An Analysis for Strategic Locational Management: The Case of Lombardy

In this work an analysis of the Italian region is presented using the Prof. Audretsch’s framework, to identify its strengths and weaknesses and to suggest policies aimed at addressing eventual issues detected. Lombardy has been severely impacted by the recent Coronavirus crisis and therefore is an interesting case to study. The most evident criticalities were found to be (1) the coverage of the Internet and the lack of correspondence between the skills of the Lombard workers and the skills required by the labor market—as regards the factors of production; (2) the cultural factors inherent in the most widespread structure of the Lombard industry, i.e. the small and medium enterprises—as regards spaces and organization; and lastly (3) the development of SMEs and their internationalization—as regards the human dimension. The German region Bavaria was taken into consideration as a comparison term, in order to reveal areas of improvements and create more general recommendations. Data for the development of this research have been retrieved from the OECD and Istat databases and are conjugated with previous theoretical studies.