Smart regions in Italy: a comparative study through self–organizing maps

Regional performance currently seems to depend not only on the city’s combination of hard infrastructure (physical capital), but also on the availability and quality of knowledge and social infrastructure (human and social capital), according to the recent concept of the “smart region”. The present paper aims to shed light on whether Italian regions can be called “smart”. It provides a focused and operational definition of this concept and presents consistent evidence on the geography of smart regions in Italy. The statistical and graphical analyses, based on a non-linear clustering with Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) neural networks, were carried out in order to analyse the factors determining the performance of smart regions between 2009-2013. This study found that only regions of northern Italy could be defined as “smart” according to the selected “smartness” performance indicators. This result prompts the formulation of a new strategic agenda for smart regions in Italy, in order to achieve sustainable national growth and a better regional landscape.