There are only 18 Italian technological districts
Tuesday January 25, 2011
The Italian technological districts work well, and despite the crisis they stand out from the industrial ones for the excellent results achieved. Intesa Sanpaolo's research office has discovered that these 18 jewels scattered throughout Italy (North and South without distinction) are the result of the commitment of individuals but also of the territory.
"A technology district is distinguished by the presence of high tech companies with highly qualified workforce connected to university poles and research centres", explained the researcher Serena Fumagalli to Corriere della Sera. It must be emphasized that everyone has already begun to transpose innovation into real products. The reference sectors are those pharmaceutical, biomedical, aeronautical and information technology.
The pharmaceutical centers are of medium size (100 employees) and are concentrated in the Milanese, Lazio (between Rome, Frosinone and Latina), Tuscany (between Florence, Siena and Pisa) and Neapolitan areas. "A total of about 70,000 employees who produced 1,100 patents between 1998 and 2007", underlines Corriere
The district biomedical plant of Mirandola in the province of Modena and specialized in the production of "disposable components, hemodialysis equipment, cardiac surgery, transfusion and anesthesia products".
The ICT files, on the other hand, are concentrated in "8 poles which ultimately represent 59% of the total number of Italian employees in the sector (about 200 thousand)". We are talking about very small businesses with about 7 employees, but even less, located in Milan, Rome, Turin, Genoa, Catania, Aquila, between Bologna and Modena and finally in the Veneto. "Milan alone employs almost 70,000 people and Rome 50,000. Turin follows with 25,000", continues the newspaper.
Milan is in the lead for the number of patents (2 thousand), but the figure is not precise since many of these are registered to universities or research centres.
"The last sector taken into consideration is the aeronautics with five districts. The total employees are 24,000 and Varese, Naples and Turin are competing for first place", concludes the Corriere. "The companies in this case are larger. In Varese there is the largest dimension which, however, benefits all around from a small and medium-sized supply chain".
(Source: Corriere della Sera)
