Emerging communities in multilayers networks: analysis of a regional policy programme

With the growing importance of policies sponsoring innovation intermediaries (Howells, 2006; Lazaric et al, 2008; Kauffeld-Monz and Fritsch, 2013; Russo and Rossi, 2009; Caloffi et al, 2015), a need has emerged for appropriate instruments to analyze their activity. In general, current approaches do not adopt a network perspective to highlight the multidimensional system created through the activities undertaken by the intermediaries. In this paper we present an empirical analysis of a regional policy supporting the creation of specialized intermediaries in the Italian region of Tuscany. In the programming period 2007-2013 (effectively starting from 2010), the regional government of Tuscany funded twelve ‘innovation poles’. They are regional innovation intermediaries (organized to provide a range of services, including brokering and matchmaking) that bring together a number of universities and innovative service providers with potential end-users of these services. Their main goal is to promote linkages between regional actors: universities, public research organizations, KIBS, large businesses and SMEs. We highlight two main domains of interactions that support the entire system of the poles. The first domain is that in which we find the agents promoting the system of poles: this network involves both the organizations directly managing the poles, through the creation of temporary associations, and the organizations who have shareholdings in those managing organizations. The second domain relates to competence networks initiated by the system of the poles not only through the provision of services by the various operators, but also through the skills of employees and consultants, the collaboration agreements with parties outside the poles, and through the facilities of laboratories and incubators. By creating such multilayer networks we focus on interrelations between the poles based on the activities, undertaken jointly, in supporting the member companies. For each of these domains we examine the characteristics of the networks and the centrality index of the agents involved. Moreover, by adopting the analysis of multilayer networks (recently developed by De Domenico et al., 2015), we identify and compare the emerging communities in aggregate networks and in the multilayer networks with regard to the networks promoting the poles and in the competence networks.