Production Specialization, Innovation and Internationalization: the case of Mechanical Engineering in Italy

The editorial points out that the evaluations on the competitiveness of the Italian economy and its industrial apparatus appear contradictory. If in fact the analysis penalize international competitiveness of Italy in the last decades, especially in terms of institutional context and connotations of efficiency and innovative capacity in production, the data on «competitiveness of enterprises» bring out excellence and enviable records for the national manufacturing. Especially in terms of the manufacturing surplus in the trade balance and the market shares of many products and in particular for the mechanical industry and the production of machinery and equipment for the industry. The editorial also analyzes the international success of the Italian mechanical engineering in a long evolutionary process, which registered a real turning point in recent decades With strong spirit of enterprise, the success of companies in the mechanical engineering was closely related to the characteristics of the territory of location, in a virtuous circle between contractors, customers first internal and then international. In this evolutionary process the Italian industry has been able to react and "resist" in the period of recession after 2007.