The most important thing is to create financing instruments – in the form of both venture capital and debt – that enable good ideas to be funded and to grow entirely within Europe. Otherwise, European innovators will look elsewhere in the world to find the funding they need to grow.
What are your impressions following your meetings with Italian institutions?
Sometimes Italians are too pessimistic about the future. You have been innovating for hundreds of years. You already have very solid foundations. The modern intellectual property system was established in Venice in 1474. Now you need to ensure that you pay attention to intellectual property and innovation policies, and that these also become an explicit part of public policy.
WIPO data show that Italia is one of the few advanced economies in which, over the last decade, investment in tangible assets has grown faster than investment in intangible assets. Is this a warning sign for competitiveness?
I would regard this as a trend worth keeping an eye on. In Italia, investment in tangible assets accounts for around 15 per cent of GDP, whilst investment in intangible assets is only around 9 per cent. Furthermore, over the last decade, investment in tangible assets has grown more rapidly: by 5.2 per cent per year in real terms, compared with 3.6 per cent for investment in intangible assets. Sweden provides a useful point of comparison: there too, investment in tangible assets accounts for around 15 per cent of GDP, but investment in intangible assets stands at 17.4 per cent. There is no automatic link between higher investment in intangible assets and faster economic growth, particularly in the short term. But the positive signs are clear.