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 specificities in the innovation process, and to propose a specific set of technological indicators which can be used for such a purpose. The evidence presented, based on the Italian case, shows that CIS data, and the set of proposed indicators, are able to quantify the contribution of the different regions to the National System of Innovation, to identify the different technological profiles of regions and to measure the technological performances of regional systems in a broad sense, that is taking into account the basic structural 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 framework for analysing the regional dimension of innovation activities are also provided.