AI in SMEs is driven by industrial clusters: an industrial data space is needed
Artificial intelligence is a growing market, worth 1.8 billion in Italia: a 50 per cent increase year-on-year. Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are further ahead: they have well-established strategies and innovation hubs. Across Europe, the average rate of AI adoption among businesses stands at 13.5 per cent, whilst in Italia it is 8.2 per cent. This represents a five-percentage-point gap, and the main reason lies in a defining feature of the Italian economy: the large number of SMEs.
71 per cent of large Italian companies have launched at least one artificial intelligence project, and 84 per cent have already purchased licences for at least one generative AI tool. Among SMEs, the figure stands at 8 per cent. These figures are compiled in a report by the Roma Business School (RBS), which proposes a solution to bring together the areas of excellence within Italy’s industrial districts. Fashion, engineering, agri-food, pharmaceuticals and the marine sector are the industries that make the Italian economy strong and competitive, whilst remaining at the level of small businesses. The report therefore proposes a ‘Dataspace of Italia’s Industrial Clusters’: pooling industrial data and training vertical AI models.
Turning a limitation into an opportunity
“Italy’s fragmented manufacturing sector, historically its weakness, becomes an asset here,” explains Valentino Megale, co-author of the proposal. Large language models (LLMs) are trained in a horizontal manner and tend to provide generic responses. By contrast, pooling data to create vertical AI could result in models tailored to specific sectors and, as such, more useful in the workplace.
Megale argues that an existing cloud infrastructure could be utilised: the National Strategic Hub. This is a network of Italian data centres funded by the NRRP and operational since December 2022 to store and process critical and strategic data from public administrations. The proposal is to extend its functionality to the private sector. Once European funding has run out, he explains, operations could continue with funding from a public-private co-investment fund, drawing on the Italian venture capital system.
