The Impact of technology transfer on regional economic development: innovation poles as innovation ecosystems. Experience and case studies from Europe States of America

This study investigates the potential contribution of Technology Transfer to Regional economic development. Along with the design and implementation of a Smart specialization strategy (S3), the place-based policy approach is shown through a brand new concept for the Italian context, the Innovation Pole (IP), where innovation is the result of the integration of “cross-cutting” technology/knowledge- domain specific actors. The goal of this work is to contribute to the regional policy choices for managing active and integrated innovation as a lever for the competitive repositioning of the regional economy of Calabria, with the aim to improve innovation policies, which favor the enhancement of Innovation Poles, in light of the EU framework on research, development and innovation. To re-create a place-based dimension within the Calabria region, the integration among S3 and IP strategies has the goal to exploit advantages from proximity to promote economic growth and competitiveness. In recent years, Italian researchers began to focus on the concept of Innovation Pole as a “natural” evolution of technological districts (Ferrara and Mavilia, 2012). In fact, innovation Poles, intended as models of aggregation for local development, have gained increasing importance in the political strategies for promotion and development of local economies, generating interest for enterprises, Research institutes, Science parks and other actors active in the territory. Furthermore, the available literature and official sources on the matter, still illustrate how the interaction among Academic institutions, Research centers and enterprises turned out to be successful in many European countries, as well as in the U.S.A. The purpose of the analysis of existing experiences in the European and American context is the recognition of best practices and main critical issues, based on the implementation of Innovation Pole strategies. The study, based on the analysis of some of these experiences in Europe and U.S.A., applies methods of comparison to detect successful cases and established practices replicable and transferable, in a framework of initiatives for practices exchange and local development transfer models. The regional analyzes carried out include Italy (Lazio region, Piedmont region, Emilia Romagna); France (with reference to the system of the Poles of Competitiveness), Austria (the region of Styria, as the case of European best practice), and the Louisiana “Innovation Ecosystem” (as a case of American best practice). A qualitative comparison among case studies allowed to define a model able to show the logic and strategic objectives, including the peculiarities dependent on specific factor, e.g., socio-political context, geographical location, position in the process of development of the culture of innovation, degree of economic dependence on sources of structural programming, governance model and the architecture of the control model. The reason why we focused on the Louisiana “Innovation Ecosystem” as a successful example of economic development strategy, was due to the fact that Calabria region appears today as an “old version” of Louisiana (presumably as the region appeared 10-15 years ago) while presenting strong similarities (in terms of starting conditions and opportunities) with the same region. Following the identification of the relevant factors that characterized the European Innovation Pole and the Louisiana "Innovation Ecosystem”, through the analysis of the dynamics and trends in the regions of study, it was possible to trace “potential paths for development” in the short- medium term, with the aim of bringing out the common elements of a "logic of growth". To assess these similarities, a structural equation model was developed for Louisiana, to prove that the Innovation Ecosystem is, in fact, an alternative version of an Innovation Pole. The econometric model, that relates same inputs and outputs for technology transfer of an Innovation Pole, showed a positive correlation between predicted values and actual values of the endogenous variables, showing quite good fits. In other words, Innovation Pole and Innovation Ecosystem seem to share same objectives and scope. Furthermore, a depiction of the factors that made the Louisiana Innovation Ecosystem successful in the first place, as well as an understanding of the different steps the region is going through to overcome its underdevelopment, sorting investments, promoting projects and monitoring interventions, allowed us to identify, in turn, some useful policy guidelines that, with a suitable model of governance, might be successfully replicated in the Calabria region.