The overall “investment in knowledge” of firms has been conveniently summarised in one single indicator by the OECD, called “spending in knowledge-based capital”, which includes expenditures for software, R&D, copyrights, design, marketing research, firm-specific training and organisational know-how. This indicator sees Italy among the lowest-ranked countries in the OECD (slide 3). 10.
The low private and public spending in R&D is reflected in the smaller number of researchers compared to the main advanced countries. In Italy, they are only 5.5 for each thousand of workers against almost 9 for the OECD.