Research Activities
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TeDIS carries out applied research activities on innovation and competitiveness of enterprises and SMEs in the industrial districts.
The centre develops the following main research perspectives:
Industrial districts, technologies and networks
A core TeDIS research area is the study of Industrial Districts and SMEs embedded in local manufacturing contexts and their evolution process in relation to Network Technologies. The objective of the research is to analyse the level of convergence between the district economic model of development and ICT opportunities.
Through its activites, the most important is the annual TeDIS Survey, a research program that analyses the diffusion of network technologies and the most challenging evolutionary trends within the Italian Industrial Districts according to a quantitative approach.
SMEs, local clusters and internationalization
The process of SME's internationalization is the second relevant TeDIS research area of interest. The goal of the TeDIS study program is to describe and to analyze the internationalization trends of Italian SMEs and local manufacturing systems within the scenario of global economy.
The TeDIS program is based on innovative research methodologies that couple macro-economic analyses, surveys and case studies together.
Creativity, Design and Innovation
This new research area has been promoted since 2003. Creativity is a key element in order to sustain the firm's competitive advantage in a global economy. New trends in consumption and market are reshaping the competition in favour of a growing need for innovative product close to the requests in terms of aesthetics and quality coming from customers.
From this point of view, creativity and design are the new drivers to innovate product and services combining traditional R&D activities and aesthetics, style, communication value.
The research uses quantitative (in conjunction with TeDIS Survey) as well as qualitative methods (focus groups, interviews, case studies).
Within this area another field of research has been launched in 2006, Technologies for Culture and Tourism. The goal of this research area is to investigate how new technologies, such as mobile technologies and high-tech theaters, can be used to provide better tourist experiences in terms of physical (tourism path, tourism information) as well as semantic access to cities and museums.
Logistics
Logistics is another growing area of research, focused on supply chain management in local contexts (industrial districts) and global economy.
The social and economic development of Italian and European countries (i.e. the CADSES area) relies on the ability of SMEs to face changes brought about by global, regional and local threats.
In this scenario, logistic represents a strategic leverage to compete on global scale since it can ensure the delocalisation of production phases, higher service standards and closer enterprises’ relationships with customers and suppliers.
Nevertheless SMEs’ interconnection to logistic networks is not taken for granted: to compete in terms of costs and service quality, SMEs should be equipped with logistic interfaces which can reduce the information gap between them and specialized logistic operators.
Research aims at identifying new opportunities of economic growth at at the local and international level based on innovative logistics services.
TeDIS center is also involved in other research topics related to the analysis of innovation management processes (property rights) and in innovative industries in the global economy (nanotechnologies).
For each of these research perspectives, the center has developed a systematic procedure for data acquisition and elaboration, a case study evaluation methodology based on focus groups and workshops, interactive relationships with firms and communities of professionals active in the most dynamic industrial clusters. The research results are disseminated both to international academic journals as well as to specialized magazines and newspapers; the center also organizes national and international events to present its research results.
