Italy’s innovation gap is structural. Ranking 14th in the EU.
Its R&D spending is far behind Europe’s innovation leaders: around 1.3–1.5% of GDP, versus 3.1% in Germany, 3.3% in Austria, 3.3% in Belgium, and above 3% in Sweden/Denmark.
The EU average is 2.24%.
Italy accounts for only 8% of European Patent Office filings, compared with 16% for France and 35% for Germany.
This is why Italy has had decades of weak productivity growth: too little R&D, too few scale-ups, too much firm fragmentation, weak venture capital, slow digital adoption and limited high-tech investment.
Italy is still a major industrial power. But without innovation, industry becomes stagnation.