An Information System to Deliver Innovative Services to SMEs: The Case of a Science and Technology Park in Southern Italy

Summary

After a description of the main characteristics, which Calabria, an area in a consistent delay of development, presents, authors have considered the local market of services. From this analysis came out an important datum: most small local enterprises ask nearly always for a latent demand of services, also the traditional ones. Therefore we can understand the role of the Science and Technology Park of Calabria (STPCa1), managed by CALPARK Inc., that is to contribute towards the strengthening of the linkages between the world which produces technical and organizational knowledge and the world which would utilize it. STPCa1 carries out two main actions: the first one is the supply of a great variety of services to local enterprises which today are operative and the other is the contribution to the creation of new innovative enterprises.

From a careful observation of all possible services which can interest local enterprises, it is clear that every service consists of an explicit component of the relative technical and organizational knowledge and of an implicit component of such a knowledge. This distinction is important because the first one is referable to the information, which can be processed and spread through all the possible channels of communication, from the traditional ones — by mail or fax — to the more modern ones — as multimedia networks —, while the second component cannot be expressed as information and therefore it presupposes the work of expert consultants, holders of the implicit knowledge, who carry out for the user-company their action, complementary to the informative component already acquired by the companies.

The previous observation suggests the realization of the CALPARK Informative System (CIS), organized on three levels. Such a system in the first level distributes among omogeneous groups of user-companies, in a unidirectional way, information collected and worked out from different sources. In order to make that aim effective, the CIS creates, manages and updates users’ map of interests, a conceptual instrument which combines the typology of different services with the typology of the economic sector to which the user-company belongs. The second level is fulfilled when the single user-company asks for further information or even for an explanatory support about received information. The third level takes place when the single user-company asks for a consulting support in order to turn the received information and its problems into an innovation project. CIS general aim is to distribute a complete ensemble of services and supports, partially represented by informative services, to user-companies, so that it can contribute to their development.

It is important to underline that a thorough analysis on which information technologies can be utilized is not interesting for CIS realization, because, even if multimedia technologies reached an enormous development and potential, we know that it is not sufficient to distribute information, which will be acquired, even in the simplest and most effective way, but it is necessary to solve some problems connected to the following points:

• local availability of information and knowledges;

• technical and economic ability of a single enterprise to select and acquire useful information;

• ability of a single enterprise to make useful such information, in order to improve its own competitiveness;

• ability of a single enterprise to contextualize efficaciously the new knowledge, in order to render it useful;

• etc..

In any case, the information on the various aspects of interest of a small enterprise well selected and efficaciously confectioned is inalienable, even if it is not sufficient for the enterprise development. That's why the organization of a system as CIS, with an iterative planning process, which involves from the beginning user-companies, partners of CALPARK, is very useful. CIS experimentation will be based on the demand and supply of services analysis in the field, and on the correlated setting up of an evaluation system. The last one, which will be proposed in a future communication, consists of two distinct moments: the first one is related to the functioning and the control methodologies of reached results within the system (analysis led on the basis of the coherence research), the second one concerns the evaluation of the level of satisfaction of users, which are the target of the service (service quality analysis).