of multi-hazard. Through a cluster analysis and a Multi-Hazard Indicator it is possible to disentangle specific and geographically defined hazard patterns. Moreover, the analysis of both exposures and local vulnerabilities suggests that they tend to be linked with hazards. In this respect, Italian inner areas seem to face the most critical situation (and because of the lack of organisation infrastructures), and deserve proper attention. In particular, community resilience (as also promoted by the Sendai Framework) could be enhanced by a proper assessment of local hazards and vulnerabilities.

2019 - Multilayer Network Analysis of Innovation Intermediaries’ Activities [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Annalisa, Caloffi; Righi, Riccardo; Righi, Simone; Rossi, Federica
abstract

Policymakers wishing to enhance innovation processes in small and medium-sized enterprises increasingly channel their interventions through innovation intermediaries. However, limited empirical research exists regarding the activities and performance of intermediaries, with most contributions taking a qualitative approach and focusing on the role of intermediaries as brokers. In this paper, we analyse the extent to which innovation intermediaries, through their engagement in different activities, support the creation of communities of other agents. We use multilayer network analysis techniques to simultaneously represent the many types of interactions promoted by intermediaries. Furthermore, by originally applying the Infomap algorithm to our multilayer network, we assess the contribution of the agents involved in different activities promoted by intermediaries, and we identify the emerging multilayer communities and the intercohesive agents that span across several communities. Our analysis highlights the potential and the critical features of multilayer analysis for policy design and evaluation.

2019 - Reconstruction after an Earthquake: Learning from the Past. The Case Study of Emilia-Romagna [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Pagliacci, Francesco
abstract

The earthquake that in 2012 hit the Emilian plain - on the border with Veneto and Lombardy - was one of the biggest in the recent history of Italy. In Emilia, the reconstruction was able to reconnect people and places, mobilizing resources that in that territory, in ordinary times, were in fact latent. Moreover, such an extraordinary action was able to orient the system along new trajectories of development, accelerating those very processes of transformation that were already in motion before the occurrence of the 2012 earthquake. Both the case of the biomedical sector in the Mirandola area, which was the closest to the epicentres and the case of the agri-food sector represent leading examples of such a local capacity. Yet, the process of reconstruction in Emilia was also marked by light and shadow: some of the organizational innovations, which have represented the distinctive feature of that experience, could have had an even more disruptive effect on the national scene. The paper highlights the characteristics of these important innovations, also pointing out what potential seems not yet to have been exploited.

2019 - R&I smart specialisation strategies and on socio-economic and demographic conditions [Banca dati]
Pagliacci, F.; Pavone, P.; Russo, M.; Giorgi, A.
abstract

In this database the EU-28 regions are classified according to their socioeconomic and demographic features and to the strategic priorities outlined in their research and innovation smart specialisations strategy (RIS3). The socioeconomic and demographic classification returns three, nine, and 19 different types of EU regions. The classification of the RIS3 priorities, based on an automatic text analyisis, returns four and 19 different types of priorities described in free text format and five and 11 types of priorities based in the series of related codes of economic domains, scientific domains and policy objectives.

2019 - R&I smart specialisation strategies: classification of EU regions’ priorities [Banca dati]
Pavone, P.; Russo, M.; Pagliacci, F.; Giorgi, A.
abstract

Building on automatic text analysis, this DB proposes an original categorization of Research and Innovation Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3) priorities and provides a common language (with detailed dictionaries) to classify priorities and then to associate EU regions to multiclass categories of priorities. This result is a powerful tool to interpret the current state of diversification across regions, with its potential of complementarities and synergies that might support territorial integrated development paths. It would also support regions in their future strategic programmes on RIS3.

2019 - R&I smart specialisation strategies: classification of EU regions’ priorities. Results from automatic text analysis [Working paper]
Pavone, P.; Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.; Giorgi, A.
abstract

Building on automatic text analysis, this paper proposes an original categorization of Research and Innovation Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3) priorities and provides a common language (with detailed dictionaries) to classify priorities and then to associate EU regions to multiclass categories of priorities. This result is a powerful tool to interpret the current state of diversification across regions, with its potential of complementarities and synergies that might support territorial integrated development paths. It would also support regions in their future strategic programmes on RIS3. A case study on the Alpine macro-region shows innovation development paths to outline macroregion strategic planning.

2019 - RIS3 in macro-regional strategies: tools to design and monitor integrated territorial development paths [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Russo, Margherita; Pagliacci, Francesco; Pavone, Pasquale; Giorgi, Anna
abstract

This paper highlights the importance of combining quantitative and qualitative analyses . It combines multidimensional analysis of the characteristics of EU macro-regions with a comparative, qualitative perspective on priorities outlined in regional innovation strategies. It shows that bottom-up strategies for regions can support integrated approaches, and that the RIS3 database in particular can help with the successful design and implementation of policies

2019 - RIS3 in macro-regional strategies: tools to design and monitor integrated territorial development paths [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pagliacci, F.; Pavone, P.; Giorgi, A.
abstract

Building on the broad and diverse picture of strategic interventions on regions' research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3) and on macro-regional strategies, this paper outlines a comparative framework to analyse regions' RIS3 priorities (to outline the intended development path that regions aim at) and socioeconomic conditions (to describe the structural features, as they emerge from Eurostat data). The paper integrates results developed in two companion papers, by Pavone et al. (2018) and by Pagliacci et al. (2018), thus providing a multidimensional perspective on similarity across regions. Identifying which are the similarities is essential in a comparative analysis that aims to measure and monitor the impact of integrated investments on the development of the territory across sectors. Implications of the methodology proposed in the paper are discussed with suggestions for policy makers.

2019 - Socioeconomic classification of EU regions [Banca dati]
Pagliacci, F.; Pavone, P.; Russo, M.; Giorgi, A.
abstract

This database returns the socioeconomic classification of EU regions, considering sub-national structural similarities, referring to population, labour market, and sectoral composition of the economy. It returns the outcome of a Cluster Analysis, returning three, nine, and 19 different types of EU regions. This work is part of the Work Package Nr: T-3 "Enhancing shared Alpine Governance project" of the Project "Implementing Alpine Governance Mechanism of the European Strategy for the Alpine Region" (AlpGov) of the Interreg Alpine Space Programme - Priority 4 (Well-Governed Alpine Space), SO4.1 (Increase the application of multilevel and transnational governance in the Alpine Space).

2019 - Socioeconomic effects of an earthquake: does spatial heterogeneity matter? [Articolo su rivista]
Pagliacci, Francesco; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Estimation of the macroeconomic effects of an earthquake critically depends on the identification of the affected area's boundaries, socioeconomic local heterogeneity and proper counterfactual analysis. By taking the 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake (Italy) as a case study, this paper answers these questions in a sub-regional framework. Cluster analysis tackles the heterogeneity issue, returning different types of affected municipalities. A difference-in-differences analysis then suggests that, since 2012, some clusters (and some municipalities within them) have performed better than others. This contrasts with the results observed by comparing the whole affected area with the non-affected one, with implications for both policy interventions and the recovery processes.

2019 - The automotive sector in Mexico [Working paper]
Carreto Sanginés, J.; Russo, M.
abstract

This paper contextualises the background of a broader research on the digital technological transformation in the automotive industry in Mexico. It explores the impact of the NAFTA in the development of automotive industry in Mexico and how this country has become an important player in the global value chains of the automotive industry. This will provide the ongoing research project on "Digital transformation in the automotive supply chain in Mexico" with insights of what could be the impact of the new trade agreement with US and Canada, as well as its effects inside the country and its crosscountry impact on the automotive global value chain. The paper describes briefly the situation of the automotive industry before the NAFTA was signed, in 1992, and the development in Mexico during the validity of Agreement. The automotive industry has become the second most important industry in Mexico, after food industries. In 2015 it represented 18.5% of manufacturing GDP, and it exports most of its production to the United States. In 2018, Mexico ranked as the 8th world producers of cars.

2019 - The Network Effects of Regional R&D Collaboration Policy [Articolo su rivista]
Caloffi, Annalisa; Rossi, Federica; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Adopting a counterfactual approach to the evaluation of an R&D collaboration policy, carried out on a regional scale, we investigate different types of persistent network effects, namely persistence, breadth, composition, and intensification. Our findings reveal that the R&D collaboration policy was able to generate a persistent change in the networking behaviour of participating firms (persistence effect), stimulating in particular collaborations with universities. Network effects were greater for firms that, prior to the policy intervention, were already accustomed to collaborating, than for more stand-alone firms. With respect to the former firms, we also find a composition effect, which implies a change in the type of partners in innovation-related activities.

2019 - What innovation policy mix does matter for which countries? Patterns emerging from multidimensional analysis on STIP Compass platform [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pavone, P.
abstract

An increasing consensus is shared among scholars on the relevance of policy mix in supporting innovation processes. An essential support for a comparative analysis of innovation policies is provided by STIP Compass. As a joint initiative of the European Commission and OECD, STIP Compass contains taxonomies of policies, databases, monitoring tools, and links between various data sources. The paper addresses two research questions: the first one concerns the way to single out a pattern of innovation policy mix. The second one specifically focuses on the dimensions in the narratives adopted to describe the current policy issues. The paper refers to the STIP Compass database downloaded on 24th August 2019. Results can be browsed by using the navigation on Tableau Public. Being aware that the potential of STIP Compass relies on the quality of information that is entered by the countries, this paper aims at enhancing the awareness of both scholars and policy makers involved in the innovation policy field by suggesting its use to outline patterns of policy mix across countries. Although the database is incomplete and currently under revision, the exercise undertaken in this paper outlines methods for text analysis that will be applied to the new updated edition of STIP Compass, when available. One urgent message is drawn from the analysis undertaken in this paper: aiming at providing an effective analytical framework a tools for innovation policies in Europe, the European Commission cannot overlook that subnational policies need to be entered in STIP Compass, and this could be done in a straightforward way, by using information on regional innovation policies already available in the DG Regio.

2019 - What innovation policy mix does matter for which countries? Patterns emerging from multidimensional analysis on STIP Compass platform [Software]
Russo, Margherita; Pavone, Pasquale
abstract

A wide literature on digital transformation in manufacturing and services has explored its impact on long term changes in labour demand and skills and on productivity and growth. A new perspective on the ongoing digital transformation has been prompted by Oecd to highlight specific metrics needed to assess its impact on the economy and society and to support innovation policies. Drawing on these contributions, this paper aims to shed light on the impact of digital transformation on the reorganization and relocation of the various segments of the automotive supply chain. In particular, it will focus on the effects generated by different paces of adoption of digital technologies in this supply chain, with regard to both the various segments and the various sizes of companies, in different countries. The causes of this heterogeneity will be discussed and the implications for the full impact of the ongoing transformation will be considered in relation to industrial and innovation policy in Europe. The paper addresses the issue by reviewing empirical evidence on the automotive supply chain, which includes the most advanced manufacturing and service companies that are now adopting digital technologies. Evidence from case studies in the automotive industry in China, Germany, Italy and Japan will help in identifying the main challenges of digital transformation for European countries, which will involve a strongly interrelated supply chain both within and outside Europe.

2018 - A comparative evaluation of regional subsidies for collaborative and individual R&D in small and medium-sized enterprises [Articolo su rivista]
Caloffi, Annalisa; Mariani, Marco; Rossi, Federica; Russo, Margherita
abstract

We analyse whether public subsidies supporting collaborative research and development (R&D) projects in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are able to encourage persistent R&D investment and interorganisational networking more than subsidies supporting individual R&D projects. Adopting a counterfactual approach to policy evaluation, we compare subsidies for collaborative R&D and for individual R&D implemented in the same Italian region in the same period. Our findings suggest that, once public support is no longer available, the two subsidies have different effects on different types of SMEs. If the policymakers’ objective is to increase the number of R&D-performing SMEs over time, they should provide subsidies for collaborative R&D to firms with modest R&D experience. If their objective is to increase the amount of spontaneous R&D investment over time, they should target SMEs with some prior R&D experience, using either subsidy. Finally, if their objective is to induce SMEs to network with external organisations, subsidies for collaborative R&D projects should be preferred to subsidies for individual R&D projects.

2018 - Cinquanta anni di contrattazione di secondo livello: che cosa impariamo dal caso Lamborghini? [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pavone, P.; Cetrulo, A.
abstract

In the last fifty years, the nature and quality of industrial relations in Italy has changed considerably. The national bargaining process has been severely weakened and social dialogue between the parties has been questioned on several occasions. Corporate bargaining in the Fiat automotive group marked a season where the test of strength between company management and the Trade Union seemed to be played out on the ground of economic development based on a waiver of workers' rights, and where the global dimension of industrial relations in a multinational company could not be questioned because it was not an issue relevant to corporate bargaining. In this context, the existence of some divergent situations, such as that of Lamborghini, is extremely interesting, due to the particular context of regional development in which it is located and to the turning point in its ups and downs when, in 1998, it was acquired by the Audi VW group. A longitudinal analysis of the bargaining at company level offers cues for tracing a periodisation of the issues at the centre of the comparison between the parties, and the methods in which the comparison takes place. Based on the original body of bargaining from 1968 to 2016, the analysis proposed in this essay uses the results of automatic text analysis for a critical reflection that flanks the reading of documents. In addition to identifying an effective periodisation of the issues at the heart of corporate bargaining, the conclusions underline the link between the national level and the corporate level of bargaining.

2018 - Effetti economici e sociali del sisma sugli allevamenti dell’Alto Maceratese [Working paper]
Habluetzel, A.; Russo, M.; Pagliacci, F.; Pacifici, L.; Bisci, C.
abstract

Il contributo analizza la filiera zootecnica dell’Alto Maceratese danneggiata dal sisma del 2016. Rispetto ad alcune difficolta storiche (marginalità territoriale e spopolamento), questa analisi si è concentrata sugli effetti del sisma. In collaborazione con i veterinari della Regione Marche, è stato somministrato ad un campione di 55 famiglie di allevatori un questionario semi-strutturato al fine di osservare le caratteristiche socio-economiche degli allevamenti (prevalentemente a media quota e dediti nella metà dei casi unicamente all’attività zootecnica) e i danni prodotti dal sisma (ad abitazioni, patrimonio zootecnico e strutture agricole). L’ultima sezione del questionario raccoglie alcune proposte di miglioramento nella fase di ricostruzione. Proprio la rigenerazione dei territori colpiti, infatti, sembra porre ambizione sfide che riguardano il ripristino delle attività lavorative e il ritorno della popolazione sul territorio.

2018 - Innovation intermediaries as a response to system failures: Creating the right incentives [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Annalisa, Caloffi; Federica, Rossi; Righi, Riccardo
abstract

Innovation intermediaries, i.e. intermediary organisations that support firm-level and collaborative innovation are a varied set of organisations that provide either networking services (e.g. support to R&D partnership formation and to university-industry collaborations) or other knowledge-intensive services (e.g. knowledge and technology mapping, various types of consultancy) or both. Since intermediaries can facilitate knowledge exchange among organisations with different languages, cultures, decision-making horizons, systems of incentives and objectives, they can play an important role in policies aimed at promoting innovation and technology transfer within local, regional and national innovation systems. In particular, as we will argue in this Chapter, the range of activities that intermediaries engage in can potentially address numerous failures in their innovation systems. Our study provides a theoretical framework to address the mismatch between the policies’ objectives to address innovation system failures, on the one hand, and the indicators used to evaluate the intermediaries’ performance, on the other. By suggesting that the measurement of the intermediaries’ performance should be explicitly linked to their success in remedying such failures, this approach can then provide a guide to the design of appropriate indicators. These issues are illustrated through a case study of publicly-funded innovation intermediaries in the Italian region of Tuscany in 2011-2014.

2018 - Laboratori di robotica ed educazione tecnologica contestualizzata [Articolo su rivista]
Mengoli, Paola; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Realized between 2009 and 2013 as an action-research to support the education system, tackling the challenges of the new manufacturing of Industry 4.0, Officina Emilia's robotics workshops are described in the paper that presents methods and results of the evaluation of the activities. The conclusion remarks are on how to involve students, their teachers and schools, with the aim of simultaneously creating significant learning in the new enerations, in-service teacher training experiences, innovation of methodologies.

2018 - L’Industria Automotive in Emilia-Romagna [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Il capitolo presenta la composizione della filiera automotive in Emilia-Romagna e le caratteristiche delle imprese rispondenti nll'idagine dell'Osservatorio automotive del 2018. Sintetizza gli spunti di riflessione emersi nel corso delle interviste ai manager dell’automotive dell’Emilia-Romagna, con riferimento a: competenze, comunicazione digitale e face-to-face; big data nella creazione di valore, uso delle stampanti 3D, diffusione dei robot, potenzialità della piccola dimensione nella creazione di nicchie di mercato; collaborazione con OEM stranieri, manutenzione delle tecnologie di alta precisione, concorrenza e collaborazione aperta, requisiti richiesti dagli OEM stranieri sulle cindizioni di lavoro. L'ultima sezione del saggio riporta i risultati dell’analisi sulla trasformazione digitale in corso nelle imprese della regione.

2018 - Robotics workshops and Contextualised Technological Education programme [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Mengoli, Paola
abstract

Realized between 2009 and 2013 as an action-research to support the education system, tackling the challenges of the new manufacturing of Industry 4.0, Officina Emilia's robotics workshops are described in the paper that presents methods and results of the evaluation of the activities. The conclusion remarks are on how to involve students, their teachers and schools, with the aim of simultaneously creating significant learning in the new generations, in-service teacher training experiences, innovation of methodologies.

2017 - A hybrid space to support the regeneration of competences for re-industrialization [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Mengoli, P.
abstract

Since the 1970s, in many European industrialized areas, cities have undergone radical trans-formations to cope with de-industrialization but also with the new needs of the post Fordistic or-ganization of the factories and their ecosystems: logistics and transport requirements were de-manding new functional areas, business services - from individual units up to big service compa-nies - needed different configurations of working spaces, urban sprawling increased to satisfy resi-dential needs. A huge amount of manufacturing buildings has become no longer appropriate for many production processes and the future of the old industrial premises has punctuated the public debate of the past forty years: from their restoring (to keep traces of local socio-technical identity), to their demolition (to provide new appropriate production or living spaces), to their re-use (for hosting new activities). In the somewhat drastic passage from the past industrial era to the future digital economy, medium size cities in industrialized areas present some specific challenges when they have to support the new manufacturing age: not only with new spaces, but also with new skills. In recent years, many public (and also private) initiatives have proposed and implemented the transformation of old manufacturing building in new settings to foster creativity-and-innovation, a condition considered essential, among others, to create new opportunities for growth. Are the re-uses of buildings effective for that goal? Is contamination in hybrid spaces the crucial ingredient for their success in supporting creativity? These questions appear even more critical when we are confronted with the creation of new skills for re-industrialization in areas that are still pillars of manufacturing activities but that are progressively lost the social fabric that reproduced skills. Although their general character is to enable information and communication flows, cities in industrialized areas have lost some important pieces of knowledge on material processes. In this contribution we address some of those issues by investigating the action-research called "Officina Emilia" that was initiated in Italy exactly with the goal of regenerating compe-tence networks in a manufacturing area. Officina Emilia developed some distinctive features: the creation of an original space, Museolaboratorio, designed as a hybrid space; the action-research program to introduce changes through the context-based technology education; the intent to build on a large and qualified network, supporting the innovation in the education system at regional level. These features will be discussed below. The rationale for this analysis is to single out which are the agents, the processes and some conditions that may hamper similar initiatives. In this chap-ter we first introduce, in section 2, the interdependencies between economic system and education system. We discuss a new approach to technology education in context, and the specific characters of what is needed to improve such context-based education. In section 3 we present the education activities produced by Officina Emilia. In section 4 we comment on the lessons learned from the action-research that created a hybrid space. Our focus is on the relevant agents, artefacts and inter-action processes that can support social innovation in education to enhance significant learning, to meet the changes of the world of production and to address the complexity of concrete situations. Section 5 concludes with some remarks.

2017 - A hybrid space to support the regeneration of competences for re-industrialization. Lessons from a research-action [Working paper]
Mengoli, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

Since the 1970s, in many European industrialized areas, cities have undergone radical transformations to cope with de-industrialization but also with the new needs of the post Fordistic organization of the factories and their ecosystems: logistics and transport requirements were demanding new functional areas, business services - from individual units up to big service companies - needed different configurations of working spaces, urban sprawling increased to satisfy residential needs. A huge amount of manufacturing buildings has become no longer appropriate for many production processes and the future of the old industrial premises has punctuated the public debate of the past forty years: from their restoring (to keep traces of local socio-technical identity), to their demolition (to provide new appropriate production or living spaces), to their re-use (for hosting new activities). In the somewhat drastic passage from the past industrial era to the future digital economy, medium size cities in industrialized areas present some specific challenges when they have to support the new manufacturing age: not only with new spaces, but also with new skills. In recent years, many public (and also private) initiatives have proposed and implemented the transformation of old manufacturing building in new settings to foster creativity-andinnovation, a condition considered essential, among others, to create new opportunities for growth. Are the re-uses of buildings effective for that goal? Is contamination in hybrid spaces the crucial ingredient for their success in supporting creativity? These questions appear even more critical when we are confronted with the creation of new skills for re-industrialization in areas that are still pillars of manufacturing activities but that are progressively lost the social fabric that reproduced skills. Although their general character is to enable information and communication flows, cities in industrialized areas have lost some important pieces of knowledge on material processes. In this contribution we address some of those issues by investigating the action-research called "Officina Emilia" that was initiated in Italy exactly with the goal of regenerating competence networks in a manufacturing area. Officina Emilia developed some distinctive features: the creation of an original space, Museolaboratorio, designed as a hybrid space; the action-research program to introduce changes through the context-based technology education; the intent to build on a large and qualified network, supporting the innovation in the education system at regional level. These features will be discussed below. The rationale for this analysis is to single out which are the agents, the processes and some conditions that may hamper similar initiatives. In this chapter we first introduce, in section 2, the interdependencies between economic system and education system. We discuss a new approach to technology education in context, and the specific characters of what is needed to improve such context-based education. In section 3 we present the education activities produced by Officina Emilia. In section 4 we comment on the lessons learned from the action-research that created a hybrid space. Our focus is on the relevant agents, artefacts and interaction processes that can support social innovation in education to enhance significant learning, to meet the changes of the world of production and to address the complexity of concrete situations. Section 5 concludes with some remarks on the lost and missing links hampering the actionresearch to become a driver of change.

2017 - A Hybrid Space to Support the Regeneration of Competences for Re-industrialization. Lessons from an Action-Research [Capitolo/Saggio]
Mengoli, Paola; Russo, Margherita
abstract

In this paper, we present the action-research programme “Officina Emilia”, which was initiated in Italy with the goal of regenerating competence networks in a manufacturing area. Officina Emilia developed some distinctive features: the creation of an original space, Museolaboratorio, designed as a hybrid space; the action-research program to introduce changes through the context-based technology education; the intent to build on a large and qualified network, supporting the innovation in the education system at regional level. The rationale for this analysis is to single out which are the agents, the processes and some conditions that may hamper similar initiatives. We first introduce interdependencies between economic system and education system. We discuss a new approach to technology education in context, and the specific characters of what is needed to improve such context-based education. We present the education activities produced by Officina Emilia and we comment the lessons learned from the action-research that created a hybrid space. Our focus is on the relevant agents, artefacts and interaction processes that can support social innovation in education to enhance significant learning, to meet the changes of the world of production and to address the complexity of concrete situations. The conclusion focus on the lost and missing links hampering the action-research to become action.

2017 - A tale of persistent network additionality, with evidence from a regional policy [Working paper]
Caloffi, Annalisa; Rossi, Federica; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Adopting a counterfactual approach to the evaluation of a regional R&D; collaboration policy, carried out in Tuscany (Italy), we investigate different types of persistent network additionality, namely persistence effect, breadth effect, composition effect, and depth effect.

2017 - Building Back Better: idee e percorsi per la costruzione di comunità resilienti [Curatela]
Esposito, Fulvio; Russo, Margherita; Sargolini, Massimo; Sartori, Laura; Virgili, Vania
abstract

I saggi raccolti in questo volume richiamano l’attenzione su quanto è possibile fare sin d’ora, nel nostro paese, per mobilitare le migliori energie e attivare processi virtuosi nella direzione tracciata dalle Nazioni Unite nel Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-30. Si tratta certamente di “ricostruire meglio” (Building Back Better), ma servono anche azioni di prevenzione che diventano prioritarie in un contesto dove ai rischi naturali si aggiungono vulnerabilità sociali ed economiche. La comunità scientifica ha il dovere di partecipare alla creazione di condizioni che incrementino la resilienza dei territori e delle comunità a rischio o già colpiti. Solo un fecondo e concreto dialogo fra i numerosi saperi, competenze e responsabilità dei diversi attori coinvolti può consentire di intraprendere azioni adeguate per ottenere risultati incisivi e duraturi a sostegno dei territori e delle comunità. Un hub internazionale, caratterizzato da contributi multidisciplinari, può valorizzare una massa critica di ricerca e innovazione, come testimonia questo libro, attivando un proficuo confronto con i decisori politici per progettare e realizzare interventi concreti sui territori. Il volume raccoglie contributi di ricercatori di università italiane (Bologna, Camerino, Firenze, Macerata, Modena e Reggio Emilia, Politecnica delle Marche, Urbino), enti e centri di ricerca (Centro euromediterraneo di documentazione Eventi Estremi e Disastri, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Istituto nazionale di fisica nucleare, Istituto nazionale di geofisica e vulcanologia) e di ActionAid. La parte Strategie in azione raccoglie le interviste ai responsabili dell’Agenzia per la coesione territoriale, del Piano Casa Italia, della Protezione civile e di Loccioni Group.

2017 - Clusters of specializations in the automotive supply chain in Italy. An empirical analysis using text mining [Working paper]
Pavone, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

The wide literature exploring supply chains is polarized on two perspectives: micro analyses focusing on management strategies of companies, and macro assessment of cross-country interdependences. In order to explore the ongoing innovation paths, this paper adopts a third perspective on the supply chain, focusing on the internal structure of specializations within the automotive supply chain in Italy. If we compare the degree of fragmentation across global value chains, the automotive supply chain has the highest degree of fragmentation. With regard to Italy, its structural characteristics (number, size of companies, location) and dynamics of change deserve attention both for its large share in domestic production and for its interconnections with other supply chains. In this paper, we explore a strategy to identify a classification of specializations within the automotive supply chain grounded on the textual description of activities provided by companies when they register their business. Pending the acquisition of the database for the other years of the Observatory, in this work the analysis refers only to 2017 data.

2017 - Clusters of specializations in the automotive supply chain in Italy. An empirical analysis using text mining [Working paper]
Pavone, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

The wide literature exploring supply chains is polarized on two perspectives: micro analyses focusing on management strategies of companies, and macro assessment of cross-country interdependences. In order to explore the ongoing innovation paths, this paper adopts a third perspective on the supply chain, focusing on the internal structure of specializations within the automotive supply chain in Italy. If we compare the degree of fragmentation across global value chains, the automotive supply chain has the highest degree of fragmentation. With regard to Italy, its structural characteristics (number, size of companies, location) and dynamics of change deserve attention both for its large share in domestic production and for its interconnections with other supply chains. In this paper, we explore a strategy to identify a classification of specializations within the automotive supply chain grounded on the textual description of activities provided by companies when they register their business. Pending the acquisition of the database for the other years of the Observatory, in this work the analysis refers only to 2017 data.

2017 - Dati e strumenti di analisi per ricostruire meglio [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Silvestri, Paolo
abstract

La rapidità e l'efficacia della ricostruzione si basa su molte condizioni sedimentate – prima che il disastro naturale si verifichi nelle istituzioni, nelle capacità dei singoli individui e delle comunità locali, nella rete di relazioni che intrecciano i diversi luoghi. L'azione straordinaria dell'emergenza e della ricostruzione riannoda legami interrotti, mobilita risorse latenti, orienta lungo nuove traiettorie o accelera i pro-cessi di trasformazione che segnavano il territorio prima che il disastro lo trasfor-masse. Entrano in azione competenze di molte organizzazioni private e di ammini-strazioni pubbliche che operano in molti ambiti. In condizioni normali, efficacia ed efficienza di quelle azioni si misurano all'interno di ciascun ambito, ma l'emergenza e la ricostruzione rivelano la loro strettissima interconnessione. Dati indispensabili per sostenere quelle interconnessioni devono diventare un patrimonio ordinario a disposizione di tutti: delle amministrazioni pubbliche come della ricerca scientifica, dei cittadini, delle organizzazioni private, del volontariato.

2017 - Designing performance-based incentives for innovation intermediaries: evidence from regional innovation poles [Capitolo/Saggio]
Annalisa, Caloffi; Righi, Riccardo; Rossi, Federica; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Intermediary organisations that support firm-level and collaborative innovation, often called ‘innovation intermediaries’, have gained increasing prominence in knowledge-intensive economies. They provide a range of knowledge-intensive services that include, among others, technology foresight and technology scouting, R&D partnership formation, technical assistance in R&D projects, dissemination and commercialisation of results, and technology transfer. In recent years numerous policy interventions have funded organisations performing at least some innovation intermediary functions, particularly at regional level. Examples are the Regional Competitiveness Poles in France, the Innovation Networks in Denmark, the Strategic Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation in Finland, and the Innovation Poles in Italy. With the growing importance of publicly-funded regional innovation intermediaries, a need has emerged for appropriate instruments to evaluate their performance. Nonetheless, few studies have explored theoretically the key performance dimensions of the activities of innovation intermediaries, with a view to support evaluation processes. This paper analyses what are the main dimensions that should be considered when evaluating the performance of publicly-funded regional innovation intermediaries. Building on a review of the literature on innovation intermediaries and their functions within regional innovation systems, we develop a conceptual framework capturing the key performance dimensions in the activity of publicly-funded regional innovation intermediaries, which could be used as a guide to develop indicators and other metrics for the evaluation of their performance. In particular, we tie these performance dimensions to the set of systems failures that innovation intermediaries are expected to address. These system failures include: information failures, whereby regional organisations are imperfectly informed about the sources of knowledge they can tap into; managerial failures, whereby organisations do not possess the capabilities needed to acquire useful knowledge or technologies, or to usefully implement them into products and services; awareness failures, whereby organisations may be unaware of the knowledge or competences they are lacking; networking failures, whereby organisations lack potentially useful connections; and cognitive failures, which occur when individuals from different institutional backgrounds have too much cognitive distance to adequately learn together. For each of the activities that intermediaries implement in order to address one or more of these system failures, we argue that several performance dimensions should be considered. Besides the direct outputs resulting from the intermediaries’ activities, and the indirect outputs resulting from follow-up activities in which the intermediaries had some involvement, the evaluation should particularly focus on the outcomes achieved. Outcomes can be in the form of improvements in measurable performance in the activities of the intermediaries’ client organisations, or of the intermediaries themselves: for example, how they increased their profitability or turnover or their success in acquiring funds. But outcomes can also take the form of behavioural changes: for example, how these organisations changed their way of innovating, and how the intermediaries improved their own systems and practices to achieve qualitatively better outcomes. We present an implementation of our conceptual framework, with a case study focused on an innovation policy intervention aimed at funding innovation poles (a particular type of innovation intermediary), implemented by the Italian region of Tuscany in 2011-2014.

2017 - Earthquake hazard in Italy Cluster analysis of socio-economic data to inform place-based policy measures [Working paper]
Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

The Italian Government launched the Piano Casa Italia immediately after the series of massive earthquakes that struck Central Italy in 2016, following the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila and the one in 2012 in Emilia-Romagna. The cumulative impact of human losses and economic and social uncertainty produced by the last disaster in 2016 has spurred political decision-makers to advocate an ambitious long-term intervention, aimed at restructuring Italian public buildings and houses over the next decades. Italy has experienced only one other era of similar schemes with the controversial interventions lasting for more than thirty years of the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, which started in the 1950s to cope with the country's dual economic condition. Since then, no other long-term ambitious plan has been attempted in Italy and a similar planning perspective is nowadays far from the experience of most public managers, policy makers and even scholars of economics and development. The ongoing challenges that the Piano Casa Italia has to face are multifaceted: political, economic and social. Challenges pertaining to the agents asked to design the scheme, to implement it and to accept it. The overall perspective of structural change will mark its implementation. This paper is a first contribution within a broader framework to outline the conditions characterizing those challenges and the paths of change that will be initiated by realizing the Plan. The paper suggests taking an analytical perspective to support informed policy measures, in four complementary domains: emergency (National Civil Protection), recovery (Struttura Commissariale), risk reduction (Piano Casa Italia), socio-economic development (National Strategy for Inner Areas). The present contribution starts with a preliminary step, in line with the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction (UNISDR 2015): a detailed analysis of the socio-economic, demographic and geographic conditions across Italian territorial areas, at a municipality level. This work explicitly aims to single out these features, by focusing both on seismic zones and on regions. The paper also returns the results of a cluster analysis performed at municipality level across Italy and concludes discussing some implications for place-based policy interventions.

2017 - Earthquake hazard in Italy Cluster analysis of socio-economic data to inform place-based policy measures [Working paper]
Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

The Italian Government launched the Piano Casa Italia immediately after the series of massive earthquakes that struck Central Italy in 2016, following the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila and the one in 2012 in Emilia-Romagna. The cumulative impact of human loss-es and economic and social uncertainty produced by the last disaster in 2016 has spurred political decision-makers to advocate an ambitious long-term intervention, aimed at re-structuring Italian public buildings and houses over the next decades. Italy has experi-enced only one other era of similar schemes with the controversial interventions lasting for more than thirty years of the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, which started in the 1950s to cope with the country's dual economic condition. Since then, no other long-term ambi-tious plan has been attempted in Italy and a similar planning perspective is nowadays far from the experience of most public managers, policy makers and even scholars of eco-nomics and development. The ongoing challenges that the Piano Casa Italia has to face are multifaceted: political, economic and social. Challenges pertaining to the agents asked to design the scheme, to implement it and to accept it. The overall perspective of structur-al change will mark its implementation. This paper is a first contribution within a broader framework to outline the conditions characterizing those challenges and the paths of change that will be initiated by realizing the Plan. The paper suggests taking an analytical perspective to support informed policy measures, in four complementary domains: emergency (National Civil Protection), recov-ery (Struttura Commissariale), risk reduction (Piano Casa Italia), socio-economic devel-opment (National Strategy for Inner Areas). The present contribution starts with a prelim-inary step, in line with the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction (UNISDR 2015): a detailed analysis of the socio-economic, demographic and geographic conditions across Italian territorial areas, at a municipality level. This work explicitly aims to single out these features, by focusing both on seismic zones and on regions. The paper also returns the results of a cluster analysis performed at municipality level across Italy and concludes discussing some implications for place-based policy interventions.

2017 - Homm-sw. Networks-of-stories for digital storytelling [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Russo, Margherita; Ghose, Ruchira; Mattioli, Mauto; Mengoli, Paola; Fogli, Agnese; Zironi, Elisabetta
abstract

Narratives enable the formation of personal and community identities, and the construction of meanings. Although increasingly popular, digital storytelling still faces some critical challenges: creation of content on tangible and intangible heritage, classification and re-use of existing documents and clips, cooperative and coordinated production of new content. Moreover, for effective exploratory paths and a more analytical approach to browsing material, contents must be set in the overall perspective of the narrations, to ensure coherent and effective narrations. Finally, validation and dissemination of related outcomes must respect scientific standards. This chapter describes a prototype of a web application supporting multimedia narratives. So far, it implements the engine for creating and managing the activity ‘networks-of-stories’, to create nonlinear and open multimedia narrations. It has tools that: support educators, also in contrasting learning difficulties, in developing inclusive and collaborative educational practices; support museums' curators; facilitate crowd sourcing; create a personal web repository of contents and connections; share contents to be published, if approved by the administrator; create a network of contents and applications, at different levels for different users and specific needs. Our web application has two key innovative functions: recording and retrieval of users' activities; narratives presented through a set of related clips (videos, albums, texts) are seen in a conceptual map.

2017 - Innovation Intermediaries from the Third to the Fourth Industrial Revolution [Articolo su rivista]
Caloffi, Annalisa; Rossi, Federica; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Intermediary organisations that support firm-level and collaborative innovation, often called knowledge or innovation intermediaries, have gained increasing prominence in knowledge-intensive economies. The label “intermediaries” is not meant to be reductive. Intermediaries do not merely offer matchmaking services, but provide a wide range of knowledge-intensive services including, among others, knowledge and technology mapping, technical assistance in R&D projects, dissemination and commercialisation of research results, support for universityindustry collaborations (Bessant and Rush, 1995; Lynn et al, 1996; Hargadon and Sutton, 1997; Den Hertog, 2000; Howells, 2006; Doganova, 2013). Most importantly, they are innovation catalysers, as they “mobilise, reframe and structure expertise and policy imperatives” (Meyer and Kearnes, 2013, p423). Intermediaries are not third parties, but they are often an integral part of innovation processes. While typical intermediaries include knowledgeintensive business services providers, technopoles, technology transfer agencies, science parks and incubators, a wide range of organisations can provide at least some intermediary functions (Howells, 2006; Caloffi et al, 2015a). We review the features and role of innovation intermediaries, and focus on the challenges involved in the design of innovation intermediaries that can appropriately support the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution.

2017 - Interventi normativi per l’emergenza: perché serve una legge nazionale [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Scagliarini, Simone
abstract

Molti dei problemi che si pongono all’indomani di una calamità sono i medesimi e la risposta del legislatore (prima) e della gestione commissariale (poi) non sempre riesce a essere adeguata. Dall'analisi svolta sulle ordinanze emanate nel caso del sisma in Emilia del 2012 è possibile tracciare quali siano gli ambiti rilevanti per l'intervento normativo. Si analizzano inoltre alcuni esempi di effetti economici con-seguenti a un terremoto che colpiscono le famiglie anche nella vita quotidiana, come per i mutui, le polizze assicurative o i contratti per servizi relativi a beni perduti a seguito del sisma. Gli Autori propongono l’adozione di una legge generale che individui preventivamente una serie di misure che il Governo possa direttamente attivare in modo immediato all’indomani di disastri naturali, con l'obiettivo di mettere in atto risposte pronte ed efficaci che riducano gli effetti negativi dell'incertezza nel-le decisioni delle famiglie

2017 - La filiera automotive in Emilia-Romagna [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Pavone, Pasquale; Bigarelli, Daniela; Baracchi, Monica
abstract

In questo capitolo utilizziamo la metodologia sviluppata da Pavone e Russo (2017) per classificare le specializzazioni produttive della filiera automotive. Tale metodologia utilizza un’analisi automatica delle descrizioni testuali delle attività delle imprese contenute nel database della popolazione statistica utilizzata nell’Osservatorio automotive 2017. Il capitolo presenta un quadro dell’industria metalmeccanica dell’Emilia-Romagna e delle specializzazioni nella filiera automotive della regione. Sono commentati i risultati relativi all’indagine dell’Osservatorio ed un approfondimento realizzato grazie alle interviste condotte dagli studenti dell’Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia. Le conclusioni del capitolo propongono uno sviluppo dell'indagine empirica sui temi della digitalizzazione.

2017 - La subfornitura meccanica in Emilia-Romagna fra crisi e riorganizzazione delle filiere. Quali strategie per competere [Working paper]
Bigarelli, D.; Baracchi, M.; Russo, M.
abstract

La ricerca presentata in questo rapporto è stata realizzata nell’ambito del progetto pro-mozionale, di cui all’art. 13 della Legge Regionale 09/02/2010 n. 1 Norme per la tutela, la promozione, lo sviluppo e la valorizzazione dell’artigianato, approvato con determina della Giunta Regionale Emilia-Romagna n. 2581 del 22/02/2016 dal titolo “Tra creativi-tà e tradizione: una nuova immagine dell’impresa artigiana nella subfornitura meccani-ca”. La finalità principale della ricerca riguarda l’analisi degli effetti della crisi e dei processi di riorganizzazione in atto nelle principali filiere dell’industria meccanica regionale sul-le caratteristiche e le prospettive delle imprese di subfornitura. Gli obiettivi conoscitivi sono, in particolare, l’analisi dei cambiamenti di tipo strutturale delle imprese, legati ai processi di internazionalizzazione dei mercati di sbocco e di ap-provvigionamento; l’analisi delle strategie seguite dalle imprese in risposta alla crisi e al nuovo contesto competitivo; l’analisi dell’evoluzione delle relazioni fra committenti e subfornitori.

2017 - Modeling and estimating the economic and social impact of the results of the project Re-search Alps [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Guerra, F.; Pagliacci, F.; Paganelli, M.; Petit, L.; Olland, F.; Weisenburger, E.; Zilio, E.
abstract

The idea behind the Re-search Alps project has been conceived inside within the EUSALP Action Group 1 - “to develop an effective research and innovation ecosystem” (AG1). EUSALP is the EU-Strategy for the Alpine Region, which is composed of seven countries: Austria, France, Germany, Italy Liechtenstein, Slovenia and Switzerland. The strategy aims at ensuring mutually beneficial interactions between the mountain regions at its core and the surrounding lowlands and urban areas. The goal of the Re-search Alps project is the publication on the web of an open dataset describing the private and public laboratories, research and innovation centers (hereinafter, referred as “labs”, in short) existing in the seven aforementioned countries, with particular reference to the 48 Regions constituting the Alpine Area.

2017 - New paths for the application of DCI in social sciences: Theoretical issues regarding an empirical analysis [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Righi, Riccardo; Roli, Andrea; Russo, Margherita; Serra, Roberto; Villani, Marco
abstract

Starting from the conceptualization of ‘Cluster Index’ (CI), Villani et al. [16, 17] implemented the ‘Dynamic Cluster Index’ (DCI), an algorithm to perform the detection of subsets of agents characterized by patterns of activity that can be considered as integrated over time. DCI methodology makes possible to shift the attention into a new dimension of groups of agents (i.e. communities of agents): the presence of a common function characterizing their actions. In this paper we discuss the implications of the use in the domain of social sciences of this methodology, up to now mainly applied in natural sciences. Developing our considerations thanks to an empirical analysis, we discuss the theoretical implications of its application in such a different field.

2017 - Social innovation and natural disasters: the "Casa Italia" Plan [Articolo su rivista]
Pagliacci, Francesco; Russo, Margherita; Sartori, Laura
abstract

This article critically reads the Plan "Casa Italia" in light of a Social Innovation approach combined with a socio-economic perspective, underlying the main challenges the Plan faces to be effectively implemented. It also discusses some policy implications. The Plan could serve as an efficient tool for social innovation only when it integrates a socio-economic perspective within its dominant engineering and technical matrix.

2017 - Strategie, pubbliche e private, in azione per ri-costruire meglio. Analisi dei testi di quattro interviste [Working paper]
Pavone, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

In questo lavoro presentiamo la metodologia e i risultati dell'analisi automatica delle trascrizioni delle interviste realizzate nell'ambito dell’instant book "BBB: idee e progetti per ricostruire meglio" (Esposito et al. a cura di, 2017). Sono presi in esame quattro ambiti strategici: dell'Agenzia della Coesione Territoriale, del Piano Casa Italia, della Protezione Civile, e quello di un'impresa modello di azione nella comunità. L'obiettivo del lavoro è duplice. Da un lato si intende offrire una lettura sistematica delle specificità e degli elementi comuni ai diversi ambiti presi in esame. Dall'altro lato, si vogliono approfondire alcuni spunti metodologici nell'analisi automatica dei testi in merito a: integrazione di strumenti di analisi, limiti che derivano dalla ridotta dimensione del corpus, potenzialità interpretative della rappresentazione grafica dei risultati, integrazione tra analisi automatica dei testi, annotazione automatica di un corpus di testi e lettura esperta.

2017 - Strategie, pubbliche e private, in azione per ri-costruire meglio. Analisi dei testi di quattro interviste [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pavone, P.
abstract

In this paper we present the methodology and results of the automatic analysis of the transcripts of the interviews carried out under the project "ideas and projects for better reconstruction" (Esposito et al., 2017). Four strategic areas are considered: the Territorial Cohesion Agency, the Casa Italia Plan, the Civil Protection, and that of a community model of action in the community. The goal is twofold. On the one hand, it is intended to offer a systematic reading of the specificities and elements common to the various aspects considered in the interviews. On the other hand, we want to explore some methodological ideas in the automatic analysis of the texts on the following issues: integration of analytical tools, constraints resulting from the size of the corpus, interpretative potential of graphical representation of results, integration between automatic information retrieval, auto-coding of a corpus and expert reading.

2017 - The RE-SEARCH ALPS (research laboratories in the alpine area) project [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Guerra, Francesco; Russo, Margherita; Fontana, Marco; Paganelli, Matteo; Bancilhon, Francois; Frisch, Christian; Petit, Loic; Giorgi, Anna; Zilio, Emanuela
abstract

The paper describes the RE-SEARCH ALPS project, which aims to gather, consolidate, harmonize and make available to different targets (public and private bodies working at local, regional and national level) data about laboratories, research and innovation centers which are active in particular in the regions of seven countries which constitute the Alpine Area (France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein and Slovenia). The project is complemented with a search engine which allows the users to directly query the dataset and to obtain geo referenced data as result. The data will be properly visualized thanks a visualizer developed in the project. From a research perspective, the project has to address hot and challenging Big Data issues, such as big data integration (to join data sources), entity recognition and linkage in large amount of data (to discover the same Institution represented in different sources), data cleaning and reconciliation (to address issues related to different representation of the same real object). The project has been applied in a call for the cration of Open Datasets promoted by the European Innovation and Networks Executive Agency through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding instrument. The project has been recently approved (AGREEMENT No INEA/CEF/ICT/A2016/1296967): it lasts two years and will start on July 2017.

2017 - WPTIP 1993-2017: a longitudinal analysis of issues, connections and impact of the discussion on technology and innovation policy at Oecd [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pavone, P.
abstract

The occasion of the 50th plenary meeting of the OECD Working Party on Innovation and Technolo-gy Policy (TIP) is being taken to elaborate a reflexive analysis of the WPTIP activity to ground a discussion for future activities, particularly in view of the discussion of the next budget plan and for a future mandate after that of 2014-2019. This analysis aims at providing an overview of the theo-ries and analyses grounding the recommendations proposed by WPTIP on technology and innova-tion policy, in a period in which 'innovation' has become the catchword for any discussion on poli-cies to support economic development and social inclusion. To place this analysis in a historical perspective, this paper adopts a systematic automatic text analysis to organize figures and facts over 25 years. The analysis considers text documents on WPTIP events (such as conferences, workshops, plenary meetings) and activities (such as reports on specific topics).

2016 - Analisi degli effetti socio-economici del sisma [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bertolini, P.; Giovannetti, E.; Martinelli, E.; Palmirani, M.; Pattaro, F.; Russo, M.; Sartori, L.
abstract

Unim ore e il terremoto del 2012 in Emilia Romagna. Interventi e ricerche per fronteggiare l’emergenza e sostenere la ripresa

2016 - Designing performance-based incentives for innovation intermediaries: Evidence from regional innovation poles [Working paper]
Russo, Margherita; Annalisa, Caloffi; Righi, Riccardo; Rossi, Federica
abstract

A growing number of innovation policies provide funding for innovation intermediaries, with the aim to remedy some of the system failures that occur within local, regional and national innovation systems. In order to induce innovation intermediaries to behave in accordance with the policies’ objectives, public funding is often conditioned on their attainment of minimum performance targets measured through indicators, whose design is therefore crucial for the policies’ success. Focusing on the case of a regional policy programme in Italy, the paper shows that policymakers’ choice of performance indicators that were only loosely tied to the policy’s objectives, prompted intermediaries to adopt behaviours that were misaligned with those objectives. The paper then presents a reflection on how to design performance indicators that encourage intermediaries to most appropriately address relevant failures in their innovation systems.

2016 - Documentare e comunicare l'attività di trasferimento tecnologico. Analisi testuale della comunicazione dei poli di innovazione [Working paper]
Pavone, P.; Fiordelmondo, V.; Russo, M.
abstract

There is an increasing attention on the needs to support SMEs in enhancing their innovation opportunities and capabilities. Through a policy measure to foster the regional innovation system, 12 innovation poles were active in Tuscany in the period 2011-2014 to provide to their members (affiliation is needed) a range of knowledge-intensive services such as knowledge and technology mapping, R&D partnership formation, technical assistance in R&D projects, technology transfer. Each pole was created as a consortium of organizations operating as public or private research centres and service centres (universities, innovation centres or technology transfer centres and firms). In this paper we adopt a statistical analysis of textual content produced by the innovation poles to identify distinctive or common elements in the various texts they produced in three years of activity and to draw some assessment of their communication on their activities. Documents under analysis are of different types: designed as written texts (on Smart Specialization Strategy and monitoring the activities of the poles), transcripts of spoken language (the recordings of interviews); web communication. Through and automatic analysis we propose a systematic comparison of all these documents that would not be possible through direct reading of texts: on the whole it is over 56,000 graphic forms, for a total of over two million occurrences. To compare both the intra diversity across the same type of document and across the different types of documents, first we analyse each of the four body separately, in order to identify the specific content and the four languages used by the poles of innovation: "report", texts structured in the format of the monitoring; "design", the documents on smart specialization strategy; "reflection and analysis", in the transcription of interviews; and "communication", that characterizes the web sites. For this analysis, each document is associated with one or more categories (such as, for example, pole' band category, date of the document) that allow us to group or isolate relevant content in different contexts. In this work we first introduce the set of processing of texts aimed at the selection of graphic forms on which we focus our analysis. Then, we present for each corpus the description of the analysed documents, the results of calculations performed for the treatment of the text and the analysis of the main components that explain the variability of language within each corpus. These analyses (represented by the factorial of two main components) interpret the selection of graphic forms being analysed with respect to categorical variables, defined for each document in each of the corpora. The analysis concludes with some ideas for the modelling of regional system of innovation clusters in Tuscany.

2016 - Documentare e comunicare l'attività di trasferimento tecnologico. Analisi testuale della comunicazione dei poli di innovazione [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pavone, P.; Fiordelmond, o. V.
abstract

There is an increasing attention on the needs to support SMEs in enhancing their innovation op-portunities and capabilities. Through a policy measure to foster the regional innovation system, 12 innovation poles were active in Tuscany in the period 2011-2014 to provide to their members (af-filiation is needed) a range of knowledge-intensive services such as knowledge and technology mapping, R&D partnership formation, technical assistance in R&D projects, technology transfer. Each pole was created as a consortium of organizations operating as public or private research cen-tres and service centres (universities, innovation centres or technology transfer centres and firms). In this paper we adopt a statistical analysis of textual content produced by the innovation poles to identify distinctive or common elements in the various texts they produced in three years of activi-ty and to draw some assessment of their communication on their activities. Documents under analysis are of different types: designed as written texts (on Smart Specializa-tion Strategy and monitoring the activities of the poles), transcripts of spoken language (the re-cordings of interviews); web communication. Through and automatic analysis we propose a sys-tematic comparison of all these documents that would not be possible through direct reading of texts: on the whole it is over 56,000 graphic forms, for a total of over two million occurrences. To compare both the intra diversity across the same type of document and across the different types of documents, first we analyse each of the four body separately, in order to identify the specific con-tent and the four languages used by the poles of innovation: "report", texts structured in the format of the monitoring; "design", the documents on smart specialization strategy; "reflection and analy-sis", in the transcription of interviews; and "communication", that characterizes the web sites. For this analysis, each document is associated with one or more categories (such as, for example, pole' band category, date of the document) that allow us to group or isolate relevant content in different contexts. In this work we first introduce the set of processing of texts aimed at the selection of graphic forms on which we focus our analysis. Then, we present for each corpus the description of the analysed documents, the results of calculations performed for the treatment of the text and the analysis of the main components that explain the variability of language within each corpus. These analyses (represented by the factorial of two main components) interpret the selection of graphic forms be-ing analysed with respect to categorical variables, defined for each document in each of the corpo-ra. The analysis concludes with some ideas for the modelling of regional system of innovation clusters in Tuscany.

2016 - Documenting work through videos. A project by Officina Emilia with nine engineering firms in the province of Modena (2008-2010) [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pozzoli, S.; Tantillo, F.
abstract

In order to meet the need of representing labour in the workshop, Officina Emilia has concentrated on work in the small mechanical factories. The aim is to spread - among teachers, young persons and their families, local administrators and people who work at various levels in the local institutions - a knowledge of what the world of engineering production entails and of the people employed in it, and to investigate in depth the nexus between innovation and production, knowledge and learning places. Research, analysis and transmission of knowledge would need to be mobilized on a very large scale to find answers to the questions as to the current nature of jobs and what workers do in mechanical factories. Through the OE_Imprese project, Officina Emilia has set a preliminary aim: to contribute to opening the discussion, to signal the need to find answers, to better formulate the questions, to articulate the knowledge of the variety of cases, situations and contexts in which workers operate today. A multidisciplinary working group has set up instruments to facilitate the preliminary stages of collection and analysis of the documentation of the firms, and has selected the video as a suitable tool for gathering documentation for the research and the construction effective teaching instruments. In this paper (in a bilingual version Italian/English) we present two video productions made in the OE_Imprese project: a series of videointerviews with 35 workers (in Italian with subtitles in English), and a videoinstallation to narrate firms and workers in the Modena engineering district. The videos were made in the period November 2008-January 2009, by Filippo Tantillo and Sara Pozzoli. The collaboration between Officina Emilia and the firms of the territory emerges from the need to investigate and make visible the intermesh between production and innovation that formerly characterized the district, and that still today represents an aspect peculiar to engineering production in the Modena area, projecting it into the future, mapping out the paths of transformation.

2016 - Energie Sisma Emilia. Guida all'utilizzo dei database dell'indagine 'Energie_I400' [Working paper]
Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

After the series of earthquakes that occurred in Emilia-Romagna (Italy) in May 2012, the research team based in the Department of Economics of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia started research activities to investigate the socio-economic impact due to the shock. When analysing the effects of the earthquake on the living and working conditions of the population, a critical issue is the availability of relevant data. Thus, within the applied research ‘Energie Sisma Emilia’, in 2015 the research team realized a survey on a sample of 400 families living in the area affected by the earthquake. The survey was based on the same questionnaire adopted in the previous research ICESmo3 (carried on in Summer 2012) investigating the socio-economic conditions of families living in the same area. The 2015 questionnaire includes additional sections on the effects of the earthquake on social capital and consumption behaviour. Data are under analysis and will be presented in public events and publications. The dataset will be made available on request at the end of the research project. The goal of this paper is to return the main methodological aspects, and to present the principles that guided management of data and that drive the use of databases. Section I describes the main issues addressed by the ‘Energie Sisma Emilia’ project. Section II introduces the general survey settings; the sample characteristics; and the elaboration of sample weights. Section III describes the details of the informational basis (organization of specific databases, codebook and command files developed to generate databases in format Stata13). Section IV presents the criteria that align the databases and the questionnaire: variables management was originally handled to allow researchers to easily retrieve information from the syntax of the variable labels, and to automatize future elaborations. Section V concludes with operational indications in using ‘Stata Survey’ to produce inferential analysis.

2016 - Enhancing the resilience of social infrastructures: issues on agents, artefacts and processes. Proceedings of the 2016 Modena Workshop [Working paper]
Pagliacci, F.; Righi, S.; Russo, M.
abstract

In the social sciences domain, the term 'resilience' is usually associated to a wide set of changes that affect people and their communities. In particular, both the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 and the Sendai Framework explicitly focus on the way in which communities face both natural and man-made hazards. To this respect, both material and non-material infrastructures play a critical role, hence deserving a specific focus when assessing local communities' level of resilience. Among them, this paper focuses on: health services, social services, government (according to a multi-level perspective, from the national to the local level), communication infrastructure (i.e. specific tools to interconnect all aforementioned networks). Firstly, this paper discusses some of the most important issues and theoretical frameworks that should be addressed in the analysis of the processes of enhancing the resilience of social infrastructures. Secondly, the discussion that took place in a workshop promoted in May 2016 as the outcome of a one-year dialogue across a group of EU researchers is returned. The debate moves from some theoretical perspectives on resilience and it eventually returns some case studies and real experiences, such as the actions of local governments and the role of risk communication.

2016 - Enhancing the resilience of social infrastructures: issues on agents, artefacts and processes. Proceedings of the 2016 Modena Workshop [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pagliacci, F.; Righi, S.
abstract

In the social sciences domain, the term 'resilience' is usually associated to a wide set of changes that affect people and their communities. In particular, both the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 and the Sendai Framework explicitly focus on the way in which communities face both natural and man-made hazards. To this respect, both material and non-material infra-structures play a critical role, hence deserving a specific focus when assessing local communities' level of resilience. Among them, this paper focuses on: health services, social services, govern-ment (according to a multi-level perspective, from the national to the local level), communication infrastructure (i.e. specific tools to interconnect all aforementioned networks). Firstly, this paper discusses some of the most important issues and theoretical frameworks that should be addressed in the analysis of the processes of enhancing the resilience of social infrastructures. Secondly, the discussion that took place in a workshop promoted in May 2016 as the outcome of a one-year dialogue across a group of EU researchers is returned. The debate moves from some theoretical perspectives on resilience and it eventually returns some case studies and real experiences, such as the actions of local governments and the role of risk communication.

2016 - Evaluating the performance of innovation intermediaries: insights from the experience of Tuscany’s innovation poles [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; Caloffi, Annalisa; Rossi, Federica; Fiordelmondo, Valentina; Ghinoi, Stefano
abstract

With the growing importance of innovation intermediaries, particularly in the policy context, a need has emerged for appropriate instruments to evaluate their performance. The identification of appropriate performance indicators, however, has proved to be problematic. First, indicators are likely to influence the behavior of innovation intermediaries, not always in a desirable manner. Second, commonly used indicators focus on the immediate results achieved by the intermediaries, often disregarding the permanent behavioral changes that they can stimulate in their innovation system. Instead, we argue that the latter are particularly important for the evaluation of innovation intermediaries, whose success should be measured in terms of their ability to help organizations to change their innovative behavior. By focusing on an innovation policy intervention implemented by the Italian region of Tuscany in the period 2007-2013, we discuss the advantages and limitations of the indicators that have been set up by the regional government in order to evaluate the performance of innovation poles, a particular type of innovation intermediary, and discuss some feasible avenues for their improvement.

2016 - Il progetto “Energie Sisma Emilia” [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Brunetti, Massimo; Chiarolanza, Anita; Pagliacci, Francesco; Silvestri, Paolo
abstract

I disastri naturali, come quelli che si sono verificati in Italia nel secondo dopoguerra e, in particolare, eventi sismici, alluvioni, frane ed esondazioni, richiamano in misura crescente l’attenzione (e non solo quella degli studiosi) sulla fragilità del territorio e sulla necessità di interventi di prevenzione per mitigare i loro effetti economici e sociali. Accanto alla prevenzione, si segnala da più parti, dalle Nazioni Unite alla Commissione Europea, la necessità di far leva sulle capacità di resilienza delle comunità colpite da calamità naturali, agendo quindi sui fattori endogeni dello sviluppo.

2016 - Innovation and development after the earthquake in Emilia [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Silvestri, P.; Bonifati, G.; Gualandri, E.; Pagliacci, F.; Pattaro, A. F.; Pedrazzoli, A.; Pergetti, S.; Ranuzzini, M.; Reverberi, M.; Solinas, G.; Vezzani, P.
abstract

The 2012 earthquake in Emilia-Romagna (Italy) has shaken up the collective understanding on the socioeconomic importance of a vast territory that generates almost 2% of Italian GDP. The area affected by the earthquake is characterized by the presence of important industrial and agricultural districts, and by good practices of local governance that are internationally renowned. Private and public buildings, factories, offices and retail shops, historical and cultural heritage sites have been severely damaged. Not only, but it set in motion transformations in the socio-economic system that might have unexpected consequences and that undermine the quick recovery of the local system: different agents, at different levels, taking individual and collective decisions, generate a cascade of changes that interact with its evolution path. Indeed, earthquakes pose challenges, but provide unprecedented opportunities: strategic decisions by economic and political agents, newly available financial resources, coordination or lack of coordination among main stakeholders, and so on. The following paper provides an overview of the first results of Energie Sisma Emilia research project: it aims at collecting and disseminating relevant knowledge and evidence in order to design policies. In particular, it identifies the agents propelling innovation processes, and analyses their strategies in ever-changing environment. The paper starts with a socio-economic analysis of the area struck by the earthquake, followed by the results of three of the focus groups conducted. Eventually, it illustrates a specific innovation: the introduction and implementation of the digital infrastructure “Mude”.

2016 - Innovation and development after the earthquake in Emilia [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Silvestri, P.; Bonifati, G.; Gualandri, E.; Pagliacci, F.; Pattaro, A.; Pedrazzoli, A.; Pergetti, S.; Ranuzzini, M.; Reverberi, M.; Solinas, G.; Vezzani, P.
abstract

The 2012 earthquake in Emilia-Romagna (Italy) has shaken up the collective understanding on the socioeconomic importance of a vast territory that generates almost 2% of Italian GDP. The area af-fected by the earthquake is characterized by the presence of important industrial and agricultural districts, and by good practices of local governance that are internationally renowned. Private and public buildings, factories, offices and retail shops, historical and cultural heritage sites have been severely damaged. Not only, but it set in motion transformations in the socio-economic system that might have unexpected consequences and that undermine the quick recovery of the local system: different agents, at different levels, taking individual and collective decisions, generate a cascade of changes that interact with its evolution path. Indeed, earthquakes pose challenges, but provide unprecedented opportunities: strategic decisions by economic and political agents, newly available financial resources, coordination or lack of coordination among main stakeholders, and so on. The following paper provides an overview of the first results of Energie Sisma Emilia research project: it aims at collecting and disseminating relevant knowledge and evidence in order to design poli-cies. In particular, it identifies the agents propelling innovation processes, and analyses their strat-egies in ever-changing environment. The paper starts with a socio-economic analysis of the area struck by the earthquake, followed by the results of three of the focus groups conducted. Eventual-ly, it illustrates a specific innovation: the introduction and implementation of the digital infrastruc-ture “Mude”.

2016 - Innovazioni e sviluppo dopo il sisma in Emilia [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Silvestri, Paolo; Bonifati, Giovanni; Gualandri, Elisabetta; Pagliacci, Francesco; Pattaro, Anna Francesca; Pedrazzoli, Alessia; Pergetti, Silvia; Ranuzzini, Marco; Reverberi, Manuel; Solinas, Giovanni; Vezzani, Paola
abstract

Quali sentieri di sviluppo si attivano nei territori colpiti da disastri naturali? Disastri naturali come quelli che si sono verificati in Italia nel secondo dopoguerra e in particolare eventi sismici, alluvioni, frane ed esondazioni richiamano in misura crescente l’attenzione, non solo quella degli studiosi, sulla fragilità del territorio e sulla necessità di interventi di prevenzione per mitigare gli effetti economici e sociali dei disastri naturali. Le riflessioni proposte in questo saggio si basano su una prima lettura dei risultati del progetto di ricerca “Energie Sisma Emilia”. Avviato nel settembre 2014 da un vasto gruppo di ricerca dell’Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, il progetto ha una duplice finalità: contribuire, con l’analisi degli effetti del terremoto sull’assetto economico e sociale della regione, all’accumulo e condivisione della conoscenza necessaria per favorire la maturazione di decisioni strategiche informate. Il ruolo dell’università nel processo di ricostruzione è esso stesso un elemento di innovazione nella fase che segue un disastro naturale: si tratta di un attore centrale perché potenzialmente capace di creare nuove conoscenze necessarie per rispondere alle domande che accompagnano la ricostruzione.

2016 - Multilayer network analysis of innovation intermediaries’ activities: methodological issues and an application to a regional policy programme [Poster]
Russo, Margherita; Annalisa, Caloffi; Righi, Riccardo; Righi, Simone; Rossi, Federica
abstract

To enhance innovation processes in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in the last decade innovation policies have increasingly supported the creation and strengthening of intermediaries (Howells, 2006; Lazaric et al, 2008; Kauffeld-Monz and Fritsch, 2013; Russo and Rossi, 2009; Caloffi et al, 2015). So far, however no adequate analytical framework to assess the activity and performance of these intermediaries has been developed. In this paper we address this issue by suggesting a network perspective (a) to analyse the multidimensional activities undertaken by innovation intermediaries and (b) to assess the contribution of the agents involved in different activities promoted by intermediaries. Methodological issues are discussed both in theory and with regard to an empirical application to analyse a regional policy supporting the creation of specialized intermediaries, named “innovation poles”, in the Italian region of Tuscany. The creation of innovation poles has mobilized a large number of agents that were directly involved with different roles in the creation of the regional system of technology transfer. Through the different activities they perform, the various agents create connections between the poles; the poles, in turn, create links between agents, facilitating the exchange of information and creating opportunities for joint actions to boost innovation. This network of networks perspective of analysis asks for the identification of pivotal agents embedded in multidimensional interactions and helps in detecting emerging communities of innovators in the regional innovation system. By adopting the analysis of multilayer networks approach (recently developed by Rosvall & Bergstrom, 2007 and 2008, and De Domenico et al., 2015), we identify the emerging multilayer communities and the intercohesive agents, framing the intermediaries’ impact. The paper concludes discussing the implications of this methodology on policy assessment.

2016 - Networked by design: Can policy requirements influence organisations' networking behaviour? [Articolo su rivista]
Rossi, Federica; Caloffi, Annalisa; Russo, Margherita
abstract

An important, but under-researched, question in relation to policies funding networks of innovators is: what kind of innovation networks should be supported, if the policy objective is not just to sponsor successful innovation projects, but also to encourage the participants to form networks with desirable characteristics? Focusing on a set of policy programmes implemented by the regional government of Tuscany, in Italy, between 2002 and 2008, aimed at funding networks of collaborating organisations, we investigate whether the imposition of requirements on the composition of the networks that would be eligible for funding – in particular, the demand that networks should comply with minimum size and heterogeneity thresholds – influenced the participants' networking behaviour in the context of successive policy interventions. Our results show that these requirements immediately affected the size and composition of the project networks that applied for funding, although not always in the intended direction. However, these effects did not extend to the successive periods, when those requirements were no longer in force. This suggests that the imposition of policy requirements, per se, is unlikely to induce persistent changes in organizations' networking behaviour. Other approaches such as implementing outreach actions in order to encourage new organisations to participate in existing innovation networks and to form new ones, and additional measures designed to foster learning opportunities for the participants, might be more effective tools to influence the networking behaviour of participating organisations.

2016 - Socio-economic effects of an earthquake: does sub-regional counterfactual sampling matter in estimates? An empirical test on the 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake [Working paper]
Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

Estimates of macroeconomic effects of natural disaster have a long tradition in economic literature (Albala-Bertrand, 1993a; 1993b; Tol and Leek, 1999; Chang and Okuyama, 2004; Benson and Clay, 2004; Strömberg, 2007; UNISDR, 2009; Cuaresma, 2009; Cavallo and Noy, 2009; Cavallo et al., 2010; The United Nations and The World Bank, 2010). After the seminal contribution of Abadie et al. (2010) in identifying synthetic control groups, with DuPont and Noy (2015) a new strand has been opened in estimating long term effects of natural disaster at a sub-regional scale, at which the Japan case provides plenty of significant economic variables. Although the same methodology has been applied in estimating the impact of earthquakes in Italy (Barone et al. 2013; Barone and Mocetti, 2014), the analysis has been limited to the regional scale. In our paper, due to a lack in long-term time series data at municipality level, this paper cannot adopt the methodology suggested by Abadie et al. (2010). Nevertheless, it provides a test bed for assessing the relevance of a sub-regional counterfactual evaluation of a natural disaster’s impact. By taking the 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake as a case study, we propose a comprehensive framework to answer some critical questions arising in such analysis. Firstly, we address the problem of identifying the proper boundaries of the area affected by an earthquake. Secondly, through a cluster analysis we show the importance of intra area differences in terms of their socio-economic features. Thirdly, counterfactual analysis is assessed by adopting a pre- and post-earthquake difference-in-difference comparison of average data in clusters within and outside the affected area. Moreover, three frames to apply propensity score matching at municipality level are also adopted, by taking the control group of municipalities (outside the affected area): (a) within the same cluster, (b) within the same region, (c) in the whole country. The four variables considered in the counterfactual analysis are: total population; foreigner population; total employment in manufacturing local units; employment in small and medium-sized manufacturing local units (0 to 49 employees). All the counterfactual tests largely show a similar result: socio-economic effects are heterogeneous across the affected area, where some clusters of municipalities perform better, in terms of increase of population and employment after the earthquake, against some others. This result sharply contrasts with the average results we observe by comparing the whole affected area with the non-affected one or with the entire region.

2016 - Socio-economic effects of an earthquake: does sub-regional counterfactual sampling matter in estimates? An empirical test on the 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake [Working paper]
Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

Estimates of macroeconomic effects of natural disaster have a long tradition in economic literature (Albala-Bertrand, 1993a; 1993b; Tol and Leek, 1999; Chang and Okuyama, 2004; Benson and Clay, 2004; Strömberg, 2007; UNISDR, 2009; Cuaresma, 2009; Cavallo and Noy, 2009; Cavallo et al., 2010; The United Nations and The World Bank, 2010). After the seminal contribution of Abadie et al. (2010) in identifying synthetic control groups, with DuPont and Noy (2015) a new strand has been opened in estimating long term effects of natural disaster at a sub-regional scale, at which the Japan case provides plenty of significant economic variables. Although the same methodology has been applied in estimating the impact of earthquakes in Italy (Barone et al. 2013; Barone and Mocetti, 2014), the analysis has been limited to the regional scale. In our paper, due to a lack in long-term time series data at municipality level, this paper cannot adopt the methodology suggested by Abadie et al. (2010). Nevertheless, it provides a test bed for assessing the relevance of a sub-regional counterfactual evaluation of a natural disaster’s impact. By taking the 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake as a case study, we propose a comprehensive framework to answer some critical questions arising in such analysis. Firstly, we address the problem of identifying the proper boundaries of the area affected by an earthquake. Secondly, through a cluster analysis we show the importance of intra area differences in terms of their socio-economic features. Thirdly, counterfactual analysis is assessed by adopting a pre- and post-earthquake difference-in-difference comparison of average data in clusters within and outside the affected area. Moreover, three frames to apply propensity score matching at municipality level are also adopted, by taking the control group of municipalities (outside the affected area): (a) within the same cluster, (b) within the same region, (c) in the whole country. The four variables considered in the counterfactual analysis are: total population; foreigner population; total employment in manufacturing local units; employment in small and medium-sized manufacturing local units (0 to 49 employees). All the counterfactual tests largely show a similar result: socio-economic effects are heterogeneous across the affected area, where some clusters of municipalities perform better, in terms of increase of population and employment after the earthquake, against some others. This result sharply contrasts with the average results we observe by comparing the whole affected area with the non-affected one or with the entire region.

2016 - Text Mining and network analysis to support improvements in legislative action. The case of the earthquake in Emilia-Romagna [Articolo su rivista]
Pavone, Pasquale; Russo, Margherita; Righi, Simone; Righi, Riccardo
abstract

In the three years after the 2012 earthquake in Emilia-Romagna, through the enactment of more than 350 ordinances, the Commissioner has structured interventions to cope with emergency and reconstruction. The intense law-making, essential to fill a legal vacuum, has enabled to overcome the uncertainties of the difficult phase of recovery. There is agreement among experts and policy makers that a large number of those ordinances was due to the absence of national rules governing the urgent intervention in case of natural disasters. On the push of actions taken in Emilia-Romagna, the Italian Parliament has reopened the debate on a national law on emergency after natural disasters. Through a systematic content analysis of the corpus of ordinances issued in Emilia-Romagna, in this paper we propose a contribution in drafting the decrees related to the law on emergency. Two main strands of analysis have been developed. In the first one, an automatic text analysis, supported by Taltac2, has provided inputs for a factor analysis and a cluster analysis of the thematic areas covered by the ordinances. Four main topics have been singled out: Contribution grant criteria; management of allocation of resources; urgent works for municipalities, schools and churches buildings; interventions to support population. Having associated each ordinance to one of the four topics, a temporal analysis of the issues addressed during the emergency and reconstruction phase highlights the sequence of actions that were undertaken in Emilia. In a second step, the set of terms characterizing each cluster it is used to obtain a redefinition of disjunctive classification towards a fuzzy multi-class. Furthermore, by adopting an hybrid system of text mining, it is possible to extract the legislation (and other ordinances) cited in the ordinances and identify clusters of regulatory areas of reference to meet the emergency and reconstruction following natural disasters. In this second strand, clusters of citations are detected with an algorithm of network analysis (Infomap) based on information theory (Rosvall & Bergstrom, 2008; De Domenico et al, 2015). This analysis highlights subsets of nodes and allows to outline which are the most relevant issues involved in the areas of intervention after a natural disaster

2015 - Analisi cluster delle caratteristiche socio-economiche dei comuni dell'Emilia-Romagna: un confronto tra comuni dentro e fuori dal cratere del sisma [Working paper]
Piazzi, V.; Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

The socio-economic features of the area hit by the 2012 earthquake in Emilia-Romagna (Italy) represents a first step in building a more comprehensive framework, which could help in better interpreting earthquake effects in both short and medium period. Actually, this analysis falls under that broader field of research, which is aimed at providing counterfactual evaluations of both natural disasters’ impacts and the adoption of public policies to support reconstruction. This paper moves from the idea that those municipalities, which lie close to the epicentre of 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake, are not particularly homogenous in terms of socio-economic features. Analysing those major differences is a key element in order to assess the way human activities and other specific economic features at municipality level may either increase or limit the effects of an earthquake. Firstly, this paper tackles the problem of properly identifying the boundaries of the area directly hit by the 2012 earthquake. Indeed, different acts have provided different definitions of those boundaries. Eventually, a cluster analysis has been performed covering all municipalities in Emilia-Romagna, according to a set of demographic and economic variables, available at municipality level. This analysis highlights the existence of different typologies of municipalities, even in the area hit by the earthquake. In particular, these results are of particular interest, allowing further assessments on the effects of the earthquake. Actually, according to cluster analysis results, specific counterfactual examples (not hit by the earthquake) will be identified.

2015 - Analisi cluster delle caratteristiche socio-economiche dei comuni dell'Emilia-Romagna: un confronto tra comuni dentro e fuori dal cratere del sisma [Working paper]
Piazzi, V.; Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

L'analisi delle caratteristiche socio-economiche del territorio colpito dagli eventi sismici del maggio 2012 in Emilia-Romagna rappresenta un elemento conoscitivo, preliminare ancorché cen-trale, di una più ampia proposta interpretativa degli effetti del sisma nel breve e medio periodo. Tale lavoro si inserisce nel framework teorico della valutazione controfattuale degli impatti di eventi catastrofici e delle relative politiche di ricostruzione. Il paper muove dall'idea che il 'cratere' del sisma (i comuni più prossimi all’epicentro) non rappresenti un'area omogenea dal punto di vi-sta socio-economico. La comprensione di queste differenze è rilevante per stimare in che misura gli effetti di un sisma sono influenzati dall'attività umana e dalle caratteristiche strutturali dei terri-tori colpiti. Il lavoro affronta, innanzitutto, il tema dell'identificazione dei confini del cratere del sisma sulla base della normativa in materia. Attraverso un'analisi cluster, condotta su variabili so-cio-economiche disponibili a livello comunale, vengono poi individuate le diverse tipologie di comuni presenti nel cratere del sisma. I risultati ottenuti sono di particolare interesse: oltre a resti-tuire un quadro polimorfo del cratere stesso, tali risultati sono funzionali alla successiva misura-zione degli effetti prodotti dal sisma sul territorio. I cluster individuati, infatti, saranno utilizzati come base conoscitiva per costruire gruppi di controllo per un'analisi controfattuale, relativa alle variazioni di alcune variabili socio-economiche nei territori colpiti dal sisma rispetto ad un insieme di altri comuni simili, ancorché non colpiti

2015 - Analisi lessico testuale delle ordinanze del Commissario Delegato alla ricostruzione in Emilia-Romagna: Un contributo alla legge nazionale su emergenza e ricostruzione [Working paper]
Pavone, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

In the three years after the 2012 earthquake in Emilia-Romagna, through the enactment of more than 350 ordinances, the Commissioner has structured interventions to cope with emergency and reconstruction. The intense law-making, essential to fill a legal vacuum, has enabled to overcome the uncertainties of the difficult phase of recovery. There is agreement among experts that a large number of those ordinances was due to the absence of national rules governing the urgent intervention in case of natural disasters. On the push of actions taken in Emilia-Romagna, the Italian Parliament has reopened the debate on a national law on emergency after natural disasters. Through a systematic content analysis of the corpus of ordinances issued in Emilia-Romagna, in this paper we propose a contribution in drafting a law on emergency. Two main strands of analysis have been developed. In the first one, an automatic text analysis, supported by Taltac2, has provided inputs for a factor analysis and a cluster analysis of the thematic areas covered by the ordinances. Four main topics have been singled out: grant criteria and contributions; management of allocation of resources; urgent works for municipalities, schools and churches buildings; interventions to support population. Having associated each ordinance to one of the four topics, a temporal analysis of the issues addressed during the emergency and reconstruction phase highlights the sequence of actions that were undertaken in Emilia. In a second step, the set of terms characterizing each cluster it is used to obtain a redefinition of disjunctive classification towards a fuzzy multi-class.

2015 - Analisi lessico testuale delle ordinanze del Commissario Delegato alla ricostruzione in Emilia-Romagna: un contributo alla legge nazionale su emergenze e ricostruzione [Working paper]
Pavone, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

Il Commissario delegato all'emergenza e alla ricostruzione dopo il sisma in Emilia-Romagna del 20 e 29 maggio 2012, ha gestito gli interventi a favore delle popolazioni colpite at-traverso l'emanazione di ordinanze commissariali. In particolare dal 8 giugno 2012 al 23 febbraio 2015, sono state emanate 349 ordinanze. Si è trattato di una produzione normativa, indispensabile per colmare un vuoto legislativo, che ha consentito di superare le incertezze della difficile fase di ripresa dopo lo shock sismico. È opinione diffusa tra gli esperti che un gran numero di quelle ordi-nanze sono state necessarie per l'assenza di una normativa nazionale che disciplini gli interventi urgenti in caso di calamità naturali. Sulla spinta delle azioni messe in atto in Emilia-Romagna, è stato ripreso il dibattito parlamentare su una legge nazionale sull'emergenza, la cui discussione è attualmente in corso alla Camera dei Deputati. In questo documento proponiamo un contributo a quel disegno di legge attraverso un'analisi automatica dei testi delle ordinanze in grado di fornire una lettura temporale delle tematiche af-frontate e degli atti normativi in esse citati. L'analisi lessico-testuale, effettuata utilizzando il soft-ware Taltac2 sul Corpus costituito dalle Ordinanze, mira ad una classificazione automatica delle tematiche e ad un'analisi temporale dei temi affrontati dall'azione normativa nel corso del tempo. Sono state individuate quattro tematiche principali: criteri di concessione dei contributi; gestione e assegnazione delle risorse; opere urgenti per scuole, municipi e chiese; interventi di assistenza alla popolazione. Avendo associato a ciascuna ordinanza a uno dei temi individuati dall'analisi cluster, abbiamo analizzato la sequenza di azioni intraprese nel corso della ricostruzione. I termini che caratterizzano ciascun cluster sono stati utilizzati per ottenere una definizione di classi disgiunte attraverso una categorizzazione fuzzy plurima.

2015 - Distretti, piccole imprese e sapere diffuso nei sistemi produttivi della meccanica [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

This contribution provides an analysis of the conditions that have fostered innovation in systems of small business in Italy, with particular reference the mechanical industry. A specific aspect described in the paper is the link between vertical disintegration of production processes and networks of competences in systems of small business. It will highlight regional and sectoral differences that have characterized the dynamics of these production systems. The main conditions that made possible the building of the commons for the benefit of the development and innovation are discussed: high quality education and widespread social value of work, even in technical tasks, entrepreneurship. With regard to the transformation in the system of education and training, some critical issues emerging in recent decades are discussed for their implications on the development path of SMEs systems.

2015 - Earthquake in the city: the people yet to come [Working paper]
Cardullo, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

The paper starts a critical reflection on the effects of disasters on urban change. It is a compendium of the discussions, meetings and fieldworks of the research team Energie Sisma Emilia at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. The fieldwork included a one-day walking-and-photographs (April 2015) in the town centre of Mirandola. This is one of the towns that Energie Sisma Emilia chose to evaluate since it was heavily affected by the earthquakes of May 2012. The working research question concerns post-disaster city change and possible gentrification of old town centres. Migrants—counted as much as one third of the resident population in our case study—found a sanctuary of affordable rents in old town centre of Mirandola, prior to its reconstruction. From discourse analysis of planning documents, there is a sense that a certain imaginary city was already in place before the earthquake. If this is the case, we consider the possibility that post-disaster politics might be determinant in displacement of migrant population. The paper begins by looking at three frameworks drawn from the 'Sociology of Disasters' and by making a tempting parallel with three analytical perspectives on cities: city as a container, city of assemblages, and city as a futurity. In the central part, it opens to gentrification debate and to the multiple dimensions of urban displacement. The field notes and photographs of the walk in Mirandola are discussed at the end as very first empirical findings or, rather, initial scoping for a longitudinal research endeavour.

2015 - Earthquake in the city: the people yet to come [Working paper]
Cardullo, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

The paper starts a critical reflection on the effects of disasters on urban change. It is a compendium of the discussions, meetings and fieldworks of the research team Energie Sisma Emilia at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. The fieldwork included a one-day walking-and-photographs (April 2015) in the town centre of Mirandola. This is one of the towns that Energie Sisma Emilia chose to evaluate since it was heavily affected by the earthquakes of May 2012. The working research question concerns post-disaster city change and possible gentrification of old town centres. Migrants—counted as much as one third of the resident population in our case study—found a sanctuary of affordable rents in old town centre of Mirandola, prior to its reconstruction. From discourse analysis of planning documents, there is a sense that a certain imaginary city was already in place before the earthquake. If this is the case, we consider the possibility that post-disaster politics might be determinant in displacement of migrant population. The paper begins by looking at three frameworks drawn from the 'Sociology of Disasters' and by making a tempting parallel with three analytical perspectives on cities: city as a container, city of assemblages, and city as a futurity. In the central part, it opens to gentrification debate and to the multiple dimensions of urban displacement. The field notes and photographs of the walk in Mirandola are discussed at the end as very first empirical findings or, rather, initial scoping for a longitudinal research endeavour.

2015 - Emerging communities in multilayers networks: analysis of a regional policy programme [Poster]
Russo, Margherita; Annalisa, Caloffi; Righi, Riccardo; Righi, Simone; Rossi, Federica
abstract

With the growing importance of policies sponsoring innovation intermediaries (Howells, 2006; Lazaric et al, 2008; Kauffeld-Monz and Fritsch, 2013; Russo and Rossi, 2009; Caloffi et al, 2015), a need has emerged for appropriate instruments to analyze their activity. In general, current approaches do not adopt a network perspective to highlight the multidimensional system created through the activities undertaken by the intermediaries. In this paper we present an empirical analysis of a regional policy supporting the creation of specialized intermediaries in the Italian region of Tuscany. In the programming period 2007-2013 (effectively starting from 2010), the regional government of Tuscany funded twelve ‘innovation poles’. They are regional innovation intermediaries (organized to provide a range of services, including brokering and matchmaking) that bring together a number of universities and innovative service providers with potential end-users of these services. Their main goal is to promote linkages between regional actors: universities, public research organizations, KIBS, large businesses and SMEs. We highlight two main domains of interactions that support the entire system of the poles. The first domain is that in which we find the agents promoting the system of poles: this network involves both the organizations directly managing the poles, through the creation of temporary associations, and the organizations who have shareholdings in those managing organizations. The second domain relates to competence networks initiated by the system of the poles not only through the provision of services by the various operators, but also through the skills of employees and consultants, the collaboration agreements with parties outside the poles, and through the facilities of laboratories and incubators. By creating such multilayer networks we focus on interrelations between the poles based on the activities, undertaken jointly, in supporting the member companies. For each of these domains we examine the characteristics of the networks and the centrality index of the agents involved. Moreover, by adopting the analysis of multilayer networks (recently developed by De Domenico et al., 2015), we identify and compare the emerging communities in aggregate networks and in the multilayer networks with regard to the networks promoting the poles and in the competence networks.

2015 - Evaluating the performance of innovation intermediaries: insights from the experience of Tuscany’s innovation poles [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Caloffi, A.; Rossi, F.; Fiordelmondo, V.; Ghinoi, S.
abstract

With the growing importance of innovation in-termediaries, particularly in the policy context, a need has emerged for appropriate instruments to evaluate their performance. The identifica-tion of appropriate performance indicators, however, has proved to be problematic. First, indicators are likely to influence the behavior of innovation intermediaries, not always in a desirable manner. Second, commonly used in-dicators focus on the immediate results achieved by the intermediaries, often disregard-ing the permanent behavioral changes that they can stimulate in their innovation system. In-stead, we argue that the latter are particularly important for the evaluation of innovation in-termediaries, whose success should be meas-ured in terms of their ability to enable other or-ganizations to improve their innovation capa-bilities. By focusing on an innovation policy intervention implemented by the Italian region of Tuscany in the period 2007-2013, we dis-cuss the advantages and limitations of the indi-cators that have been set up by the regional government in order to evaluate the perfor-mance of innovation poles, a particular type of innovation intermediary, and discuss some fea-sible avenues for their improvement.

2015 - Evaluating the performance of innovation intermediaries: insights from the experience of Tuscany’s innovation poles [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Caloffi, A.; Rossi, F.; Fiordelmondo, V.; Ghinoi, S.
abstract

With the growing importance of innovation intermediaries, particularly in the policy context, a need has emerged for appropriate instruments to evaluate their performance. The identification of appropriate performance indicators, however, has proved to be problematic. First, indicators are likely to influence the behavior of innovation intermediaries, not always in a desirable manner. Second, commonly used indicators focus on the immediate results achieved by the intermediaries, often disregarding the permanent behavioral changes that they can stimulate in their innovation system. Instead, we argue that the latter are particularly important for the evaluation of innovation intermediaries, whose success should be measured in terms of their ability to enable other organizations to improve their innovation capabilities. By focusing on an innovation policy intervention implemented by the Italian region of Tuscany in the period 2007-2013, we discuss the advantages and limitations of the indicators that have been set up by the regional government in order to evaluate the performance of innovation poles, a particular type of innovation intermediary, and discuss some feasible avenues for their improvement.

2015 - I contributi alle imprese colpite dal sisma del 2012 in Emilia-Romagna: una base informativa per l'analisi e il monitoraggio della ricostruzione [Working paper]
Reverberi, M.; Russo, M.
abstract

In the project Energie Sisma Emilia (www.energie.unimore.it), the data on contributions paid for the reconstruction of economic activities damaged by the earthquake that hit Emilia in 2012 are an essential information for monitoring the reconstruction. This paper aims to describe the criteria to assign contributions for the restoration and reconstruction of the buildings (for industrial, agricultural and commercial) damaged by an earthquake. The data collected during the submission of applications for assistance, then processed by the head of the procedure for its payment, may allow to draw a clear picture of the reconstruction process by highlighting the specific sector and size of businesses affected, in the municipalities of the crater of the earthquake as well as of construction companies and professionals involved in the process of submitting applications for assistance and the implementation of the intervention. In the Emilia Romagna region, businesses companies affected by the earthquake were given access to four sources of contributions: (a) for the reconstruction of buildings, temporary relocation, restoration of machinery and equipment and compensation for damage to the inventory of raw materials, semi-finished and finished products; (b) funds made available by Inail (National Institute for insurance against accidents at work) for seismic retrofitting; (c) funds intended for productive investment for innovation and (d) to support the location in case of unavailability of local unit in which it was performed, the activity before the earthquake, (ERDF - POR Regione-Emilia Romagna). By systematizing data and information available to date, we share some preliminary information gathered by the research group Energy Sisma Emilia for the analysis of data on the reconstruction of business companies, which will start once the data will be made available in an appropriate manner by the Emilia-Romagna.

2015 - I contributi alle imprese colpite dal sisma del 2012 in Emilia-Romagna: una base informativa per l'analisi e il monitoraggio della ricostruzione [Working paper]
Reverberi, M.; Russo, M.
abstract

Nell'ambito del progetto Energie Sisma Emilia (www.energie.unimore.it), i dati sui contri-buti erogati per la ricostruzione delle attività economiche danneggiate dal sisma che ha colpito l'Emilia nel 2012 costituiscono una base informativa essenziale per il monitoraggio della ricostru-zione. Il presente lavoro ha l'obiettivo di descrivere i criteri e le modalità con cui sono stati erogati i contributi per il ripristino e la ricostruzione dei fabbricati (ad uso industriale, agricolo e commer-ciale) danneggiati dal terremoto. I dati rilevati in fase di presentazione delle istanze di contributo, poi elaborati dal responsabile del procedimento per la sua erogazione, potrebbero consentire di de-lineare un quadro puntuale del processo di ricostruzione evidenziando le specificità settoriali e di-mensionali delle imprese colpite, nei comuni del cratere del sisma, oltre che delle imprese di co-struzione e dei professionisti coinvolti nel processo di presentazione delle istanze di contributo e di realizzazione dell'intervento. Le imprese della regione Emilia Romagna colpite dal sisma hanno potuto accedere a quat-tro fonti di contributi: (a) destinati alla ricostruzione di fabbricati, alla delocalizzazione tempora-nea, al ripristino di macchinari e impianti e al risarcimento per i danni alle scorte di materie prime, semilavorati e prodotti finiti; (b) messi a disposizione dall'Inail per l'adeguamento antisismico; (c) destinati ad investimenti produttivi per l’innovazione e (d) per il sostegno alla localizzazione nel caso di inagibilità dell’unità locale in cui veniva esercitata l’attività prima del sisma, finanziati nell’ambito del POR-FESR. Sistematizzando i dati e le informazioni ad oggi disponibili, condividiamo alcune informa-zioni preliminari raccolte dal gruppo di ricerca Energie Sisma Emilia per l'analisi dei dati sulla ri-costruzione delle imprese, che si potrà avviare una volta che i dati saranno messi a disposizione in maniera adeguata dalla regione Emilia-Romagna.

2015 - L'informatizzazione delle procedure per la ricostruzione: prime evidenze dai contributi concessi per le abitazioni [Working paper]
Ranuzzini, M.; Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

Il sisma del 2012 rappresenta il primo caso, in Italia, nel quale la gestione delle pratiche per la richiesta di contributo per la riparazione di abitazioni a seguito di un disa-stro naturale è stata interamente informatizzata. Il presente contributo analizza la genesi dell'infrastruttura Mude (Modello unico digitale per l'edilizia), utilizzata a tale scopo. Benché tale piattaforma sia stata creata prima del 2012, si analizza in questo lavoro il suo funzionamento nell'ambito degli interventi per la ricostruzione post-sisma in Emilia. Nel-la prima parte del lavoro si descrivono le caratteristiche principali del modello Mude e in particolare: la procedura amministrativa, i soggetti coinvolti e le modalità di calcolo dei contributi. Nella seconda parte si descrivono, invece, gli open data sulla ricostruzione at-tualmente a disposizione, evidenziandone caratteristiche e principali criticità che emergo-no dal loro utilizzo per attività di ricerca e monitoraggio. In particolare, si utilizzano le prime elaborazioni territoriali, basate sui dati relativi a contributi concessi e pagamenti già erogati, per evidenziare anche possibili sviluppi futuri di ricerca.

2015 - L'informatizzazione delle procedure per la ricostruzione: prime evidenze dai contributi concessi per le abitazioni [Working paper]
Ranuzzini, M.; Pagliacci, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

The earthquake of 2012 is the first case in Italy where the management of practice for assistance for the repair of housing as a result of a natural disaster has been fully computerized. This paper analyses the genesis of Mude infrastructure (Modello Unico Digitale per l'Edilizia), used for this purpose. Although this platform was created before 2012, we analyse in this work its mode of operation as part of the interventions for reconstruction after the earthquake in Emilia. In the first part of the work we describe the main features of the model Mude and in particular: the administrative aspects, the agents involved and the methods for calculating public subsidies. In the second part we describe, instead, open data on the reconstruction now available, highlighting features and main problems that arise from their use for research and monitoring. In particular, we use first territorial elaborations, based on data relating to grants allowed and payments already dispensed, also to highlight possible future research.

2015 - Promozione del sistema dei poli di innovazione nello spazio web: analisi dei contenuti e delle reti di relazioni virtuali [Working paper]
Di Cristofaro, M.; Fiordelmondo, V.; Ghinoi, S.; Russo, M.
abstract

Nel progetto di analisi e modellizzazione del sistema regionale dei poli di innovazione in Toscana (www.poliinnovazione.unimore.it), abbiamo esaminato in modo sistematico le informazioni disponibili nei siti web dei poli con due obiettivi: (i) analizzare la varietà di linguaggio e di contenuti che caratterizzano i poli nella loro attività on line; (ii) verificare in che misura i poli facciano riferimento agli stessi enti, imprese, organizzazioni, progetti e, tra questi, alle organizzazioni/o attività direttamente collegate al polo (come ad esempio i soggetti gestori dei poli laboratori, gli incubatori, gli aderenti). Questo articolo presenta nella prima parte l'analisi linguistica dei siti web prodotti dai poli di innovazione ed ha lo scopo di fornire un insieme di variabili per la valutazione delle loro strategie di promozione. Il metro di valutazione principale è l'individuazione della fonte dei materiali pubblicati online dai singoli poli (materiali originali vs. materiali prodotti da terzi), che è stato usato come indicatore del livello di partecipazione di ogni singolo polo nelle strategie di promozione delle proprie attività. Si è quindi cercato di quantificare il livello di coinvolgimento che ogni polo ha espresso – nel proprio sito web – attraverso la pubblicazione di testi. L'analisi è stata condotta utilizzando la metodologia di linguistica dei corpora al fine di svolgere un'indagine sia quantitativa sia qualitativa (simile alla metodologia nota come CADS), ed è stata effettuata prendendo in esame 24 termini relativi ai concetti di innovazione e sviluppo, all'interno dei contenuti web pubblicati dai poli di innovazione (azienda, aziende, centri, collaborazione, conoscenze, finanziamenti, gestione, gestore, impresa, imprese, industriale, innovazione, poli, polo, processi, progetti, progetto, ricerca, servizi, servizio, sviluppo, tecnologia, tecnologie, territorio). Attraverso la valutazione dell'utilizzo dei 24 termini all'interno dei testi web, l'analisi ha evidenziato come le nozioni di innovazione e sviluppo vengano costruite dai singoli poli in termini sia di significato, sia di connotazione. Oltre all'analisi linguistica, l'analisi dei testi web ha consentito anche di individuare in maniera puntuale i domini principali e i link completi citati nei siti web dei poli. Adottando una prospettiva di analisi delle reti di relazioni, con queste informazioni sulle reti virtuali abbiamo analizzato due questioni rilevanti per la modellizzazione del sistema dei poli di innovazione: attraverso le citazioni dei domini principali mettiamo in evidenza in che misura i siti web i poli hanno comunicato le connessioni tra di loro e con i soggetti attivi nel trasferimento tecnologico; attraverso l'analisi dei link completi presenti nei siti web dei singoli poli possiamo individuare in che misura i poli fanno riferimento allo stesso spazio di informazioni. La presentazione è strutturata come segue: nella sezione 1 vengono presentati i dati, gli strumenti e la metodologia utilizzata nell'analisi linguistica; nella sezione 2 viene presentata l'analisi linguistica dei 24 termini selezionati ; nella sezione 3 sono analizzate le reti di relazioni virtuali, la sezione 4 conclude. L'appendice 1 presenta i dettagli tecnici sulla raccolta e successiva pulizia dei dati; l'appendice 2 contiene la lista dei principali link completi presenti all'interno dei siti dei poli presi in esame.

2015 - The Emergence of Intermediary Organizations: A Network-based Approach to the Design of Innovation Policies [Capitolo/Saggio]
Caloffi, Annalisa; Rossi, Federica; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Greater understanding of what factors promote the formation of innovation networks and their successful performance would help policymakers improve the design of policy interventions aimed at funding R&D projects to be carried out by networks of innovators. In this paper, we focus on the organizations that can play the role of network intermediaries, facilitating the involvement of other participants and promoting communication and knowledge flows. Based on an original empirical dataset of organizations involved in five publicly-funded policy programmes in support of innovation networks, we identify different types of intermediaries based on an analysis of their positions within networks of relationships. We observe that agents that occupy broker positions – linking agents that are not connected to each other – are more likely to be found in technologically turbulent environments, while the agents that occupy intercohesive positions – bridging cohesive communities of network agents – operate in more stable contexts. Intermediaries in general are more likely to be local associations and governments. However, besides this, it is not possible to clearly identify types of organizations that are more likely to be either brokers or intercohesive agents: different innovation networks may require different organizations to mediate relationships between the other participants.

2015 - What Makes SMEs more Likely to Collaborate? Analysing the Role of Regional Innovation Policy [Articolo su rivista]
Caloffi, Annalisa; Rossi, Federica; Russo, Margherita
abstract

The last twenty years have witnessed the diffusion of regional innovation policies supporting networks of innovators. The underlying aim of these policies is to encourage firms, particularly SMEs, to undertake collaborations with organisations possessing complementary knowledge. Focusing on a set of SMEs that have participated, over time, in several innovation networks funded by the same regional government, the paper investigates how their relationships have evolved with respect to the following aspects: (i) reiteration of pre-existing relationships as opposed to experimentation of new relationships; (ii) collaboration with organisations possessing complementary rather than similar knowledge and competencies; (iii) creation of local relationships rather than experimentation of extra-local collaborations; (iv) reliance upon intermediaries to connect with other organisations. Our findings reveal that the involvement in these policy-supported networks changed the firms’ relational patterns, leading them to collaborate with a wider variety of agents than those with whom they were linked before the policies. Sectoral heterogeneity had a negative effect on the probability to collaborate, while, not surprisingly, co-localisation increased the likelihood to collaborate. Mutual involvement with intermediaries also had a positive effect. However, in the case of firm-to-university relationships only specialized intermediaries such as innovation centres were likely to perform a positive role and, therefore, encourage networking.

2014 - Can policy design help organizations improve their networking capabilities? An empirical analysis on a regional policy [Articolo su rivista]
Rossi, Federica; Caloffi, Annalisa; Russo, Margherita
abstract

In parallel with the interest in networks of innovation on the part of the academic literature, policymakers are increasingly recognizing the important systemic nature of innovation processes, involving many agents often engaged in networks of relationships (OECD, 1997; Mytelka and Smith, 2002; European Commission, 2003; Nauwelaers and Wintjes, 2008), and they are increasingly supporting the creation of networks among firms and other types of organizations. Examples are the EU Framework Programmes (Breschi and Malerba, 2009; Tindemans, 2009) as well as the many national and regional policies launched in the past decade or so (Branstetter and Sakakibara, 2002; Caloghirou et al, 2004; Russo and Rossi, 2009; Bellandi and Caloffi, 2010; Cunningham and Ramlogan, 2012). Policies for innovation networks usually aim to support joint R&D, technological development or technology transfer projects or even, sometimes, networking per se (with a view to create a “critical mass” of experts or users in a certain technology). At the same time, these policy interventions may also help the participants improve their ability to perform collaborative innovation, by allowing them to gain experience in working with external partners on a specific activity. Such behavioural outcomes, while not generally considered the main objective of these policies, have the potential to generate long-lasting beneficial changes in the participants’ competences and abilities (Gök and Edler, 2012). An important question for policy design is what kind of networks should be supported, if the objective of the policy is not just to fund “successful” innovation projects, but also to increase the participants’ ability to engage in collaborative innovation. Should policies simply provide funding to innovation networks on the basis of an assessment of the project they intend to realize, or should they promote the setup of networks with specific features, in order to increase the agents’ innovative potential through networking?

2014 - Education with micro-robots and innovation in education [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Paola, Mengoli; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Knowledge-driven re-industrialisation in Europe calls for changes in education systems. We address those changes by focusing on the adoption of a context-based approach to place science and technology within young people’s daily lives and to promote their understanding of the relevant issues emerging in society. In particular, we propose the use of micro-robots labs in order to: (i) improve a context-based approach to technology education and (ii) spread the knowledge of working condi-tions, employment opportunities and industrial enterprises activities. We suggest action-research as a feasible practice to boost bottom-up changes in teaching and learning activities, and we focus on the university initiative Officina Emilia as an example. The paper proposes some concluding remarks focusing on hybrid places to foster innovation, involving not only teachers and experts on education, but also researchers in different technological domains and in the social sciences and humanities, manufacturing and services companies, civil society.

2014 - Innovation in education and re-industrialisation in Europe [Working paper]
Mengoli, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

In this paper we discuss innovations in education, with a focus on those oriented towards knowledge-driven re-industrialisation in Europe. We first introduce the specific education needs for re-industrialisation with regard (a) to young people’s knowledge and skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and (b) to specific training needs of mid-level technicians. Then we propose the adoption of a context-based approach to place science and technology within young people’s daily lives and to promote links between science, technology and society. In particular, we propose the use of robotics labs to improve context-based approach to technology education. We suggest action-research as a feasible practice to boost bottom-up changes in teaching and learning activities, and we focus on the university initiative Officina Emilia as an exemplar of such actions, as the initiative involves university researchers, manufacturing and services companies, education agencies, civil society. The paper offers some concluding remarks on two main ingredients that can support a more appropriate set of education and training activities to enhance knowledge-driven re-industrialisation: first, the need to allow the emergence of hybrid places fostering innovation, with the involvement of different agents; second, the robotics labs, among others, as a means to foster a multidisciplinary perspective, crucial for the new challenges that education faces in supporting re-industrialization.

2014 - Politiche a sostegno del sistema di ricerca e sviluppo in Danimarca, Finlandia, Francia, Germania, Italia, Spagna e Svezia [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Silvestri, F.; Fiordelmondo, V.; Caloffi, A.; Rossi, F.; Ghinoi, S.; Kaulard, A.
abstract

As a complementary research in the project "Poli.in_Analysis and modeling of Innovation Poles in Tuscany", this paper addresses the issue of how are structured policies for innovation in other EU countries and Italian regions that have adopted policies of innovation through the creation of innovation poles. Integrating a research produced by Caloffi, Mariani and Rulli (2014) on innovation policies in the Italian regions, the paper analyses the policies of innovation and technology transfer of some of the major European countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, and six Italian regions having innovation poles policies. For each country, the survey highlights the following issues. 1. Background: there is a national policy supporting the regional policies? At what level decisions are made concerning technology transfer? What are the infrastructure created at both national and regional levels? 2. Regions: which will be considered and why? 3. Time horizon: in which periods of time are individual policies for innovation active? 4. Financial dimension: what is the budget invested in those policies? 5. Beneficiaries: the aim is mainly to large companies or SMEs? Who are the stakeholders? What are the institutions involved? 6. Hints for the comparison with the policies of the Tuscany Region: what are the issues confrinted in other countries to identify the key players of innovation policy? What degree of similarity have the concepts used in the country compared to those we ientify in Tuscany (technology clusters, innovation poles, competence centers, network of incubators, ...)? For each country sources of information are listed. The paper presents also a review on six Italian regions that implemented policies for in-novation poles.

2014 - Politiche di innovazione e trasferimento tecnologico in Toscana. Ricognizione degli strumenti attivati nel periodo 2000-2013 [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Silvestri, F.; Fiordelmondo, V.; Caloffi, A.; Rossi, F.; Ghinoi, S.; Kaulard, A.
abstract

The survey of innovation policies and technology transfer activated by the Tuscany Region (Italy) in the periods 2000-2006 and 2007-2013 is one of the tools to support the research project "Poli.in_Analysis and modeling of Innovation Poles in Tuscany". In the first part of this paper we present a detailed review of innovation policies in Tuscany, by listing the calls, decrees and infrastructure created by the various policies, from the RIS and RIS +, implemented at the end of the 90s and early 2000s, to the last decrees issued in July 2014 on the basis of policies ERDF 2014-2020. On the basis of the legislation analyzed, we propose a timeline with a graphical representation where we highlight the relationship between the decrees, calls for funding and infrastructure created in the period 2000-2014. Where possible, the financial resources available to the region are reported. To define the purpose, the time evolution and the mutual relations between the entities and the infrastructure is the Glossary containing: the description of the infrastructure that facilitate or promote innovation; some definitions of the key technology transfer system in Tuscany; definitions of the services included in the catalog of advanced and qualified services. The Glossary is divided into three sections: Infrastructure or entities that facilitate or promote innovation; Definition; Qualified services. The sources used to prepare the report and the time line were those provided by the Region and, as a supplement, other documents and decrees that have been sourced from the official site of the Tuscany Region. As for the preparation of the glossary, in addition to the official documents of the Region of Tuscany we used also the corporate websites of the various entities described.

2014 - The roles of different intermediaries in innovation networks: A network-based approach to the design of innovation policies [Working paper]
Caloffi, A.; Rossi, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

Greater understanding of what factors promote the formation of innovation networks and their successful performance would help policymakers improve the design of policy interventions aimed at funding R&D projects to be carried out by networks of innovators. In this paper, we focus on the organizations that can play the role of network intermediaries, facilitating the involvement of other participants and promoting communication and knowledge flows. Based on an original empirical dataset of organizations involved in five publicly-funded policy programmes in support of innovation networks, we identify different types of intermediaries based on an analysis of their positions within networks of relationships. We observe that agents that occupy broker positions – linking agents that are not connected to each other – are more likely to be found in technologically turbulent environments, while the agents that occupy intercohesive positions – bridging cohesive communities of network agents – operate in more stable contexts. Intermediaries in general are more likely to be local associations and governments. However, besides this, it is not possible to clearly identify types of organizations that are more likely to be either brokers or intercohesive agents: different innovation networks may require different organizations to mediate relationships between the other participants.

2013 - Can policy design help organizations improve their networking capabilities? An empirical analysis on a regional policy [Working paper]
Rossi, F.; Caloffi, A.; Russo, M.
abstract

In parallel with the interest in networks of innovation on the part of the academic literature, policymakers are increasingly recognizing the important systemic nature of innovation processes, involving many agents often engaged in networks of relationships (OECD, 1997; Mytelka and Smith, 2002; European Commission, 2003; Nauwelaers and Wintjes, 2008), and they are increasingly supporting the creation of networks among firms and other types of organizations. Policies for innovation networks usually aim to support joint R&D, technological development or technology transfer projects or even, sometimes, networking per se (with a view to create a “critical mass” of experts or users in a certain technology). At the same time, these policy interventions may also help the participants improve their ability to perform collaborative innovation, by allowing them to gain experience in working with external partners on a specific activity. Such behavioural outcomes, while not generally considered the main objective of these policies, have the potential to generate long-lasting beneficial changes in the participants’ competences and abilities (Gök and Edler, 2012). An important question for policy design is what kind of networks should be supported, if the objective of the policy is not just to fund “successful” innovation projects, but also to increase the participants’ ability to engage in collaborative innovation. Should policies simply provide funding to innovation networks on the basis of an assessment of the project they intend to realize, or should they promote the setup of networks with specific features, in order to increase the agents’ innovative potential through networking?

2013 - Homm-sw. Networks-of-stories to value tangible and intangible heritage in museum: abstract, poster & e-poster [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Ruchira, Ghose; Mauro, Mattioli; Russo, Margherita
abstract

1st International Conference on Digital Heritage

2013 - Homm-sw Networks-of-stories to value tangible and intangible heritage in museums [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Ghose, R.; Mattioli, M.
abstract

Social inclusion, lifelong learning and the regeneration of competence networks are key processes which foster innovation. Museums may play an important role in these processes and ICT can strongly support the effectiveness of the interventions required. Among them, digital tools used to tell stories are becoming increasingly popular. Narratives in new dimensions enable the formation of personal and community identities, and the construction of meanings [1] [2 ]. Hommsw supports multimedia narratives which enhance tangible and intangible heritage in education and cultural mediation, as well as in tourism. Developed by Officina Emilia (Italy) and Crafts Museum (India), the application is online at www.homm-museums-software.org. So far, it implements the engine for creating and managing the activity ‘networks-of-stories’, to create a nonlinear and open multimedia narration. [3],[4] In the last decade, digital storytelling has spread rapidly due to the growth and possibilities offered by new ICT devices [5] [6]. Together with crowd sourcing it can enrich the understanding of tangible and intangible heritage. Digital storytelling still faces some critical challenges: creation of content on tangible and intangible heritage, classification and re-use of existing documents and clips, cooperative and coordinated production of new content. Moreover, for effective exploratory paths and a more analytical approach to browsing material, contents must be set in the overall perspective of the narrations, to ensure narration is coherent. Finally, validation and dissemination of related outcomes must respect scientific standards. Homm-sw has tools that: support educators, also in contrasting learning difficulties, in developing inclusive and collaborative educational practices; support curators; facilitate crowd sourcing; create a personal web repository of contents and connections; share contents to be published, if approved by the administrator; create a network of contents and applications, at different levels for different users and specific needs. Homm-sw extends the museum experience. Before the visit: users can have a general look at museum contents and note, in their online personal desktop, what they are interested in. During the visit: users can retrieve their notes and add what is available on the museum’s exhibits and augmented reality, hands-on activities and multimedia contents, living laboratories, demonstration programs. Homm-sw in the onsite-mode allows only notes and memos, to fully enjoy what the museum uniquely offers. After the visit: users access their online workspace to retrieve and explore their notes, and any other content, as much as they wish. Beyond those common to other ICT tools in use in museums, Homm-sw has two key innovative functions. First, recording and retrieval of users' activities: during the visit in a museum, the visitor accessing her account may browse and take notes in her personal workspace and then retrieve and explore them, and many more, as much as she likes after the visit. Second, narratives presented through a set of related clips (videos, albums, texts) are easily seen in the conceptual map proposed by the curators. Homm-sw can be shared with non-profit organizations which intend to develop new features and share the upgrade with previous users and with new users, on the same conditions. Other engines will be implemented according to the demands of users, together with multi-channel and multilingual extension. As a tool for digital storytelling, integration with other software applications is welcome.

2013 - homm-sw shaping the future_video [Altro]
Russo, Margherita; Ghose, Ruchira; Mattioli, Mauro
abstract

Il video presenta le funzionalità dell'applicazione software "homm-sw" creata per realizzare narrazioni multimediali per valorizzare il patrimonio culturale, tangibile e intangibile

2013 - LEVE. Reti di competenza e sviluppo locale in provincia di Livorno [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Fiordelmondo, V.; Kaulard, A.; Mengoli, P.; Natali, A.; Silvestri, F.
abstract

Il progetto “Leve_Reti di competenze, istruzione e innovazione nella Provincia di Livorno” è uno studio preliminare alla progettazione di politiche per l’innovazione. Il contesto sociale ed economico preso in esame è quello della Provincia di Livorno. Nella ricerca, che si avvale dell’esperienza di ricerca-azione di Officina Emilia (UniMORE). Al fine di valorizzare le sinergie formative e produttive già esistenti e al contempo di rintracciare nuove linee di interazione e collaborazione, abbiamo adottato il modello di innovazione di Lane e Maxfield (1997). I fondamenti teorici di questo studio vedono l 'innovazione come un processo che emerge da interazioni che avvengono entro relazioni generative, cioè relazioni tra attori eterogenei che condividono una visione, che inducono a cambiamenti nel modo in cui essi vedono loro stessi, il loro mondo e coloro con cui si relazionano, determinando innovazioni che si caratterizzano come nuove attribuzioni di artefatti o nuove identità. Questi cambiamenti sono spesso cumulativi, e creano le condizioni perché avvengano nuove relazioni generative. Tali processi di interazione comprendono diversi elementi cognitivi, sociali, tecnici, economici e politici, che si estendono a diversi livelli dell’organizzazione sociale e avvengono secondo scale temporali differenti. Le dinamiche dei processi di innovazione, stimolate da tali relazioni, sono condizionate anche dalla presenza di attori ed istituzioni: creano legami tra agenti ed organizzazioni con competenze simili o complementari, favoriscono la riproduzione di sistemi regolatori e la diffusione di codici di comunicazione condivisi, producono beni pubblici importanti per il funzionamento del sistema economico e sociale.

2013 - Reti di competenze e innovazione nei sistemi di piccole imprese meccaniche [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

Il saggio intende offrire l’analisi delle condizioni che hanno favorito l’innovazione nei sistemi di piccola impresa in Italia, con particolare riferimento all’industria meccanica. Un aspetto di rilievo sarà il nesso tra disintegrazione verticale dei processi di produzione e reti di competenze nei sistemi di piccola impresa. Metterà in luce le differenze territoriali e settoriali (nei diversi comparti) che hanno caratterizzato la dinamica di quei sistemi produttivi. Richiamerà le condizioni che hanno reso possibile la costruzione di beni comuni a favore dello sviluppo e dell’innovazione: istruzione di qualità elevata e diffusa, valore sociale del lavoro, anche in mansioni tecniche, imprenditorialità diffusa. Si soffermerà sulle trasformazione nel sistema di istruzione e formazione e metterà in luce le criticità che negli ultimi decenni questi sistemi produttivi hanno affrontato.

2013 - Un tornio a scuola [Altro]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Il documento raccoglie la stampa in pdf di tutte le clipo in italiano della rete di storie "Un tornio a scuola". La rete di storie è stata creata con l'applicazione homm-sw. Nella rete di storie “Un tornio a scuola” vogliamo raccontare l’importanza dell’istruzione tecnica nello sviluppo locale a Modena. L’obiettivo è valorizzare l'intreccio tra relazioni economiche, relazioni sociali, sistema dell'istruzione e condizioni storiche, tecniche e di mercato in cui si andarono a formare le condizioni per lo sviluppo del distretto meccanico a Modena nel secondo dopoguerra. L'unità del nostro racconto è la clip: un video, un album di foto, un testo. Ogni clip è una narrazione, con un nucleo attorno a cui si sviluppa un inizio e una fine. Attraverso i collegamenti che abbiamo tracciato tra le clip, le singole narrazioni formano una rete di storie. Le connessioni tra le clip sono una traccia per una narrazione aperta, non univoca. Altre reti di storie sono possibili: seguendo la nostra proposta di collegamenti tra le clip, l'esploratore (“utilizzatore”/ “navigatore”, come lo vogliamo chiamare) potrà cambiare l'ordine con cui leggerli, ascoltarli, visualizzarli; oppure nuovi collegamenti potranno essere definiti dagli esploratori, a seconda delle loro prospettive/interessi/conoscenze nell’esplorare e analizzare le singole clip (i contenuti testuali e verbali, le immagini, le sequenze, le musiche e i suoni)

2013 - What Networks to Support Innovation? Evidence from a Regional Policy Framework [Capitolo/Saggio]
Caloffi, Annalisa; Rossi, Federica; Russo, Margherita
abstract

We explore how the implementation of a set of policy programmes over a period of six years induced some “emergent” learning effects which had not originally been envisaged by policymakers. This way, we show how policy evaluation can be used not only to assess the expected impact of policy interventions but also to discover their unexpected behavioural effects, and therefore provides an important instrument to guide the design of future interventions.

2012 - Education systems facing the challenges of technological, organizational and social changes: US and Italy in a comparative perspective [Working paper]
Cipollone, Piero; García, Eugene; Mengoli, Paola; Mehmet, ; Poggi, Annamaria; Poliandri, Donatella; Russo, Margherita
abstract

2012 - Effetti della crisi internazionale sulla subfornitura meccanica in Emilia Romagna [Working paper]
Bigarelli, D.; Russo, M.
abstract

The engineering industry in Emilia-Romagna is a strategic asset for the development of Italy. What are the effects of the 2008 crisis on this industry in the region? What were the responses from companies? What questions for public policy emerge from the reading of the structural features of the regional industry and effects of the crisis? To outline the answers to these questions, in addition to the statistics available from official sources and to previous empirical research, information were drawn from a series of more than forty interviews (carried out between January and April 2011) to 28 engineering companies in the provinces of Bologna and Modena and to associations of firms in the two provinces. A background of the debate on development issues in manufacturing sectors introduces the relevance of mechanical production of the Emilia-Romagna region. The results of the empirical investigation focus on the networks of relationships that characterize the mechanical filières in the region. In the second part of the paper, 28 case studies are presented with regard to their structural characteristics, the pre-crisis strategies, the effects of the crisis and post-crisis strategies, problems, perspectives of local subcontracting. Issues of public policy are highlighted. For eight companies that have agreed to the disclosure (Ima, Sacmi, Marchesini, Tetra Pak, Partena, Rossi, Caprari, CBM) extended description drawn from interviews are also available.

2012 - Innovazione nei sistemi educativi per migliorare la qualità dell’istruzione [Articolo su rivista]
Mengoli, Paola; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Il saggio introduce le problematiche dell’innovazione nei sistemi educativi, concentrando poi l’attenzione lungo due direttrici. La prima riguarda i principali fattori che influenzano i processi di innovazione dei sistemi educativi. La seconda direttrice propone una lettura delle innovazioni nella governance dei sistemi educativi che evidenzia le criticità della dicotomia tra decentramento e accentramento, e mette in luce come l’efficacia delle innovazioni dipenda anche dagli strumenti di monitoraggio e valutazione a sostegno dei progetti di miglioramento. È lungo queste due direttrici che si delineano i principali punti emersi dalla discussione nel gruppo di ricerca MIQUA e presentati in questo fascicolo.

2012 - Local sustainability and competitiveness: the case of the ceramic tile industry [Altro]
Russo, Margherita; Börkey, Peter; Cubel, Emilio; Lévêque, François.; Mas, Francisco.
abstract

The present survey deals with the influence of pollution abatement on employment and competition in the ceramic tile manufacturing sector in four EU countries: Italy, Spain, France and Germany. It appears that Italy and Spain are the best performing ceramic tile industries. Their competitive advantage has mainly been driven by their particular type of organisation as an industrial district. In these countries firms are operating in clusters, which is generating important economies of agglomeration and permitting a high rate of innovation. But the industry seems now to be at a turning point, diseconomies of agglomeration, mainly due to pollution and congestion, are beginning to grow faster than economies of agglomeration and the environment is more and more becoming a limiting factor for competitiveness in industrial districts.

2012 - Sviluppo locale e meccanismi di rigenerazione delle competenze [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Il saggio discute di quale sia oggi il “modello emilia” e delinea quali siano i caratteri di fondo del modello ancora oggi presenti nelle realtà emiliana che si trova in una fase economica ancora segnata da forti instabilità. Propone una selezione di elementi chiave per esaminare alcuni caratteri di un modello: il nesso tra sviluppo locale, innovazione e istruzione, da un lato, e la scala di azione delle politiche dall’altro.

2011 - Economia e finanza nelle imprese meccaniche delle regioni del Nord Italia 2005-2008 [Working paper]
Canovi, L.; Russo, M.; Baracchi, M.; Bigarelli, D.
abstract

2011 - Politiche industriali per i distretti, politiche di sviluppo ispirate dai distretti. La lezione di Sebastiano Brusco [Articolo su rivista]
A., Natali; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Questo saggio discute due idee fondamentali di politica industriale elaborate da Sebastiano Brusco: i servizi reali a sostegno delle imprese distrettuali e quelli necessari per la trasformazione di gruppi di imprese isolate in sistemi di imprese; la promozione di cambiamenti diffusi sul piano delle conoscenze e competenze, e delle relazioni sociali. Argomenteremo che a queste due idee sono connesse due concezioni del ruolo del distretto industriale. Nelle politiche industriali centrate attorno ai servizi reali, i distretti industriali sono i destinata-ri delle politiche; nelle politiche di sviluppo locale i distretti industriali sono il modello di riferimento che porta a definire un approccio di intervento innovativo. In una fase ulteriore, infine, con la proposta dei contratti di programma di distretto come forma di sostegno delle politiche territoriali nel Mezzogiorno, i distretti industriali si trasformano in possibili attori delle politiche sulla scena nazionale.Il saggio esplora il modo in cui si è verificato questo cambiamento concettuale e delinea, in sintesi, alcuni dei mutamenti nel paradigma di ricerca e nel quadro di interventi di policy dell’ultimo decennio.

2011 - Promoting successful innovation networks: a methodological contribution to regional policy evaluation and design. The case of Tuscany's innovation policies 2000-2006 [Working paper]
Caloffi, A.; Rossi, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

2010 - Innovation, generative relationships and scaffolding structures. Implications of a complexity perspective to innovation for public and private interventions [Capitolo/Saggio]
F., Rossi; Russo, Margherita; S., Sardo; J., Whitford
abstract

The linear model of innovation has been superseded by a variety of theoretical models that view the innovation process as systemic, complex, multi-level, multi-temporal, involving a plurality of heterogeneous economic agents. Accordingly, the emphasis of the policy discourse has changed over time. The focus has shifted from the direct public funding of basic research as an engine of innovation, to the creation of markets for knowledge goods, to, eventually, the acknowledgement that knowledge transfer very often requires direct interactions among innovating actors. In most cases, policy interventions attempt to facilitate the match between “demand” and “supply” of the knowledge needed to innovate. A complexity perspective calls for a different framing, one focused on the fostering of processes characterized by multiple agency levels, multiple temporal scales, ontological uncertainty and emergent outcomes. This contribution explores what it means to design interventions in support of innovation processes inspired by a complex systems perspective. It does so by analyzing two examples of coordinated interventions: a public policy funding innovating networks (with SMEs, research centers and university), and a private initiative, promoted by a network of medium-sized mechanical engineering firms, that supports innovation by means of technology brokerage. Relying on two unique datasets recording the interactions of the organizations involved in these interventions, social network analysis and qualitative research are combined in order to investigate network dynamics and the roles of specific actors in fostering innovation processes. Then, some general implications for the design of coordinated interventions supporting innovation in a complexity perspective are drawn.

2010 - Innovazione: processi sociali e politiche pubbliche”, [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Il saggio illustra le tematiuche affrontate nel volume inducando le dimensioni critiche che occorre affrontare quando spostiamo l’attenzione dalla generica interazione tra domanda e offerta di innovazione alla costruzione del processo di innovazione e agli strumenti di intervento pubblico più efficaci per sostenerlo.Una prima dimensione che viene indagata è la complessità dei processi di innovazione, che è il fulcro della teoria a cui faremo riferimento. Tale complessità non riconducibile alla sola sfera tecnica o a quella economica riguarda la molteplicità di tipologie di attori coinvolti, la molteplicità dei livelli a cui si verificano le interazioni sociali (impresa, sistema di imprese, sistema produttivo locale, sistema di mercato, sistema nazionale di innovazione), la molteplicità degli orizzonti temporali associati allo svolgimento delle azioni interrelate al cambiamento e all’azione degli attori coinvolti (ciascuno con la serie di temporalità delle proprie interazioni). Un insieme coerente di politiche per l’innovazione che tenga conto della complessità dei processi sociali da cui scaturisce l’innovazione deve quindi affrontare questioni che si pongono su scale temporali diverse e su diversi livelli di organizzazione politica e sociale (dai comuni, alle regioni, ai paesi all’Unione Europea) e deve poter individuare, a ciascun livello, gli agenti su cui fare leva per stimolare e sostenere l’innovazione. Quali strumenti abbiamo per individuare tali agenti, e per monitorare e valutare i processi di innovazione e non solo le innovazioni e i loro effetti? Con riferimento ai sistemi di piccola e media impresa, i contributi raccolti in questo volume individuano alcune risposte a tali questioni e approfondiscono l’analisi delle loro implicazioni sulle politiche per l’innovazione. Una seconda dimensione che analizzeremo in questo volume è l’intreccio tra politiche e teorie dell’innovazione. L’analisi di questo intreccio offrirà una chiave di lettura essenziale per l’analisi degli effetti delle politiche. In particolare, ogni strumento di politica pubblica si basa su una teoria, anche quando questo legame non sia reso esplicito. È quindi assai importante, per prima cosa, chiarire il quadro teorico al quale le politiche vengono riferite e le specifiche istituzioni che hanno maturato e promosso quelle politiche. Affronteremo, in particolare, due domande che sono fondamentali per l’elaborazione di una teoria dell’innovazione. In primo luogo: che cosa è l’innovazione? Quando pensiamo all’innovazione, abbiamo in mente nuovi prodotti o nuovi servizi, nuovi processi produttivi, nuove modalità organizzative dei processi di produzione, nuovi mercati (come suggerito da Schumpeter, 1934). Ma questa definizione è, per molte ragioni, allo stesso tempo, inadeguata e fuorviante perché richiama la nostra attenzione sui risultati dei processi innovativi, più che sui processi di innovazione (Bonifati 2010). E le politiche devono mirare alla riorganizzazione dei processi se esse vogliono poterne influenzare i risultati. In questo volume proponiamo un diverso modo di descrivere l’innovazione. Si tratta di processi caratterizzati da interazioni tra agenti eterogenei. Interazioni che riguardano molti aspetti (cognitivi, sociali, tecnologici, economici e politici), che si svolgono su scale temporali assai diverse (a volte sviluppandosi nell’arco di settimane, a volte di decenni) e che hanno luogo in molte sedi (dalle università ai centri di ricerca industriale pubblici e privati, dagli enti di regolamentazione alle associazioni di categoria, agli ordini professionali, fino all’organizzazione dei mercati). Ciascuno di questi processi, in ciascuna di queste sedi, può generare «colli di bottiglia» (Rosenberg, 1976, 1982, 1996) che impediscono la creazione o l’affermarsi di innovazioni. La seconda domanda riguarda le interazioni. Se le consideriamo un el

2010 - Processi di innovazione e sviluppo locale. Teorie e politiche [Curatela]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Le riflessioni che hanno animato il lavoro di ricerca proposto in questo volume prendono lemosse da domande teoriche che si sono intrecciate ad un intenso confronto con amministratori regionali, dirigentidei centri di servizi, ricercatori impegnati sui temi del trasferimento tecnologico e dell’innovazione.Il nostro lavoro ha permesso di individuare le condizioni per favorire relazioni generative escaffolding structure (strutture di sostegno) efficaci nel sostenere processi di innovazione nei sistemidi piccola e media impresa.Un insieme coerente di politiche per l’innovazione deve affrontare questioni che si pongonosu scale temporali diverse e su diversi livelli di organizzazione politica e sociale (dai comuni, alleregioni, dai singoli paesi all’Unione europea) e deve poter individuare, a ciascun livello, gli agenti su cuifare leva per stimolare e sostenere l’innovazione. Quali strumenti abbiamo per individuare taliagenti, e per monitorare e valutare i processi di innovazione e non solo le innovazioni e i loroeffetti? Con riferimento ai sistemi di piccola e media impresa, i contributi raccolti nel volumeindividuano alcune risposte a tali questioni e approfondiscono l’analisi delle loro implicazionisulle politiche per l’innovazione.Nei vari saggi consideriamo l’innovazione come un processo sociale caratterizzato da interazionitra agenti eterogenei. Interazioni che riguardano molti aspetti (cognitivi, sociali, tecnologici,economici e politici) che si svolgono su scale temporali assai diverse (a volte sviluppandosinell’arco di settimane, a volte di decenni) e che hanno luogo in molte sedi (dalle università ai centridi ricerca industriale pubblici e privati, dagli enti di regolamentazione alle associazioni di categoria,agli ordini professionali, fino all’organizzazione dei mercati). Ciascuno di questi processi,in ognuna di queste sedi, può generare «colli di bottiglia» che impediscono la creazione o l’affermarsidi innovazioni. Se consideriamo le interazioni un elemento fondamentale dei processidi innovazione, allora dobbiamo esplorare più in profondità quali siano quelle rilevanti e in qualicontesti (pensiamo al sistema di istruzione e formazione, al sistema universitario, al sistema dellaricerca pubblica e al sistema della ricerca privata, alle istituzioni finanziarie, alle condizioni legislativeche regolano gli scambi tra attori e la proprietà intellettuale). Occorre anche chiedersi qualitipi di organizzazioni, e nell’ambito di quali attività, siano coinvolti nel processo innovativo.Laddove le interazioni tra gli agenti non stiano generando risultati desiderabili in termini diinnovazione, quali strumenti possono modificare la struttura delle interazioni? Abbiamo raccoltole risposte a queste domande attorno a due assi del ragionamento: le teorie dell’innovazione,nella prima parte del volume, le riflessioni sulle politiche a sostegno dell’innovazione, nellaseconda parte.

2010 - Reti di cooperazione e innovazione [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Rossi, Federica
abstract

il caso studiato è il Programma Regionale di Azioni Innovative «Innovazione Tecnologica in Toscana (PRAI-ITT)», attuato dalla Regione Toscana nel periodo gennaio 2002-dicembre 2004. Obiettivo del Programma era stimolare i processi di innovazione tecnologica nell’economia della regione mediante la creazione di reti di cooperazione tra agenti eterogenei (imprese, centri di ricerca, università, istituzioni pubbliche locali, centri per l’innovazione, centri di servizi alle imprese, agenzie formative e organismi finanziari). La novità di questo Programma, che rendeva necessario definire nuovi strumenti di analisi, risiedeva nell’aver individuato nella rete di cooperazione il soggetto destinatario degli incentivi pubblici. L’uso congiunto del metodo etnografico e dell’analisi delle reti di relazioni sociali (tramite gli strumenti della social network analysis) ha consentito una migliore comprensione delle caratteristiche strutturali del Programma e delle azioni da intraprendere in futuro per l’analisi, il monitoraggio e la valutazione degli effetti di programmi simili. Il profilo temporale dei processi di innovazione si è rivelato essere un aspetto cruciale del Programma: il piano di sfruttamento dei risultati è esso stesso un processo non sempre realizzabile (talvolta neanche chiaramente individuabile) nel limitato tempo a disposizione per l’utilizzo del finanziamento; l’orizzonte temporale a cui riferire la valutazione sulle relazioni generative prodotte dal programma di Azioni Innovative deve estendersi oltre la conclusione amministrativa del Programma. Dall’analisi della costruzione e sviluppo delle reti di partner è emerso che i proponenti avevano fatto ricorso a reti di relazioni già attive e a proposte in qualche misura già in parte delineate in precedenti attività di ricerca e sperimentazione. È stato anche possibile individuare il nucleo di attori più centrali per la loro capacità nel mobilitare – attraverso molteplici legami diretti e indiretti – la partecipazione ai progetti di innovazione di alcune centinaia di attori, molti dei quali non avevano precedenti esperienze di contatto con centri di ricerca e università. Ma le aspettative dei partecipanti erano che quelle reti non fossero necessariamente le stesse che avrebbero poi realizzato lo sviluppo del prototipo o lo sfruttamento dei risultati del progetto: la mobilitazione di relazioni generative si estende quindi oltre il nucleo di attori individuati dall’analisi dei partecipanti al Programma. Alcuni tra gli attori più centrali hanno avuto un ruolo particolare nel costruire un ponte tra esperienze, esigenze e capacità diverse. Si tratta di attori spesso attivi in una gamma di attività – dalla ricerca, alla formazione, alla consulenza su servizi di certificazione – che li ha avvicinati a ambiti molto diversi (dalla ricerca accademica alla particolare tecnologia di produzione) dei quali hanno appreso i molti linguaggi. La loro multivocalità li rende soggetti essenziali perché le reti si possano creare, modellare (allargandosi o restringendosi) e possano funzionare attorno a specifiche proposte progettuali. Le implicazioni dell’analisi del Programma di Azioni Innovative della Toscana ha evidenziato anche che le politiche per l’innovazione richiedano una forte dose di innovazione nelle politiche. Di questo c’è consapevolezza nello strumento individuato dalla Commissione Europea (le Azioni Innovative, appunto), ma occorrerebe costruire strumenti appropriati, e questo riguarda non solo nuovi specifici obiettivi delle politiche per l’innovazione (le reti di cooperazione tra attori con competenze eterogenee, ad esempio, invece che solo generici incentivi destinati magari a particolari aree tecnologiche, o a particolari ambiti territoriali di una regione). Occorre connettere quegli obiettivi specifici alle informazioni rilevanti da raccogliere nel bando pubblico per poter poi pro

2009 - Cooperation networks and innovation: A complex systems perspective to the analysis and evaluation of a regional innovation policy programme [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, M.; Rossi, F.
abstract

Recent developments in innovation theory and policy have led policy makers to assign particular importance to supporting networks of cooperation among heterogeneous economic actors, especially in production systems composed of small and medium enterprises. Such innovative policies call for parallel innovations in policy analysis, monitoring and assessment. Our analysis of a policy experiment aimed at supporting innovation networks in the Italian region of Tuscany intends to address some issues connected with the design, monitoring and evaluation of such interventions. Combining tools from ethnographic research and social networks analysis, the article explores the structural elements of the policy programme, its macroscopic impact on the regional innovation system and the success of individual networks in attaining their specific objectives.This innovative approach allows us to derive some general methodological suggestions for the design and evaluation of similar programmes. Copyright © 2009 SAGE Publications.

2009 - Industrial districts in a globalizing world: A model to change or a model of change? - Materiali di discussione del Dipartimento di Economia Politica (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia), n. 615 [Working paper]
Russo, Margherita; J., Whitford
abstract

Industrial districts – and especially industrial districts in Italy – have been much studied and debated, and are seen by some as a model of economic development to be emulated, and by others as a model that has already had its day. All agree, however, that those districts today are in transformation, that globalization has put them “on the move.” This article uses a study of the Modenese mechanical district – an archetypical industrial district – to examine this “movement.” It analyzes changes in the district, including especially the rise to prominence in the district of relatively small multinational firms, and shows that this rise has not severed these firms’ ties to the territory but has rather reconfigured relations in ways that have led those firms also to the need for new regional institutions and organizations consistent with a district structure “on the move”. In particular, the article uses a case study of a private company created to broker collaborative technology transfer among its owner-members as a means to understand what sorts of institutions might be required and, in so doing, draws policy conclusions for regional economic development policy.

2009 - Industrial districts in a globalizing world: A model to change, or a model of change? [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

2009 - Innovation policy: levels and levers [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; Rossi, Federica
abstract

We investigate to what extent and how the adoption of a complexity-based perspective to innovation (Lane and Maxfield, 1996, 1997, 2005; Lane et al., 2008; Read et al, 2008; Russo, 2000) can support policymakers in their quest to implement effective interventions, able to foster innovation processes and to create structures that sustain them over time. We argue that broad attempts at theorizing innovation processes do not lend themselves to a quick translation into simple ‘policy recipes’, because conceptualizing innovation as a complex multi-level process implies that it is not possible to devise context-independent ways to support it: improved theoretical understanding of innovation processes should not aim to provide policymakers with simple encompassing solutions, but it should help them formulate and address questions that are appropriate to the particular context within which they operate. In line with this approach, we present our analysis of a specific policy experiment, the ‘Technological Innovation in Tuscany’ programme (henceforth RPIA-ITT). In this context - drawing upon a dynamic interactionist theory of innovation whose main building blocks are the concepts of generative relationships, competence networks, scaffolding structures and the role of narrative in driving action in situations characterized by ontological uncertainty (Lane, Malerba, Maxfield and Orsenigo, 1996; Lane and Maxfield, 1997, 2005, 2008; Russo, 2000, 2005) – we have been able to identify methodological and analytical tools that can be applied to policy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation activities. We conclude with some broader implications for innovation policy as well as an agenda for future research.

2009 - Innovative interventions in support of innovation networks. A complex system perspective to public innovation policy and private technology brokering [Working paper]
Rossi, F.; Russo, M.; Sardo, S.; Whitford, J.
abstract

2009 - La scuola di Modena e l’inchiesta [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

In Italia l’inchiesta diventò sin dagli anni Sessanta uno strumento della ricerca sociale: rilevare le informazioni attraverso un questionario più o meno strutturato rispondeva ad una necessità di acquisire informazioni su fenomeni sociali per i quali non si disponeva di conoscenze adeguate (quali, ad esempio, le condizioni di lavoro). Il paper esamina l’originale contributo di Sebastiano Brusco nell’uso dell’inchiesta nelle ricerche di economia indu-striale e sullo sviluppo locale. Si discute lo sfondo teorico di quel contributo, dall’economia industriale e dello sviluppo alla grounded theory, e si evidenziano alcuni risultati che esemplificano la ricchezza interpretativa che lo strumento dell’inchiesta ha nell’analisi dello sviluppo locale.

2009 - Politiche industriali per i distretti, politiche di sviluppo ispirate dai distretti. La lezione di Sebastiano Brusco [Working paper]
Natali, A.; Russo, M.
abstract

2009 - The Italian Revival of Industrial Districts and the Foundations of Industrial Policy [Capitolo/Saggio]
A., Natali; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Problems of development were at the center of the work of Sebastiano Brusco. Over a thirty-year period at the end of the last century and in conjunction with a large team of collaborators, he made many of the most important contributions to the study of (mainly) Italian industrial districts1.Drawing particularly on the experience of Emilia Romagna in the 1970s, Brusco showed that a multiplicity of forms of industrial organization could be efficient, if properly embedded in supporting social and institutional structures. He developed analytical and empirical tools on policies to help conceptualize a form of local development that was associated with the presence of industrial districts, and used these tools to rethink the effectiveness of policy instruments. This work was carried out in conjunction with his dialogue with trade unions in Italy in the 1970s on the one side and, on the other side, with an international scientific community that was then growing around the research on industrial districts and local development. Unfortunately, his premature death in 2002 has denied us his continued participation in a discussion that owes him much. But he has nonetheless left us a priceless legacy in his many and lucid writings, with their vivid demonstration that theoretical analyses and empirical studies can be fruitfully interwoven with research and didactic activity2.Prior to launching on his studies of Industry and Labour, to which he devoted his years at Cambridge (UK) in the early 1960s, Brusco found a cue for his research in theoretical, political and social experience in the Sardinia of the 1950s. He belonged to a group of intellectuals of the Ichnusa review, gathered around the jurist Antonio Pigliaru and sparking an intense discussion on themes of development. This context went on to shape Brusco's work in subsequent decades, and led him down a personal research path focused on the interpretation and analysis of industrial districts and local development3.This chapter briefly reviews the problems and the analytical tools put forward by Brusco in his writing on local development (section 2). We shall deal with two fundamental concepts of industrial policy developed by Brusco (sections 3 and 4): the role of real services to support district firms and the role of real services needed to transform groups of isolated firms into systems of firms; and the promotion of widespread changes at the level of knowledge, competences, and social relations. These concepts emphasize both that industrial policies centred on real services can treat the industrial district per se as a key policy target and that local development policies should use the concept of the industrial district as a reference model to identify innovative approaches to policy design and intervention more generally. Thus, when policy making used district planning contracts as a form of support for territorial policies in Southern Italy, the industrial districts themselves became actors of policy making on a national scale (section 5).

2009 - The Officina Emilia Initiative: Innovative Local Actions to Support Education and Training Systems [Working paper]
Mengoli, P.; Russo, M.
abstract

2008 - Agglomerazione spaziale dell’industria metalmeccanica italiana, 1981-2001. Aspetti teorici e implicazioni per l’analisi empirica [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; E., Pirani
abstract

Nell’ambito della nuova geografia economica si è sviluppata un’ampia letteratura che cerca di misurare i fenomeni di agglomerazione spaziale utilizzando l’indice di agglomerazione spaziale proposto da Ellison e Glaeser (1997).L'applicazione all'industria meccanica in Italia, proposta in questo capitolo, evidenzia che, sebbene rimangano rilevanti, per molti dei comparti dell’industria meccanica, i vantaggi localizzativi sono diminuiti nel corso dei venti anni considerati.Le cause di tale diminuzione non possono essere analizzate attraverso l’indice di Ellison e Glaeser, ma possiamo fare ricorso alle ricerche empiriche che evidenziano come negli ultimi venti anni in Italia la produzione meccanica sia stata caratterizzata da intrecci produttivi tra imprese, specializzate in fasi, localizzate in un ambito territoriale ristretto (Brusco, 1989, 2008; Russo, Pirani, 2002; Bonomi, Marenco, 2006; IPL, 2005; Ginzburg, Bigarelli, 2005). Le reti di relazioni tra le imprese di un sistema produttivo locale rendono possibile la crescita delle imprese, che spesso non aumentano la dimensione in termini di addetti grazie a un’ampia esternalizzazione di fasi prima realizzate all’interno dell’impresa.La comparazione dei risultati ottenuti dalle elaborazioni dei dati relativi ai SLL e alle province ci ha consentito di porre in luce un altro aspetto problematico nel computo dell’indice di agglomerazione spaziale: la scelta dell’unità territoriale a cui riferire l’analisi comparata dei vantaggi di agglomerazione delle attività produttive. Un aspetto questo a cui si presta poca attenzione, e che invece potrebbe rendere sostanzialmente inutilizzabile l’indice di Ellison e Glaeser ai fini di quella comparazione tra settori e paesi nel tempo, che è l’obiettivo di Ellison e Glaeser nel proporre un modello di scelte localizzative. Dalle ricerche empiriche sull’industria meccanica emerge che la base territoriale più appropriata per poter esaminare gli effetti di spillover sarebbe la trama di SLL identificati dall’ISTAT, ma l’indice d risulta sovrastimato in oltre la metà dei comparti.Nell’applicare all’Italia l’indice di agglomerazione spaziale di Ellison e Glaeser la provincia risulta l’unità territoriale che, con una classificazione a quattro cifre, consente di raggiungere un compromesso accettabile tra non distorsione dell’indice d (che risulta non distorto nel 90% dei comparti) e disaggregazione territoriale rilevante per l’analisi. Se l’analisi venisse condotta utilizzando i comuni e non i SLL come unità territoriali, l’indice sarebbe sovrastimato in 95 comparti su 99.Due riflessioni, quindi, che invitano alla massima cautela nell’utilizzo dell’indice di agglomerazione spaziale proposto da Ellison e Glaeser e che, a nostro avviso, riaprono la discussione sulla necessità di individuare altri strumenti per l’analisi dei vantaggi di agglomerazione spaziale.

2008 - Differenze territoriali e specializzazioni nell’industria meccanica in Italia. Un’analisi cluster dei dati censuari 1991 e 2001 [Capitolo/Saggio]
Pirani, Elena; Paterlini, Sandra; Russo, Margherita
abstract

In questo capitolo presentiamo i risultati dell’analisi relativa ai dati censuari deglioccupati nell’industria metalmeccanica: un vasto aggregato di attività di produzionee trasformazione dei metalli, di produzione di macchinari, di mezzi ditrasporto, e di componenti e semilavorati meccanici necessari alla loro produzione.In questo lavoro proponiamo di utilizzare l’analisi cluster quale metodologiastatistica per individuare una tipologia di SLL che tenga conto congiuntamentedella dimensione del SLL oltre che della specializzazione manifatturiera emeccanica e della presenza di imprese di piccola e media dimensione. L’obiettivoè definire una classificazione dei territori che metta in luce le differenze nell’intensitàdi specializzazione meccanica. Il nostro contributo originale consistenell’utilizzo di questa tecnica per evidenziare il fenomeno di contiguità spazialetra SLL con differenti gradi di specializzazione e dimensione di impresa, un fenomenonoto nelle ricerche empiriche su singoli distretti e sistemi produttivi locali,ma che finora non aveva trovato riscontro in un’analisi sistematica che consentissedi avere un quadro d’insieme sull’intero paese.

2008 - Dinamica spaziale dell’occupazione nei macrosettori e nei cluster dell’industria meccanica in Italia, 1951-2001 [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Con riferimento al periodo 1951-2001, questo capitolo presenta i dati relativi all'occupazione nei macrosettori (sezione 2) e nell'industria meccanica (sezione 3) nelle macroregioni e nei cluster (sezione 4) evidenziati nell’analisi spaziale presentata nel capitolo 1 del volume.La specificazione delle fonti e della metodologia utilizzata per la ricostruzione della serie storica e i relativi punti critici sono descritte nell’Appendice, che riporta anche l’elenco degli aggregati di attività economiche nelle diverse classificazioni utilizzate

2008 - I distretti industriali: lezioni per lo sviluppo. Una lettera e nove saggi (1990-2002) [Curatela]
A., Natali; Russo, Margherita; Solinas, Giovanni
abstract

Analisi della struttura industriale italiana e confronti tra sistemi produttivi, il nesso tra formazione, competenze e capacità concorrenziale, il significato dei servizi reali, la piccola impresa e l’ideologia della sinistra, la politica di sviluppo, nuovi indirizzi per una teoria dei distretti industriali. Nei contributi raccolti in questo volume, scritti tra il 1990 e il 2002, il pensiero di Brusco risalta in tutta la sua lucidità e si ripropone all’attenzione della comunità scientifica e del pubblico come la lezione di un grande maestro. Il volume contiene saggi inediti e saggi pubblicati per la prima volta in italiano. Si conclude con una bibliografia dell’autore.

2008 - Innovation Policy in a Complexity Perspective: Levels and Levers for Policy Intervention [Working paper]
Rossi, F.; Russo, M.
abstract

2008 - “Introduzione alla Parte I” [Prefazione o Postfazione]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

2008 - Introduzione [I distretti industriali: lezioni per sviluppo. Una lettera e nove saggi (1990-2002). Parte Prima "Struttura Industriale. Competitività sviluppo] [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Il capitolo introduce i saggi della prima parte del volume. Esemplificano la varietà di strumenti di analisi che Brusco propose sin dagli anni settanta nello studio della struttura industriale, della competitività dei sistemi produttivi, dello sviluppo locale. Ci introducono ai temi delle politiche per lo sviluppo, discussi nella seconda parte del volume, e fanno intravedere gli approfondimenti teorici a cui Brusco contribuì attingendo a molti ambiti disciplinari, che vengono richiamati nei saggi della terza parte.

2008 - Introduzione [L’industria meccanica in Italia. Analisi spaziale delle specializzazioni produttive 1951-2001] [Prefazione o Postfazione]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Nell’arco di cinquant’anni, alla notevole crescita dell’occupazione meccanica che contraddistingue il periodo 1951-81 e che accompagna lo sviluppo dell’economia italiana segue una fase di contrazione nel periodo 1981-2001, con una riduzione di circa 214.000 addetti nel decennio 1981-91 e di altri 35.000 nel decennio successivo: una riduzione complessiva del 9,75% che non si distribuisce in modo uniforme nel paese e nei vari comparti, e in alcuni casi la variazione ha segno diverso da un periodo all’altro. Due decenni di trasformazioni che hanno profondamente ridimensionato il ruolo dei sistemi produttivi di grande impresa e in cui hanno assunto un peso crescente i sistemi di produzione di piccola impresa. Queste trasformazioni sono consi

2008 - Le esportazioni metalmeccaniche dell’Italia, 1991-2004 [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

In questo capitolo presentiamo un’analisi sulle esportazioni meccaniche nel periodo 1991-2004. L’analisi disaggregata riguarda tutti i gruppi, o comparti, Ateco 2002 a tre cifre, appartenenti alle sottosezioni DJ (produzione di metallo e fabbricazione di prodotti in metallo), DK (fabbricazione di macchine e apparecchi meccanici, compresi l’installazione, il montaggio, la riparazione e la manutenzione), DL (fabbricazione di macchine elettriche e di apparecchiature elettriche e ottiche) e DM (fabbricazione di mezzi di trasporto). Questo insieme, che va dalla siderurgia agli autoveicoli, sarà indicato di seguito con il termine “metalmeccanica”.I risultati dell’analisi svolta evidenziano una significativa dinamica delle esportazioni delle regioni del Nord-Est e segnatamente dell’Emilia-Romagna e del Veneto. Le differenze dell’orientamento geografico delle esportazioni per i principali prodotti meccanici esportati mostrano un peso crescente nel mercato nordamericano e nel periodo in esame una scarsa presenza nel mercato cinese.La provincia di Modena è specializzata in sei delle otto principali produzioni meccaniche italiane, oltre che nella produzione di macchine agricole e prodotti biomedicali: in questi comparti vi sono significative differenze positive rispetto alla composizione media delle esportazioni italiane, con un maggiore orientamento verso mercati extraeuropei e in forte crescita.L’analisi della relazione tra dinamica dell’occupazione e dinamica delle esportazioni ci fa concludere che occorre molta cautela nell’esaminare la relativa performance delle province quando i dati si riferiscano alla dinamica dell’occupazione o delle esportazioni.

2008 - Le specializzazioni meccaniche in Italia, 1981-2001 [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

In questo capitolo viene descritta la variazione dell’occupazione meccanica in Italia nel periodo 1981-2001, con riferimento sia ai diversi tipi di SLL evidenziati nell’analisi cluster proposta nel CAP. 1 del volume, sia alle diverse specializzazioni per comparto dell’industria meccanica.

2008 - L’inchiesta nell’analisi della struttura sociale e dell’organizzazione della produzione Il contributo di Sebastiano Brusco [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

2008 - L’industria meccanica in Italia. Analisi spaziale delle specializzazioni produttive 1951-2001. [Curatela]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Il volume raccoglie i risultati di un progetto di ricerca sui cambiamenti nella configurazione spaziale delle specializzazioni meccaniche in Italia. Usando i dati censuari dell’occupazione meccanica nei sistemi locali del lavoro, la dinamica 1981-2001 delle trasformazioni territoriali è studiata attraverso un’analisi cluster e l’analisi shift-share. Risultano significativi vantaggi di agglomerazione spaziale che derivano da una crescente integrazione tra le specializzazioni meccaniche e tra queste e le attività di trasformazione manifatturiera del nord. L’analisi evidenzia anche nuovi sistemi locali a specializzazione meccanica nel mezzogiorno. Il volume presenta inoltre una descrizione dell’orientamento geografico delle esportazioni meccaniche delle principali province. Chiude il volume una comparazione di sistemi di piccola e media impresa meccanica (nelle province di Bologna, Modena, Reggio Emilia e Brescia) che hanno contraddistinto il modello di sviluppo dell’economia italiana della seconda metà del Novecento.

2008 - L’occupazione metalmeccanica nei sistemi di piccola e media impresa. Shift-share 1981-2001 [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita; E., Pirani
abstract

Gli elevati vantaggi di agglomerazione spaziale di molti comparti dell’industria meccanica si sono ridotti nel periodo 1981-2001.Dagli studi empirici emerge che l’andamento dell’occupazione meccanica è segnato da cambiamenti nella composizione settoriale nei vari territori e nei due decenni.La presenza di una struttura produttiva orientata verso settori più dinamici dell’economia costituisce un fattore di crescita regionale che può essere utile separare dal punto di vista analitico da rimanenti fattori locali di sviluppo, quali ad esempio i vantaggi localizzativi e di competitività, economie esterne ecc.La tecnica più largamente adottata per distinguere l’influenza esercitata su una variabile economica dalla struttura settoriale rispetto a quella di altri fattori è la cosiddetta analisi delle componenti strutturali e regionali, o analisi shift-share, introdotta negli anni Sessanta dal lavoro pionieristico di Dunn (1960). Impiegata nella comparazione della dinamica relativa di paesi (Ray, 1990; Esteban-Marquillas, 2000), questa tecnica ha riscosso in Italia un discreto successo grazie ai lavori di Biffignandi (1993) e di Guarini e Tassinari (1996).Una vasta base di dati per tale analisi è costituita dai dati censuari sull’occupazione; e la pubblicazione del censimento del 2001 è stata l’occasione per una nuova ondata di studi che applicano la tecnica shift-share e offrono spunti di riflessione per le politiche di sviluppo locale2.In questo capitolo concentreremo l’attenzione sulla dinamica spaziale del-l’occupazione meccanica nel periodo 1981-2001 con riferimento ai 32 sistemi locali del lavoro a specializzazione meccanica di piccola e media impresa identificati dall’ISTAT sui dati del censimento del 1991 (ISTAT, 1997), alle 103 province, ai 9 cluster di SLL descritti nel CAP. 1.La dinamica produttiva contribuisce a modificare i confini spaziali dei SLL, ma come abbiamo già osservato nel CAP. 1 non disponiamo di strumenti di analisi che ci consentano di evidenziare entrambe le trasformazioni. Nell’analisi shift-share che fa riferimento ai SLL abbiamo quindi scelto di adottare una configurazione spaziale intermedia, quella del 1991, che costituisce il risultato delle trasformazioni intervenute nel decennio 1981-91 e la base territoriale delle trasformazioni nel decennio successivo.I dati utilizzati, per provincia e per SLL, sono il numero di addetti delle unità locali metalmeccaniche rilevato nei censimenti dell’industria e dei servizi nel 1981, 1991 e 2001. Per la comparazione al massimo livello di disaggregazione settoriale abbiamo adottato la classificazione delle attività economiche Ateco 1981 a quattro cifre3.L’esposizione si muove su due piani strettamente connessi, quello dell’analisi dell’andamento dell’occupazione nei sistemi locali di produzione meccanica, di cui questo lavoro costituisce un tassello, e quello della didattica, con l’obiettivo di offrire agli studenti strumenti e applicazioni dell’analisi spaziale.Presenteremo i principali strumenti di analisi spaziale della struttura produttiva: il coefficiente di localizzazione, l’indice di specializzazione e la tecnica shift-share.In generale, coefficienti di localizzazione e indici di specializzazione non sembrano essere strumenti adeguati per rispondere alle domande della nostra ricerca.In questo capitolo concentreremo la nostra analisi sui risultati della tecnica shift-share.Occorre notare che l’ambito territoriale rilevante per descrivere le variazioni dell’occupazione potrebbe essere diverso per i vari comparti in cui disaggreghiamo la variazione complessiva dell’occupazione metalmeccanica e, quindi, potrebbe non essere efficace una descrizione che si riferisca alle singole unità territoriali, ma occorrerebbe considerare unità territoriali connesse e non necessariamente contigue.Metteremo a confronto dapprima i risultati relativi ai 32 SLL di piccola e media impr

2008 - Nota dei curatori [Prefazione o Postfazione]
A., Natali; Russo, Margherita; Solinas, Giovanni
abstract

2008 - Officina Emilia - Laboratorio di storia delle competenze e dell'innovazione nella meccanica [Esposizione]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Officina Emilia è un'iniziativa culturale dell’Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia. L'idea di Officina Emilia nasce alla fine degli anni Novanta nel dibattito di ricerca sui temi dell'innovazione e della rigenerazione delle reti di competenze. Nel 2000 la discussione si allarga nella comunità scientifica fino a coinvolgere le altre istituzioni locali impegnate sul tema dell’istruzione e della formazione, la Camera di Commercio, le imprese e le loro associazioni. Obiettivo di tale confronto è realizzare pratiche rivolte al sistema dell’istruzione (dalla scuola materna all’università) e della formazione (dalla formazione iniziale alla formazione continua, alla formazione life long learning e alla formazione degli immigrati). L’idea originale di Officina Emilia è che il confronto avvenga mettendo a disposizione non solo idee, ma anche un luogo fisico dove applicarle: un’officina evocativa delle lavorazioni meccaniche che costituisca un incrocio di esperienze di alto livello e bottega per apprendere come apprendere. Il museolaboratorio, come lo abbiamo chiamato, non è solo un museo con pezzi da osservare, toccare e studiare, ma un laboratorio in cui potersi interrogare sul funzionamento delle tecnologie meccaniche, sulle forme organizzative della produzione, sulle relazioni sociali che sostengono i processi di produzione e di innovazione. Collaborando con scuole, imprese, università, agenzie e centri di ricerca , Officina Emilia promuove una conoscenza attiva del contesto locale attraverso le esperienze didattiche e di orientamento rivolte agli studenti e alle loro famiglie, gli stage multidisciplinari per gli studenti universitari, l’aggiornamento dei docenti in servizio e la formazione per quelli che diventeranno docenti.

2008 - Reti di cooperazione e innovazione Analisi e valutazione di una politica regionale europea a sostegno dell’innovazione [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Rossi, F.
abstract

2008 - Sebastiano Brusco e la scuola Italiana di sviluppo locale [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Natali, A.
abstract

2007 - Politiche per l’innovazione: dalla valutazione alla progettazione [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Rossi, F.
abstract

2007 - Presentazione/Introduction” in Exfo. La fabbrica con cortile. Le ex Fonderie Riunite di Modena. Storia e architettura / Exfo. The factory with a courtyard. History and architecture of Modena’s former Fonderie Riunite [Prefazione o Postfazione]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

2006 - Dinamica spaziale dell’occupazione nei macrosettori e nei cluster dell’industria meccanica in Italia, 1951-2001 [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pirani, E.
abstract

2006 - Le specializzazioni meccaniche in Italia: 1981-2001 [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pirani, E.
abstract

2006 - L'industria meccanica in Italia: una analisi cluster delle differenze territoriali [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pirani, E.; Paterlini, S.
abstract

2006 - Processi di innovazione nei distretti e globalizzazione. Il caso di Sassuolo [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

La crescita dei distretti industriali italiani ha tracciato un nuovo modello di sviluppo considerato con interesse da studiosi e policy maker per la pecu-liare miscela di apertura al mercato mondiale e radicamento locale . La tenu-ta di quel modello deve oggi confrontarsi con l’entrata in scena dei produtto-ri cinesi, che sono in grado di competere non solo sul piano della tecnologia e dei costi, ma in qualche misura anche su quello delle strategie di marketing e di vendita: questa sfida è sia diretta, sugli stessi prodotti, che indiretta, at-traverso le interrelazioni tra i vari mercati delle materie prime, dei compo-nenti, dei macchinari e dei beni di consumo finale.Soltanto un decennio fa i mutamenti politici ed economici della Cina ve-nivano accolti con entusiasmo per le nuove opportunità che avrebbero potuto aprirsi alle imprese europee, sia attraverso l’apertura di nuovi immensi mer-cati sia per i vantaggi che sarebbero potuti derivare dall’acquisto di compo-nenti a basso costo. Da qualche anno, l’ampia presenza di prodotti cinesi concorrenti di molti beni di consumo e di beni capitali inizia a suscitare dub-bi sulla capacità delle imprese manifatturiere italiane di fare fronte a una concorrenza senza precedenti, dal punto di vista qualitativo e quantitativo. Per quel che riguarda i distretti industriali italiani, quali elementi potran-no rivelarsi fattori di vantaggio competitivo? In che misura il loro radicamento territoriale, sia in senso geografico sia in senso sociale, continua a rappresentare un elemento rilevante per la loro capacità di sviluppo? A queste domande si risponde, in genere, dicendo che la Cina offre lavoro a basso costo, ma non possiede lo “stile italiano”, che caratterizzerebbe gran parte dei prodotti dei distretti industriali del nostro paese. In questo lavoro si discute il perché le risposte che fanno leva sulla forza competitiva dello stile italiano siano insoddisfacenti, non soltanto perché sembrano considerare la creatività italiana come una sorta di dote naturale inestinguibile, ma soprattutto perché prendono in considerazione una sola dimensione del distretto e non colgono i punti di debolezza su cui occorre invece intervenire. In questo lavoro, la discussione muove dall’analisi del modo in cui la sfida cinese sta condizionando il distretto ceramico di Sassuolo, uno dei più dinamici distretti industriali italiani. Per fornire una spiegazione più esauriente e adeguata il distretto industriale viene considerato co-me un sistema complesso, caratterizzato da una struttura eterarchica , in cui diversi attori interagiscono attraverso molteplici livelli, con differenti tempo-ralità e obiettivi (Russo 2000, Lane, 2002). Saranno quindi discussi i nume-rosi cambiamenti indotti dai nuovi attori che entrano in scena, il nuovo ruolo giocato dagli attori già presenti nel distretto e quelli con cui interagiscono, i nuovi tipi di rapporti che vengono attivati. Ne emergono alcuni scenari pos-sibili, non una strategia unica e nemmeno una tassonomia di strategie di di-stretto.

2005 - Analisi cluster gerarchica delle imprese metalmeccaniche della Provincia di Modena [Working paper]
Paterlini, S.; Pirani, E.; Russo, M.
abstract

2005 - Ethnographic research and network analysis in monitoring regional programmes [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Rossi, F.
abstract

2005 - Le esportazioni metalmeccaniche dell'Italia. Shift-share e specializzazione sui dati provinciali (1991-2001) [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pirani, E.
abstract

2005 - L’occupazione metalmeccanica nei sistemi di piccola e media impresa. Shift-share e specializzazioni 1981-2001 [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pirani, E.
abstract

2005 - Stimolare l’innovazione con strumenti innovativi: reti di partenariato e sviluppo locale nel PRAI-ITT 2002-03 [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; F., Rossi
abstract

Nella dotazione globale dei Fondi Strutturali, la Commissione Europea ha previsto che una pic-cola quota (fino allo 0,65% nell’attuale periodo di programmazione) sia destinata ad azioni innovative che consentano di sperimentare nuove modalità per l’intervento strutturale comunitario: è in questo contesto che vanno considerati i Programmi Regionali di Azioni Innovative. Il paper esamina il caso del PRAI realizzato dalla regione Toscana nel periodo 2001-2004: uno strumento innovativo che la regione Toscana ha deciso di adottare per stimolare i processi di innova-zione tecnologica nell’economia regionale mediante la creazione di reti di cooperazione, di una plura-lità di attori presenti nella regione, finalizzate all’integrazione di competenze e alla sperimentazione di metodologie di diffusione dell’innovazione.In questo paper proponiamo una duplice chiave di lettura: del carattere innovativo del particola-re strumento di policy e delle questioni metodologiche connesse con l’analisi di reti di attori che parte-cipano ai processi di innovazione.La prima chiave di lettura ci introdurrà all’esame delle principali azioni intraprese dalla regione nella definizione e nella gestione del programma; la seconda chiave di lettura consentirà di mettere a fuoco le reti di relazioni che hanno reso possibile la realizzazione dei progetti e le reti di relazioni che attraversano i progetti.L’analisi metterà in luce i principali aspetti metodologici che potrebbero migliorare la costru-zione e la gestione di un Programma Regionale di Azioni Innovative con riferimento (1) all’analisi del ruolo dei diversi attori nel processo di innovazione e nella creazione di reti di cooperazione; (2) alla struttura emergente del Programma (evidenziata dall’analisi delle reti di relazioni tra i partecipanti). La sezione 1 introduce i temi della ricerca, evidenziando quali erano dal punto di vista dei po-licy maker gli obiettivi del Programma, e presenta gli aspetti teorici (rilevanti nell’analisi delle rela-zioni generative che sostengono i processi di innovazione) e gli strumenti di analisi (ricerca etnografi-ca e analisi delle reti di relazioni sociali) adottati nella ricerca. Nella sezione 2 sarà presentato il qua-dro d’insieme del Programma e dei progetti, con particolare riferimento alle caratteristiche dei diversi tipi di attori che hanno partecipato al programma. Le sezioni 3 e 4 si focalizzano sulle reti di relazioni tra gli attori e sulla struttura emergente del Programma. La sezione 5 propone alcune riflessioni di sin-tesi su risultati e obiettivi dell’analisi con particolare riferimento alle potenzialità e limiti di questo nuovo strumento di politica regionale dell’innovazione.

2005 - Stimolare l'innovazione con strumenti innovativi: reti di partenariato e sviluppo locale nei programmi comunitari [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Rossi, F.
abstract

2004 - Il distretto industriale della ceramica di fronte alla sfida cinese. Processi di innovazione e relazioni tra i diversi tipi di imprese dentro e fuori il distretto [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

2004 - Industriamoci. Capacità di progetto e sviluppo locale [Curatela]
A., Natali; Russo, Margherita
abstract

Raccolta degli scritti di S. Brusco pubblicati sul supplemento Affari e Finanza de la Repubblica tra il 1995 e il 2000

2004 - Industriamoci. Capacità di progetto e sviluppo locale [Edizione critica]
Russo, Margherita; A., Natali
abstract

Per contribuire alla conoscenza dell’opera di Sebastiano Brusco, la Biblioteca di Economia a lui intitolata ha deciso di raccogliere in volume gli articoli pubblicati sul supplemento Affari & Finanza de la Repubblica tra il 1995 e il 2000. Gli scritti rispecchiano la varietà di temi di politica industriale a cui Sebastiano Brusco ha dato un contributo scientifico fecondo e originale. La raccolta è stata curata da Anna Natali, Margherita Russo e Giovanni Solinas che ringraziano la Repubblica per averne autorizzato la divulgazione sulle pagine del sito web della facoltà di Economia di Modena alla URL www.economia.unimore.it/brusco/industriamoci_saggi1995-2000.html

2004 - Introduzione [Industriamoci. Capacità di progetto e sviluppo locale] [Prefazione o Postfazione]
A., Natali; Russo, Margherita
abstract

N/A

2004 - Processi di innovazione nei distretti e globalizzazione. Il caso di Sassuolo [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

L’arrivo sulla scena mondiale dei produttori cinesi sembra mettere in discussione la capacità dei distretti industriali italiani di far fronte a cambiamenti qualitativi e quantitativi che non hanno precedenti. Quali elementi potranno costituire, in futuro, i fattori di vantaggio competi-tivo dei distretti industriali italiani e in che misura il loro radicamento territoriale rimarrà un elemento rilevante per il loro sviluppo? In questo saggio si cercherà di rispondere a queste domande evidenziando in che modo la sfida cinese stia condizionando uno dei più dinamici distretti industriali italiani: quello delle piastrelle di ceramica di Sassuolo. Questo studio di caso intende attirare l’attenzione su temi che dovrebbero essere considerati nel più ampio dibattito sulle prospettive di sviluppo dei distretti industriali.

2003 - Competition and cooperation in a metal engineering production system [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pirani, E.
abstract

2003 - Struttura e cambiamento nelle relazioni tra le imprese metalmeccaniche della provincia di Modena.V. Tecnologie dell’informazione, dimensione dell'impresa e natura sistemica dei fenomeni organizzativi [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pirani, E.
abstract

2002 - Sebastiano Brusco: la ricerca sul campo si intreccia con la teoria [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Testimonianza sull'attività di Sebastiano Brusco nella formazione di ricerca applicata degli studenti di Economia a Modena.

2001 - Memoria e identità: un binomio creativo. Proposta per il recupero di parte dell’edificio della più antica fabbrica metalmeccanica di Modena: Officine Rizzi [Working paper]
Russo, Margherita; Ruggeri, R.
abstract

Queste note presentano le idee scaturite dal gruppo di lavoro costituito per formulare una proposta di recupero di parte dell’edificio delle ex-officine Rizzi a Modena . E' stato demolito gran parte dell’edificio: grosso modo quelle parti che erano state costruite nel corso degli ampliamenti effettuati a partire dagli anni Quaranta. Resta ancora una parte dell’edificio nord che certamente era già presente nel 1928 e che, da una prima valutazione degli esperti, sembra risalire alla fine dell’Ottocento: è a questa porzione che si riferisce la proposta di recupero. Il carattere di queste note è volutamente schematico. Dopo un prologo che introduce il tema dell’identità urbana, sono presentati alcuni dei materiali raccolti nel corso dell'indagine condotta dal gruppo di ricerca (in parte inclusi nelle cinque Appendici) e la proposta di recupero di parte dell’edificio per aprire una finestra sulla storia di Modena: una finestra in un luogo centrale della trasformazione urbanistica della città e in un edificio che evoca la storia delle origini della prima industrializzazione. Vi è poi una nota, tratta da uno scritto di Attilio Trebbi, che descrive il suo percorso – indietro nel tempo, nel 1928 – in bicicletta, per raggiungere le officine Rizzi: una “narrazione semplice” che ci fa percorrere nello spazio e nel tempo la fase di nascita dell’industria metalmeccanica a Modena. Le Appendici completano la presentazione con la riproduzione della cartografia e delle foto, e con i materiali di documentazione del presente lavoro.

2001 - Struttura e cambiamento nelle relazioni tra le imprese metalmeccaniche nella provincia di Modena III. Aspetti metodologici dell’indagine empirica: fase di rilevazione, controlli e statistiche preliminari [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pirani, E.
abstract

2001 - Struttura e dinamica dei cambiamenti nelle relazioni tra le imprese metalmeccaniche in provincia di Modena. IV Primi risultati dell'indagine empirica [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Pirani, E.
abstract

2000 - Competenze, innovazione e sviluppo locale [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Mengoli, P.
abstract

2000 - Competenze, innovazioni e sviluppo locale [Working paper]
Russo, Margherita; Mengoli, P.
abstract

Ciò che accomuna le storie di numerose imprese meccaniche di questa regione (e alle imprese dello Smaland e di molte altre regioni dell’Europa) è la stessa capacità di innovare facendo ricorso alle capacità delle persone che lavorano nell’impresa, facendo ricorso al tessuto di relazioni e di competenze che quelle persone hanno, aumentando il livello di istruzione della popolazione e in generale alimentando in tutti i modi il radicamento – nel territorio in cui vivono – delle persone che lavorano nelle imprese. E questa serie di elementi contribuisce a caratterizzare uno dei vantaggi competitivi che – nella competizione globale – alcuni territori hanno rispetto ad altri, vantaggi che bisogna sapientemente mantenere attivi, con continui interventi di “manutenzione” che ne garantiscano nel tempo l’efficacia. L’intreccio tra concorrenza globale e “processo di manutenzione” delle competenze sedimentate in una comunità sarà una delle chiavi di lettura della riflessione proposta in questo saggio. Dopo aver presentato il quadro di sfondo entro cui decifrare il nesso tra memoria storica delle competenze meccaniche e concorrenza globale, il saggio propone la creazione di un laboratorio di storia delle reti di competenze nell'industria meccanica.

2000 - Complementary Innovations and Generative Relationships: An Ethnographic Study [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

The paper presents an in-depth investigation on a promising innovation, «kervit», in the historical context of the booming ceramic industrial district of Sassuolo-Scandiano (Emilia-Romagna region in Italy). The kervit was introduced and patented by a brilliant inventor operating within, and then leading, one of the first ceramic companies of the booming district. The innovation had strong technological advantages and good market potentialities, but in the middle of the 1960s, right in the stage of sharp growth of the ceramic district, it was unable to exploit its market success, nor was the inventor’s com-pany able to survive.The joint use of the ethnographic method and the notion of «generative relation-ships», put forward by Lane and Maxfield (1997), marks an original contribution in the analysis both of the emergence of learning processes within a local productive system and of the role of dynamic complementarities in fostering the innovation dynamics.

2000 - INNOVATION DYNAMICS AND INDUSTRIAL DYNAMICS IN A LOCAL PRODUCTION SYSTEM [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

2000 - Innovation dynamics and industrial dynamics in a local production system. Changes in the agents/artifacts space in tile decoration: from silk screen to laser engraved silicon cylinder [Working paper]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

The objective of this study is to outline a general method for describing empirically the structure of the agent/artifact space, for analysing the dynamics whereby structural and cognitive changes come about, and for evaluating the generativeness of the relationships in the agent/artifact space. The paper highlights how the concrete case to be studied is defined in order to collect significant elements (qualitative and quantitative information) useful for a deeper understanding of innovation theory. In particular, the paper presents how we have chosen the particular agents and artifacts space whose structure is investigated empirically and how we manage an analysis of changes within that structure when we find that changes occur at a multiplicity of levels. The analysis moves from micro-micro level to micro-, meso- and macro-level, moreover it takes account of changes in agents’ identities?

2000 - L'attività brevettuale nel distretto ceramico, 1971.1998 [Working paper]
Masci, G.; Russo, M.
abstract

2000 - Officina Emilia - Laboratorio di storia delle comoetenze e dell'innovaziuone nella meccanica [Esposizione]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Officina Emilia è un'iniziativa culturale dell’Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia.L'idea di Officina Emilia nasce alla fine degli anni Novanta nel dibattito di ricerca sui temi dell'innovazione e della rigenerazione delle reti di competenze. Nel 2000 la discussione si allarga nella comunità scientifica fino a coinvolgere le altre istituzioni locali impegnate sul tema dell’istruzione e della formazione, la Camera di Commercio, le imprese e le loro associazioni.Obiettivo di tale confronto è realizzare pratiche rivolte al sistema dell’istruzione (dalla scuola materna all’università) e della formazione (dalla formazione iniziale alla formazione continua, alla formazione life long learning e alla formazione degli immigrati).L’idea originale di Officina Emilia è che il confronto avvenga mettendo a disposizione non solo idee, ma anche un luogo fisico dove applicarle: un’officina evocativa delle lavorazioni meccaniche che costituisca un incrocio di esperienze di alto livello e bottega per apprendere come apprendere. Il museolaboratorio, come lo abbiamo chiamato, non è solo un museo con pezzi da osservare, toccare e studiare, ma un laboratorio in cui potersi interrogare sul funzionamento delle tecnologie meccaniche, sulle forme organizzative della produzione, sulle relazioni sociali che sostengono i processi di produzione e di innovazione.Collaborando con scuole, imprese, università, agenzie e centri di ricerca , Officina Emilia promuove una conoscenza attiva del contesto locale attraverso le esperienze didattiche e di orientamento rivolte agli studenti e alle loro famiglie, gli stage multidisciplinari per gli studenti universitari, l’aggiornamento dei docenti in servizio e la formazione per quelli che diventeranno docenti.

2000 - Struttura e cambiamento nelle relazioni tra le imprese meccaniche. [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Giardino, R.
abstract

2000 - The Challenges for the Next Decade: Notes for a debate of the development of the Emilia-Romagna Region [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita; G., Allari; S., Bertini; P., Bonaretti; E., DE LEO; G., Fiorani; G., Rinaldini
abstract

With regard to the exogenous changes and the endogenous impasses that Emilia-Romagna is now facing, this paper presents what appear to be the main issues in the present transformation era of one of the richest regions in Europe. In particular, we outline the dynamics of changes at regional level with regard to both the changes in the interrelationships among the major actors, and the emergence of new phenomena, such as the demographic trends. The main regional policy measures to foster local development are sketched by focusing on industrial policies, transport infrastructure plans and policy measures on learning processes, as they emerge in the changes undertaken at regional level in technical and vocational education.

2000 - The Challenges for the Next Decade: Notes for a Debate on the Development of the Emilia-Romagna Region [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

1999 - Complementary lnnovations and Generative Relationships in a Small Business Production System: the Case of Kervit [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

1999 - Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Italy: Structure and Changes at National and Regional Level [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Mengoni, P.
abstract

1997 - Le spese ambientali dei Comuni in provincia di Modena 1993-1995 [Working paper]
Russo, M.; Cavedoni, F.; Pianesani, R.
abstract

1997 - L’industria manifatturiera in provincia di Modena: le esportazioni [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

a cura dell'Associazione Del Monte

1997 - Relazioni tra imprese e sviluppo locale [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Questo articolo vuole offrire un primo esame delle condizioni in cui il distretto industriale può diventare un efficace strumento di analisi e di politica dello sviluppo.

1996 - Cambiamento tecnico e relazioni tra imprese [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

La generazione e la diffusione di nuove tecniche e gli effetti del cambiamento tecnico sulla struttura di una industria e sulla nascita e lo sviluppo di un sistema produttivo locale sono i temi centrali affrontati in questo volume. Il processo di cambiamento tecnico è studiato con riferimento alla produzione di piastrelle dal secondo dopoguerra. In tale esame si considera il cambiamento tecnico come un processo – caratterizzato da incertezza e da fenomeni di path dependence – interpretato tenendo conto delle interrelazioni tra gli agenti. I riferimenti in tale analisi sono i contributi di Usher e Rosenberg, e i più recenti contributi di Arthur, David e Lane.Il volume si articola in due parti. A partire dai problemi emersi nello studio di caso, la prima parte del libro illustra i riferimenti teorici adottati nella analisi del cambiamento tecnico (capitolo 2) e delle economie di scala (capitolo 3). Il capitolo 3 illustra anche il modello ingegneristico adottato nella rilevazione ed elaborazione dei dati di costo. La seconda parte presenta lo studio di caso. Il capitolo 4 focalizza l’analisi storica dello sviluppo tecnico su alcuni aspetti: il trasferimento di tecnologie da altri settori, l’attività di ricerca, le convergenze tecnologiche e gli squilibri tecnologici, le complementarità tecniche e l’invenzione collettiva. Il capitolo 5 presenta i risultati dell’indagine empirica sulle economie di scala e sottolinea come le interrelazioni tra le imprese ceramiche siano state influenzate anche dal cambiamento nelle tecniche di produzione.L'ultimo capitolo conclude lo studio mettendo a fuoco i principali risultati della ricerca, con particolare riferimento alle scelte di innovazione tecnologica delle imprese, alle interrelazioni tra le imprese ceramiche e le imprese che producono macchine per la ceramica, e ai possibili interventi volti a sollecitare o sostenere l'innovazione tecnologica.

1996 - Local sustainability and competitiveness: the case of the ceramic tile industry [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

1996 - “Units of investigation for local economic development policies” [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

The idea that industry is not an adequate research unit in the analysis of development pol-icy is well known. It was present in the tradition of regional economists working on the concept of industrial complex, in Perroux’ theory of the pole of development, in Damhen’s definition of development blocks, and in the view of development put forward by Hirschman. Nevertheless, even if they have typified the development policies of many countries in the past decades, the notions of industrial complex and pole of development now seem less effective than the notion of industrial district. This notion, which emerged during the Eighties in the interpretation of the development of certain Italian regions, is gaining wide acceptance in the Anglo-American literature on development policies and in the literature investigating the “hybrid forms of organization” that are neither market, nor hierarchically coordinated. Comparing the notions of industrial complex and pole of development, this article intends to offer a preliminary outline of the conditions in which the notion of industrial district can become an effective tool for analysis and formulation of development policy.

1995 - INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, PÔLE DE DÉVELOPPEMENT, DISTRETTO INDUSTRIALE. ALCUNE QUESTIONI SULLE UNITÀ DI INDAGINE NELL'ANALISI DELLO SVILUPPO [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

1995 - Unit of investigation for local economic development policies [Working paper]
Russo, M
abstract

1994 - Distretto industriale e cambiamento economico locale [Curatela]
Russo, Margherita; M., Bellandi
abstract

1992 - Il ruolo dei servizi di trasporto [Capitolo/Saggio]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

I saggi raccolti in questo volume sono dedicati ai temi delle recenti trasformazioni dei sistemi di piccole imprese, provocate dai radicali cambiamenti delle condizioni della concorrenza interno e internazionale.I cambiamenti hanno riguardato i contenuti della domando di mercato, l'organizzazione della produzione e le forme della progettazione e della distribuzione. Nell'industria manifatturiero, la domando ho acquisito qualità e complessità rispetto al passato. I sistemi periferici di piccole e medie imprese, tipici dell'economia italiana, nel tentativo di sfuggire alla legge del ciclo di vita del prodotto si sono dovuti evolvere verso forme organizzativi pi¨ gerarchizzate. In alcuni casi particolari, imprese-leader sono emerse e hanno sviluppato funzioni e capacità nuove. Nel corso di questo processo, sono emersi inevitabilmente i limiti di adattabilità di alcuni sistemi locali o di alcune loro parti. Il volume comprende le sintesi dei lavori che studiosi e osservatori di diverso estrazione stanno compiendo su questo ampio tema. Vengono esaminate e confrontate esperienze talora dissimili, ma accomunate dalla problematico di fondo.

1991 - The effects of technical change on skill requirements [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

This essay offers an empirical analysis of the effects of technical change on skill. Firstly, with the increasing diffusion of more and more mechanization and, in this decade, with the advent of microelectronics, this theme has been widely debated both in theory and in empirical analyses. These latter are usually based on a measurement of skill in terms of the parameters adopted in the job evaluation. My critique to that approach is both on the job evaluation criteria adopted, and on the unclear distinction between quantitative and qualitative effects of technical change on labour requirements. The following analysis will show the importance of that distinction in interpreting data. The case study is the production of ceramic tiles in Italy. The analysis is articulated in three parts. The first discusses an indicator of technical level of ceramic tile production. This indicator refers to the ‘scale of mechanization’ proposed by Bright in 1958. The oldest and the most up-to-date techniques in use in the early 1980's are compared with regard both to the level of mechanization and to the number of workers required at each task at factory level. This analysis is the premiss for the distinction between quantitative and qualitative effects of technical change. This—together with the discussion of a measurement of skill based on job content—is examined in the second part. The conclusion of the case study and a critical analysis of the main contributions on this topic are in the third part.

1990 - Cambiamento tecnico e distretto industriale: una verifica empirica [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

1990 - Distretto industriale e servizi di trasporto: il caso della ceramica [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

Il libro ha origine dall'esigenza di studiare i trasporti del distretto ceramico, per programmare un intervento volto a migliorare la competitività delle imprese, e a razionalizzare il traffico sul territorio. Il settore dei trasporti interagisce fortemente con l'apparato produttivo propriamente detto, e con le strutture commerciali: l'attenzione, quindi, si sposta dai trasporti al modo in cui questi tre 'pezzi' della filiera ceramica si sono venuti strutturando nei tempo. L'autrice rilegge alcuni dei suoi studi sul sistema produttivo, li integra con un'analisi delle strutture commerciali, e costruisce un modello originale ed accurato del settore dei trasporti: ponendo sempre al centro dell'interesse le relazioni e i rapporti tra le tre attività della filiera che appaiono connesse da rapporti di causalità complessi sino ad essere inestricabili, spesso segnati da feedback molto forti, che annullano ogni pretesa di priorità o di predominio. Questa conclusione è un'indicazione di metodo assai rilevante non solo per gli studiosi dei distretti, ma per tutti gli economisti industriali. Lo studio mostra che alcuni servizi, come quelli del groupage e del trasporto, abbisognano. per essere condotti in maniera efficiente. di una scala più grande di quella che una singola impresa può raggiungere. Questi servizi crescono nel distretto e da esso non possono essere distanti: questa è la ragione del fatto assai singolare che le imprese che producono piastrelle a ]mola. anche se devono rendere in Puglia, trovano utile portare il loro prodotto a Sassuolo. Queste funzioni, di scala molto ampia, costituiscono probabilmente il principale vantaggio comparato offerto dal distretto, e rappresentano un fattore di localizzazione decisivo. li libro offre indicazioni di metodo più generali. anche a chi voglia muoversi in un'ottica di settore o di comparso. Per tutti, infatti, il passaggio dallo studio del comparto produttivo centrale ad una impostazione più complessa, che prevede anche l'analisi dei committenti. dei fornitori. dei rapporti con i mercati finali, è ormai, condizione necessaria alla comprensione dei fatti. Assai stimolanti, nel volume, sono le osservazioni sullo scarso rilievo dei costi di trasporto (perfino per una merce assai pesante come le piastrelle) rispetto ai vantaggi di localizzazione offerti dal distretto; le osservazioni sulle leggi di evoluzione dei distretti industriali; la conferma del ruolo giocato dalle grandi imprese nella crescita e nello sviluppo dei distretti, le ipotesi circa il modo in cui innovazioni nel processo produttivo potranno sollecitare cambiamenti forti nelle attività commerciali e nei trasporti.

1988 - Distretto industriale e servizi. Uno studio dei trasporti nella produzione e nella vendita delle piastrelle [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

1988 - The effect of technical change on skill requirements: an empirical analysis. [Working paper]
Russo, M.
abstract

1985 - Technical Change and the Industrial District [Articolo su rivista]
Russo, Margherita
abstract

This paper considers two aspects of technical change in the ceramic tile industry in Italy: firstly, the process of invention, adoption and diffusion of new techniques in the industry; secondly, the impact of forces of a technical nature in shaping the industrial structure. The process of technical change is examined in the light of the interrelationships between firms and their proximity. These are crucial elements characterizing an “industrial district”, whose boundaries go beyond the industry defined on a product basis. The industrial district is adopted as unit of analysis of the process of technical change. Moreover, economic, social and institutional features are considered. In this context the historical developments of new techniques are discussed in terms of the constraints to the established position of the firm at a particular time. Among the determinants of the ceramic tile industrial structure, economies of scale have had a minor role. The pattern of vertical disintegration we observe in the industry is - instead - closely related to the technical developments in the industry through the effects of technical change on the product and process specialization of the production units operating in the industrial district.