Part 7/14:
Italy relies heavily on traditional sectors: food, luxury goods, tourism, and niche machinery. While these contribute to exports, they lack high value-added growth potential. Many businesses are family-owned, small, and low-tech, with limited investment in research and development.
This low productivity hampers competitiveness; Italy's reliance on small-scale, specialized exports means limited scalability and innovation. The pharmaceutical sector offers some hope with increasing exports, but overall, Italy lags behind its European peers in technological advancement.