LEVE. Reti di competenza e sviluppo locale in provincia di Livorno

The project "Leve_Network of competences, education and innovation in the Province of Livorno" is a study to support the design of innovation policies. The social and economic context under consideration is the Province of Livorno (Italy). The research draws on the experience of actionresearch of Officina Emilia (UniMORE ). In order to exploit existing production and training synergies and at the same time to track down new lines of interaction and collaboration, we have adopted the innovation model of Lane and Maxfield (1997). The theoretical foundations of this study see innovation as a process that emerges from generative relationships, ie relationships between heterogeneous actors who share a vision that lead to changes in the way they see themselves, their world and those with whom they relate, resulting in innovations that are characterized as new attributions of functionalities to artifacts or new identity of agents (individuals as well as organizations). These changes are often cumulative, and create the conditions for new generative relationships. These interaction processes include several cognitive elements, as well as social, technical, economic and political elements, which involve different levels of social organization and occur in different time scales. The dynamics of innovation processes, stimulated by these patterns of interactions are also constrained by the presence of institutions that: create links between agents and organizations, with similar or complementary skills; encourage the reproduction of regulatory systems and dissemination of shared codes of communication; produce public goods important to the economic and social system.