Abstract
Abstract
Since 2010, the Italian Space Agency's (ASI) web 2.0 portal “Distretto Virtuale” (DV) has been hosting a meaningful panel of the sector composed of 80 subjects, large enterprises, SMEs, and research institutions. The data collected yearly in the virtual platform (until 2012) containing details of turnover, R&D activities, and workforce feed several built-in reports and indexes. Not only are these useful for monitoring the general trends of the sector, which keeps slowly growing in terms of production, workforce, and (above EU average) productivity and SMEs' role, but also it is hoped for strategical shift toward the ground users and the market. Accordingly, this work presents, over the 2010–12 period, the structure of the public–private market index of turnover, which shows the persisting (above EU average) role of public strategic demand (ESA, ASI), while private and noninstitutional businesses struggle to grow, especially on extra EU markets, where competition is tougher. Another index attempts to monitor the share of downstream turnover, that is, the size of activities catering to terrestrial users, bringing to Earth the benefits of the space system; again, this index's unsatisfactory value, although positive for SMEs, calls for institutional action. One last indicator aims at measuring the sector's attitude toward R&D expenditure, and appears this time positive, showing high levels by EU standards, especially with the SMEs. Along with a description of these indexes and the methodology of the Interinstitutional DV Working Group collaborating in the basic annual survey, observations are reported on how to increase the efficiency of the indicators: improve benchmarking by sharing metrics and definitions within the relevant international committees, extend monitoring down the line of some indexes (i.e., evaluation of effectiveness of R&D national investment), make indexes more accurate by integrating DV data with statements analysis or specific interviews, and extending the panel universe and creating procedures to cover the R.I. completely. In this line falls the conclusive attempt to outline a method of measuring two-way (from nonspace to space and vice versa) economic impacts of space operations and activities in the performance of panel firms (businesses) that do not operate exclusively for the space market. The method has been tested with a subpanel of firms fulfilling a minimum of “nonspace” activities in the chosen sensitive fields of software and aeronautics/aviation, combining the DV with spot interviews and audits. As to the impacts shown by the “nonspace toward space” enquiry, positive trends were in R&D activities (especially SMEs) and partly in productivity level and production (the latter trend only for aviation-oriented firms). As to the impacts detected by the “space toward nonspace” enquiry, limited to a number of responsive firms, a list emerged of nonspace productions crucially connected with space activities and research, and their turnover. This made possible the calculation of a “multiplier” of public strategic spending toward private space turnover and alike, as well as nonspace turnover; also, ancillary indicators were repeated here and showed record levels of R&D propension and productivity.
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