Facoltà: Ingegneria Gestionale - classe LM-31
Collocazione: 21855
Autore: Nicolini Giulia
Data: 24/10/2023
Titolo: Green and circular innovation in the context of Industry 4.0: from theory into deeds through a patent analysis in Italy
Relatore: Manzini Raffaella
Autorizzazione per la consultazione: SI
Le tesi si possono consultare unicamente in sede
The object of this thesis is to study the relationship between sustainable development and technological development by means of a patent analysis that has allowed us to analyze the amount of innovation that the Italian territory has produced over the years. This topic deserves particular attention as it is theoretically widely discussed but has little concrete evidence of application. The literature explains how sustainability is now a global challenge, necessary for the sustenance of people, the planet and prosperity, and proposes a series of possible technological connections that companies could adopt to pursue these goals. In order to verify the actual actions taken and commitment placed by companies in this direction, we have developed appropriate quantitative analyses on the patent data of the Italian nation from 2015 to 2020 extracted from the Orbit portal. The analysis focused on the intersections created by three major sets: Green Manufacturing, Circular Economy (CE) and Industry 4.0 (I4.0). Green patents were selected according to the IPC Green Inventory, developed by the IPC (International Patent Classification) Expert Committee. Circular patents, on the other hand, were identified via the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC): Y02W proposed by the European Patent Office (EPO). Finally, Industry 4.0 patents were selected via a CPC-Keywords scheme chosen from the analyzed literature. For the analysis of the amount of innovation produced in the different regions of Italy, the number of patent families falling in each of the intersections was used, representing the number of inventions generated. The number of results obtained exposes a considerable divergence between theory and facts, as out of a total of 19,404 patent families, 214 are related to Circular Economy and only 15 are part of the Green-CE-I4.0 intersection. Thanks to this project, we have provided a complete picture of the real innovation positioning of the Italian manufacturing sector with respect to a sensitive topic such as sustainability, as a starting point for possible future improvements.
