Supporting Campania Region (Italy) policy on technology transfer

Naples by Consciansky (creative commons)

The policy analyzed in the Campania pilot application aims at establishing competence centres for knowledge transfer in the Campania Region. The formation of networks between private and public bodies is assumed as the main way to stimulate innovation in SMEs and extend the dissemination of R&D results and their market deployment. The competence centres represent a networking model with the objective of bringing together in a single pool the research capacities existing in the region in a plurality of institutions such as research bodies, universities, laboratories, etc. that were previously unconnected. With the consolidation of the public research centres, the first phase of the deployment of this mechanism has already been completed. The second phase, regards opportunities to match the supply and demand for innovation generated by businesses and research centres. In this phase the centres have become legal entities and have been able to perform contractual research. However, the centres still rely on public funding and are not yet self-sustainable. The goal of the OCOPOMO policy model is to support Regional centres of competence to become self-sustainable, i.e. able to gathering revenues from the market or from competitive bids.