TORINO CITY OF INDUSTRY, INNOVATION, AND RESEARCH

Torino is the capital of the Piemonte Region. It is the fourth Italian city in extent and number of residents, including:

  • 871 thousand residents in the urban area (Istat, 2019);

  • 2.25 million residents in the metropolitan area;

  • a city surface area of 130 square kilometers

ECONOMY

Torino is the capital of the Piemonte Region, which, with a GDP of €133 billion, contributes to 7.7% of the national GDP . With over 400 thousand businesses, Piemonte is a national and European manufacturing hub. The Metropolitan City of Torino encompasses nearly half of these businesses, placing it in fourth position on the national level.

Torino is a city with an international vocation, a significant presence of foreign businesses and capital, around 400 multinational companies (Observer, 2019) and a strong presence abroad of Torino-based companies that have made direct investments.

There is a high export of regional products worth more than €46.5 billion, equal to 9.8% of all Italian exports (Maeci, 2019). In the sectors of excellence — automotive, mechatronics, and food — the percentage of exporting companies is close to 80% .

Torino is historically an industrial city that in recent years has developed and acquired new production expertise in strategic sectors linked to innovation. This has allowed it to maintain important economic weight, even on the European level, with 107,000 companies present in the city, about 220 thousand in the Metropolitan City, and a GDP of €61 billion (CCIAA-TO, 2019)

The economy in and around Torino is strongly focused on exports. In 2018, companies in the metropolitan city exported goods and services amounting to €11.7 billion towards EU countries and €7.8 billion towards non-EU countries (Coeweb, 2018).

The city maintains its great specialization in manufacturing, particularly linked to traditional sectors in the territory — automotive and aerospace — with expertise excellence in design and engineering.

Known as the “Automobile Capital of Italy”, Torino has developed around its great manufacturing industry, a complete and integrated industrial fabric with important results in the field of innovation. Numerous high-tech companies are located in Torino and its surroundings. The coexistence of large industrial groups and new, dynamic companies linked to innovation has been an important source of interaction and technological transfer among the various sectors, favouring the dynamics of new processes, products, and business models.

Piemonte and its capital, Torino, lie in the heart of the Italian automotive industry, where 34% of Italian companies and nearly 40% of turnover in the sector are located . Some of the most important players in the sector have their bases here: major OEMs, numerous SMEs, a complete supply chain, R&D centers, and advanced schools of engineering. The synergy between these subjects strongly contributes to the Region’s position among major automotive clusters, not only in Europe, but also worldwide. By way of example, some of the most important key players include: Aptiv, AVL, Changan, CNH Industrial, Dana, Dayco, Denso, Eaton, Endurance, FCA Group, FEV, GM Global Propulsion Systems, Italdesign, ITT, JAC Motors, Lear Corporation, Magna, Marelli, Martur, Michelin, SKF, Valeo, Webasto, Yanfeng, and ZF-TRW Automotive.

In Piemonte, the car components sector generates an overall turnover of €19.7 billion and employs more than 60 thousand people. These businesses are strongly oriented towards innovation: 67% invest a part of their annual turnover in research and development. In addition, 77% of companies in the sector are exporters and earn an average of 40% of their turnover from abroad. The main destination markets are EMEA countries, for 88% of the total .

The aerospace sector in Torino also represents an area of excellence in production and science, with a unique national production chain recognized worldwide due to the presence of know-how, technical capacity, high-level manufacturing, cooperation with universities and the research and development network, and an organized supply chain. These are the relevant numbers:

  • 5 international key players: Leonardo, GE AVIO, Thales Alenia Space Italia, Mecaer, and Microtecnica – UTC Collins Group

  • > 250 SMEs in the sector

  • About 15 thousand operators

  • 17% of national exports

In addition, the life sciences sector has also seen a great push in recent years. Its size has grown enormously, along with specialized companies in the city in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, health and well-being sectors. The network of research centers, multinational companies, and SMEs constitutes an innovative cluster of technology transfer and academics. Together, they form the keystone of a strong, integrated system, with more than 400 companies in the life sciences sector.

INNOVATION, R&D

Torino has known how to take advantage of the presence of large industrial groups, know-how, and productive strength to promote a transformation of the industrial fabric. The city has managed to diversify its economy to become a point of reference for advanced technologies tied to the automotive sector, ICT, aerospace, design, and biotechnology. This conversion is favoured by the presence of specialization clusters supported by large companies in the territory, a rich R&D system, and good collaboration between the public and private sectors.

The Università degli Studi di Torino is one of the most ancient and prestigious Italian universities, as well as a mark of excellence in research. The Politecnico di Torino is recognized internationally as a high-level center of education and research, with a strong focus on innovation and connection to the business world.

  • > 100 thousand students

Rounding out the excellent R&D system in Torino are numerous centers of public and private research, including: FPT Industrial by CNH Industrial, GM Global Propulsion Systems, IEIIT – CNR, LINKS Leading Innovation and Knowledge for Society, ISMB hosts the MICROSOFT INNOVATION CENTER, the CRIT Center for Research and Technological Innovation, TILab, ISI Foundation, and INRIM – Italian National Institute of Metrological Research.

The collaboration between public and private groups in research and development has facilitated the presence in the city of important regional centers of innovation that enable technological transfer between companies and research institutes in different fields.

In Italy, Piemonte and the Metropolitan City of Torino in particular play a strategic role in research and development.

In fact, the territory has elevated spending in innovation compared to GDP: together with Emilia Romagna, it is the only region in which this index exceeds 2%, being close to the European average (2.1%) and notably higher than the Italian average (1.3%).

Most R&D in the territory is conducted by companies that rely on the great qualification of the city’s academic sector and the presence of two important business incubators: I3P (PoliTo) and 2I3T (UniTo).

Collaboration between structured companies and start-ups/innovative SMEs according to the paradigm of Open Innovation is also fundamental for this path. The city has provided spaces and competencies to favour the concentration of qualifying factors (people, policies, technology) capable of promoting innovation, inclusive growth, and competition on a global level.

In this context, the Torino City Lab (TCL) stands out. This initiative is promoted by the City of Torino to support companies in co-development activities and test advanced innovative solutions in real conditions in Torino in response to urban challenges. The objective of Torino City Lab is to become recognized as a platform to develop innovation and as an entrance point for its spread around Europe. Torino City Lab is accredited by the European Network of Living Labs – ENoLL. Under this project, the Torino Living Lab initiative began in 2018 to experiment with new technological solutions enabled by IoT.

Another important project for the City of Torino is the start of an initiative regarding the realization of the Manufacturing Technology Center. This was established to support the evolution of the proposed Competence Center, mainly oriented at favouring the transfer of knowledge through specific professional training programmes based on the principles of Industry 4.0.

In May 2018, the project to create Competence Industry Manufacturing 4.0 (CIM 4.0), presented by the Università and Politecnico di Torino together with other public and private subjects, was admitted for national financing with funds allocated via a specific call by the Ministry of Economic Development.

CIM 4.0 has already been installed in the Mirafiori area of Torino Nuova Economia.

The structure provisionally called “Competence Center”, which will be realized by the Politecnico di Torino, will work in synergy with CIM 4.0 under the centers synthetically called the Manufacturing Technology and Competence Center (MTCC).

The Competence Center was the object of a specific agreement signed in March 2019 in which public funds distributed by Piemonte Region and the Camera di Commercio di Torino were assigned to the initiative to create the building that will host the education and research activities.

This initiative will constitute the seed from which the consequent Manufacturing Technology Center will develop. It is promoted by the Unione Industriale di Torino and is inspired by the successful models operating in Coventry and Rotterdam. It will be a structure to aggregate and develop innovation, with the goal of spreading the culture of technology and developing synergies between subjects, academics, and entrepreneurs interested in initiating meaningful research and development initiatives, education, innovation, and technological transfer.

All the above-mentioned initiatives will complete the process of transforming the so-called Zona A of Torino Nuova Economia, which began with the creation of the Cittadella Politecnica of Design and Mobility, already in operation since 2011, built to recover a portion of the former DAI warehouse.

In addition, as announced in September 2020, Torino will become the site of the Istituto Italiano per l’Intelligenza Artificiale (I3A) (Italian Institute for Artificial Intelligence). The objective of I3A is to act as a real network to coordinate different research activities in this field. It will be a structure for research and technological transfer capable of attracting talent from the international market. It will also serve as a point of reference for the development of artificial intelligence in Italy in connection with the main technological trends (including 5G, Industry 4.0, Cybersecurity). From the operational point of view, I3A will continue, as it should, with a staff of a thousand people and an annual budget equal to about €80 million. In this system, Torino will be a hub of reference with 600 operators in collaboration with research centers and universities. The sectors involved include manufacturing and robotics, IoT, health, mobility, food/agriculture and energy, public administration, culture and digital humanities, and aerospace .

Thanks to recent investments, the city is a candidate for becoming a true European laboratory for advanced manufacturing and innovation.