Open innovation practices: measuring, economic performance, and industrial policy issues. An analysis of the Italian manufacturing system

The economic crisis has shown the weakness of some Italian industries, calling for an effective policy response for promoting innovation of the national system. In this context, the ability to evaluate the presence of cooperative forms of innovation and of open innovation practices becomes extremely important in order to define efficient and effective industrial policy strategies. The purpose of this paper is to assess the different degree of openness of innovation processes in Italian manufacturing industries, in order to get useful information for industrial policy decisions. The analysis is conducted through the construction of two different composite indicators. The first, the Open Innovation Index (OII), provides a ranking of the Italian manufacturing industries on the basis of the different degree of openness of innovation processes of enterprises. The second, the Economic Performance Index (EPI), aims to classify manufacturing industries considering the sectoral performance in term of innovative capacity, productivity and ability to promote economic growth. Some policy implications are derived from the comparison between the two rankings.