Stimulating Firms Networks Diffusion: The Italian Case

Cooperation among firms may be very important since it may allow those involved to realize benefits of different kinds: it stimulates economies of scale, continuous exchange of knowledge, competitive advantages, economic development and more market opportunities. A firm’s network is a relatively new form of cooperation by which the involved firms can work together even if they are located far from each other; firms are usually organized in networks with the aim of improving their economic performance, reducing transaction costs and opportunistic behaviour by free-rider agents. This cooperation is a success organizational form that may generate benefits also for the economy in terms of growth and development. The context in which firms networks develop is the globalized market: it becomes global especially thanks to information and communication technologies (ICTs) diffusion and the entrance in the era of the knowledge economy. The aim of this paper is to define the key determinants of firms’ networks formation for the Italian regions: many studies suggest that some factors such as research and development (R&D) investments, openness capability, social and human capital may facilitate the emergence of firm’s networks at local level. The analysis to identify firm’s networks determinants is performed for the Italian regions and the used methodology is the multidimensional scaling: it shows a spatial representation that best approximates the similarity/dissimilarity among the Italian regions with respect to the presence of the possible determinants for firm’s networks formation.