On the importance of regional innovation flows in the European Union: some methodological issues in the Italian case

Using an Italian questionnaire not specifically designed to study geographic phenomena, the potential and limitations of the régionalisation of innovation information is analysed. There were difficulties involved in introducing the territorial dimension into the existing questionnaire and proposals are made for incremental amendments to the survey method for collecting and presenting the data, aimed at capturing the regional interdependencies. These include a request for the location of the main source of information, the broad geographic area from which technology has been acquired or transferred, and the sector and region of origin of the innovation.