Innovation policies: the national and regional dimensions

The article discusses the article by Lucchese, Nascia and Pianta (this volume). It does so from the standpoint of innovation policy mixes. We highlight four main points. First most discussions on innovation policies underestimate the central role played by public investment banks (with their tools to support firm innovation). Second we have witnessed a massive move from sectoral policies to procedural policies and indirect, criteria based policy instruments (such as tax credits or support to investments in machinery) no longer focused on industries as such but on firm innovation capacity. Third higher education constitutes probably the most important framework condition supporting innovation and this raises important questions on the overall funding of universities and on their role in vocational training. Fourth I argue that the more procedural policies become, the greater the need for place-based policies, discussing thus the importance of regional innovation policies and the role of ‘clusters’, a missing dimension in the overview of Italian policies provided by Lucchese, Nascia and Pianta.