The machine tool industry has a leading role in the Italian manufacturing system, and it is between the few industrial branches in which Italy keeps an international primary level role, being the 4th world producer and the 3rd world exporter. The branch innovation process has a threefold hybrid characterisation: it is an industry that compete at a global level, so oriented towards open innovation and imitation, but, at the same time, it tries to defend its own products. Meanwhile, it strives for product innovation, but also for production systems innovation in order to achieve a greater flexibility and reconfigurability for machine tools.
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