Measuring the regional dimension of innovation. Lessons from the Italian Innovation Survey

The aim of this paper is to assess whether and to what extent data gathered by the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) are able to grasp regional specif icities in the innovation process, and to propose a specific set of technol ogical indicators which can be used for such a purpose. The evidence presen ted, based on the Italian case, shows that CIS data, and the set of propose d indicators, are able to quantify the contribution of the different region s to the National System of Innovation, to identify the different technolog ical profiles of regions and to measure the technological performances of r egional systems in a broad sense, that is taking into account the basic str uctural characteristics of regional industries, the innovative performances of firms and the density and quality of systemic interactions between the main institutional actors. Some suggestions on how to improve the CIS frame work for analysing the regional dimension of innovation activities are also provided. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.