Emerging communities in multilayers networks: analysis of a regional policy programme

Poster presented at
“Networks, Complexity, and Economic Development”
MTA KRTK ‑ Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre for Economic and Regional Studies
November 30 – December 1, 2015, Budapest 
[workshop_schedule]

Title: Emerging communities in multilayers networks: analysis of a regional policy programme

Authors: Margherita Russo*, Annalisa Caloffi^, Riccardo Righi*, Simone Righi** and Federica Rossi§

* University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy)
** University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) and Recens (Budapest)
^University of Padua (Italy), Bikbeck University
§ Birkbeck University, London (United Kingdom)

Keywords: innovation policy, multilayer multiplex networks; regional innovation systems; innovation poles; intermediaries; communities

JEL codes: O25 Industrial Policy; O38 Technological Change: Government Policy; 30 Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change

JEL codes: O25 Industrial Policy; O38 Technological Change: Government Policy; 30 Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change

poster 

 

 

Abstract
With the growing importance of policies sponsoring innovation intermediaries (Howells, 2006; Lazaric et al, 2008; Kauffeld-Monz and Fritsch, 2013; Russo and Rossi, 2009; Caloffi et al, 2015), a need has emerged for appropriate instruments to analyze their activity. In general, current approaches do not adopt a network perspective to highlight the multidimensional system created through the activities undertaken by the intermediaries. In this paper we present an empirical analysis of a regional policy supporting the creation of specialized intermediaries in the Italian region of Tuscany. In the programming period 2007-2013 (effectively starting from 2010), the regional government of Tuscany funded twelve ‘innovation poles’. They are regional innovation intermediaries (organized to provide a range of services, including brokering and matchmaking) that bring together a number of universities and innovative service providers with potential end-users of these services. Their main goal is to promote linkages between regional actors: universities, public research organizations, KIBS, large businesses and SMEs.

The creation of innovation poles has mobilized a large number of agents that were directly involved with different roles in the creation of the regional system of technology transfer: 46 organizations managing the poles, technicians, consultants, more than 100 research laboratories and 8 incubators were pooled to supply innovative services to more than three thousand members, mainly SMEs, of the 12 poles. Through the different activities they perform, the various agents create connections between the poles; the poles, in turn, create links between agents, facilitating the exchange of information and creating opportunities for joint actions to boost innovation. We analyse the intermediaries infrastructures with a focus on the multidimensional linkages across those intermediaries infrastructures. This kind of “network of networks perspective of analysis” asks for identification of more relevant agents and interactions.

We highlight two main domains of interactions that support the entire system of the poles. The first domain is that in which we find the agents promoting the system of poles: this network involves both the organizations directly managing the poles, through the creation of temporary associations, and the organizations who have shareholdings in those managing organizations. The second domain relates to competence networks initiated by the system of the poles not only through the provision of services by the various operators, but also through the skills of employees and consultants, the collaboration agreements with parties outside the poles, and through the facilities of laboratories and incubators. By creating such multilayer networks we focus on interrelations between the poles based on the activities, undertaken jointly, in supporting the member companies.

For each of these domains we examine the characteristics of the networks and the centrality index of the agents involved. Moreover, by adopting the analysis of multilayer networks (recently developed by De Domenico et al., 2015), we identify and compare the emerging communities in aggregate networks and in the multilayer networks with regard to the networks promoting the poles and in the competence networks.