The alignment of public research supply and industry demand for effective technology transfer: the case of Italy

Italy lags behind other industrialized countries in public to private technology transfer. One of the causes of this may be the mismatch between new knowledge supplied by public research and industry demand. We test this hypothesis through a survey of leading public research scientists in four high-tech sectors. The findings show that the results of most research projects seem to be of immediate industrial interest, which contrasts with the low level of patents and licensing of Italian public research institutions. For one-third of the research results, there are no Italian companies that are able to exploit them. The same, however, is not true for the remaining results, which shows that the misalignment between public supply and industry demand alone cannot account for poor technology transfer. A closer coordination of research policy and industrial policy is required, as well as closer attention to initiatives which may support the transfer of public research results to Italian industry.