Development Opportunities and Outskirts. The Innovative Service Sector in the South of Italy

Taking up some studies on how innovation can develop far from big cities (Shearmur, 2016), and on digital divide not only based on an infrastructure gap, but also on an inequality in training opportunities and in the same perception that citizens have compared to the distance with other territories (Acilar, 2011; ORBICOM, 2005), this article wants to make a critical contribution in order to identify some factors that favor the development of the innovative service sector in fragile areas, reducing the inequality among regions. In a first phase the Author describes the «generative mechanisms» that favored the localization and concentration of innovative activities related to the development of software and IT services in Calabria, with a special reference to the role of some agency factors, such as the University and the presence of global players, which invested in human capital and research activities. At a later stage, the article focuses on the peculiar organizational dynamics of the companies taken into consideration and the local networks in which they are included. The article underlines the anchoring mechanisms of the knowledge economy (Raspe e Oort, 2008), and the generative factors of the territory, in order to be attractive to the most qualified human capital. This depletes local economy and has a negative impact especially in peripheral regions. The applied method is qualitative-quantitative. In the first part data updated to 2018 by Unioncamere and ISTAT on the economic structure of local business activities and on workers are used. The second part involves a multidimensional qualitative study which includes an analysis of the individual dimension of entrepreneurs and workers through professional profiles, an analysis of the social network between them and a focus on development opportunities and political implications.