By focusing on research and innovation, the Lombardia Region aspires to attracting and facilitating the siting of high valueadded production activities, upgrading human resources and recruiting young talent. Favouring enterprises’ investments in research and development in fact creates a harmonious meeting ground which encourages an exchange of technologies and fosters the alliance of knowledge, learning and intelligence with dexterity and proficiency, an essential element for the development of high technology.

Lombardia invests 1.32  % of its GDP (largely of private matrix) in this sector, which brings it to number one placing in Italy for investment in scientific research. 
 
A sector closely associated with the university world, one of the region’s major assets thanks to its ample educational opportunities and variety of research fields, with peaks of absolute excellence in life sciences. There are 13 Universities in Lombardia, seven of which are in Milan. Some belong to the great tradition, like that of Pavia, founded in 1361, and others to the class of internationally acclaimed institutions, such as the Bocconi University, the Polytechnic and the Catholic University. About 250,000 young people and 17,000 foreign students enrol at the Lombard universities every year to attend university courses, summer schools and post-graduate seminars. There are also many centres of research and transfer of technology in Lombardia.