Networking Day 2019 – Come l’innovazione guida la competitività

The most influential economic observers identified several factors that will produce uncertainty and a possible deceleration of the global economy in 2019: Brexit, the end of the BCE quantitative easing, the commercial tension between the USA and China, the European Parliament elections and the decline in oil prices.

The EU Commission estimated a 0.2 % growth of the Italian economy (+1.1% in Germany, +1.3% in the Eurozone) and the Report on the competitiveness of the manufacturing sectors issued in March 2019 by Istat – the Italian Institute for Statistics – showed that in Italy the work productivity increased only of the 0.4% between 2000 and 2016, compared to over 15% in France, United Kingdom and Spain and 18.3% in Germany.

In this context, the Global Competitiveness Index (2018), the annual ranking issued by the World Economic Forum, which orders countries according to their level of competitiveness, sets Italy in the 31^st place out of 140 countries (Germany is in the 3^rd place, France In the 17^th and Spain in the 26^th) and in the 17^th place at the European level. However, this index reveals a good Innovation capacity for Italy (22^nd place) that, according to the same report, could further improve by investing in the ICT adoption, enhancing innovation at the production level, developing new business models and strengthening cooperation among enterprises and research centres at the local and European level.

In this framework, new opportunities are being introduced for companies such as the development of platforms (tools and methodologies) favouring cooperation among enterprises, research centres, local entities and business organisations through the access to new services  as the exchange of resources, the establishment of cooperative relations, the micro-working and the development of knowledge and innovation in an open and cooperative environment, according to a Business to Platform model.

These developments are the objective of the SYNERGY project, a transnational cooperation project, financed under the INTERREG Central Europe Programme and in which the CRIT Networking DAY 2019 – How innovation leads competitiveness is inserted.

In a global scenario in which already established economic giants (US, Japan, South Korea, China) and new emerging economies (Brazil, India) are upgrading their innovation capacities, the EU needs more innovation to boost its global competitiveness. In this respect, the SYNERGY project aims at enhancing innovativeness in European regions by strengthening linkages and beyond borders cooperation with the purpose of creating synergies among actors – such as SMEs, public bodies, industry, business and research&education organisations – and increasing their innovation capabilities through transnational network and technology transfer.

The project intends to reach these goals through an innovative approach which, starting from existing expertise, will implement a new Synergic Crowd Innovation Platform and a series of new, open and accessible tools/procedures. These results will boost cooperation among regions and will support the implementation of join transregional activities that will ensure actors the access to know-how, innovative ideas and research results, thus contributing to the enhancement of the European innovation competitiveness.

The CRIT Networking DAY 2019 will focus on the following topics and will envisage debate and networking opportunities for participants.