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This work aims to shed light on the textile-clothing district of Carpi seen from an economic-industrial perspective. This district has always been one of the most investigated cases in Italian and foreign literature, that aimed at investigating the causes of the success of these particular productive agglomerations of Small and Medium Business (SMB). Since the years of the district successes in the 1970’s-80’s, many things have obviously changed. In the second and third paragraphs, the paper analyzes the case study of Carpi from a structural point of view. Subsequently, in the fourth paragraph, it focuses on the new industrial policy, which should be primarily centered on “investments in knowledge” (human capital, research and development). In the fifth final paragraph, some policy responses to the present challenges are suggested. Questo lavoro ha lo scopo di gettare luce sul distretto del tessile-abbigliamento di Carpi visto da una prospettiva economico-industriale. Questo distretto da sempre fra i casi maggiormente indagati nella letteratura, italiana e straniera, volta ad approfondire le cause del successo di queste particolari agglomerazioni produttive di Piccola e Media Impresa (PMI). Dagli anni dei successi distrettuali degli anni ‘70 e ’80, molte cose sono naturalmente cambiate. Il paper analizza, nel secondo e nel terzo paragrafo, il case-study carpigiano dal punto di vista strutturale. Successivamente, al quarto paragrafo, si sofferma sulla nuova politica industriale, che in primis deve essere incentrata sugli “investimenti in conoscenza” (capitale umano, ricerca e sviluppo) e, nel quinto conclusivo paragrafo, sono suggerite alcune risposte di policy alle sfide attuali.

Kenya s economy has undergone a significant process of structural transformation over the last decade. Since 2002, the economy has shown an accelerating trend with GDP growth increasing steadily from below 1 percent in 2002 to 7 percent in 2007. After a slowdown in GDP growth to 1.5 percent and 2.7 percent in 2008 and 2009 respectively, economic growth started to rebound in 2010. Amidst this positive growth context, in October 2013, the Kenyan Government launched the Second Medium-Term Plan (MTP-2) of the Vision 2030. The aim of Kenya s Vision 2030 is to create a globally competitive and prosperous country with a high quality of life by 2030 and to shift the country s status to upper-middle income level.

Innovation is the main driver of long-term economic growth. The accumulation of capital, whether in the form of physical assets such as plants and equipment, or through better human capital, cannot indefinitely sustain growth unless new products, services, processes, and/or business models are developed and implemented. This paper describes the actors involved and the types of funding available at different stages of the innovation process, the rationales for public intervention, and the advantages and disadvantages of some of the most commonly used policy instruments. Innovation activities are more difficult to finance than other types of investment for several reasons. Innovation produces an intangible asset that does not typically constitute accepted collateral to obtain external funding. Also, the technological and market uncertainty of innovation activities makes the returns to investment highly uncertain, creating significant problems for the standard risk adjustment methods used by providers of funds. This paper uses a streamlined version of an innovation process with three stages to categorize the different sources of finance available; in reality, considerable crossover takes places among instruments because innovation processes are not discrete.