EURADA, INSME’s Member and partner, held a meeting on the use of AI for local development and regional growth on 19 November 2025 within the context of the EURADA Working Group on Digitalization.
As emphasized by Francesco Molica, EURADA’s President, AI is everywhere, rapidly transforming our societies and economies. When adopted, AI has important implications for development. Yet, the impact of AI at the regional level can be significantly uneven. This evidence has motivated EURADA to dedicate this Working Group’s session to the topic of how leveraging AI can affect local and regional development.
INSME’s Secretary General Giovanni Zazzerini opened the session with a presentation on AI for SMEs and regional competitiveness, providing the perspective of innovative SMEs on AI adoption’s benefits and challenges.
Zazzerini highlighted the main reasons beyond the positive impact of AI adoption on SMEs productivity: AI enhances employee performance, automates repetitive tasks reducing errors, supports smarter data-driven decisions, increases efficiency in production and logistics, improves marketing and sales targeting, and accelerates innovation, R&D, and product development. However, and as INSME’s Secretary General demonstrated in his intervention, SMEs are often confronted with some external and internal challenges when it comes to AI adoption. For instance, SMEs might find it difficult to adopt the strong digital foundations and IT infrastructures AI needs to operate. Similarly, SMEs might face financial constraints hampering their investments in AI. Finally, a significant internal barrier is the evident skills gap within SMEs, that might have more difficulties hiring both technical and non-technical professionals to work with AI.
As AI becomes increasingly present in our economies and industries, it is crucial for development agencies and regional stakeholders to understand how AI can be properly harnessed to ensure competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience. The Working Group session, organized with the aim of exploring how AI can be integrated into regional development strategies and identifying its opportunities and challenges, provided an exceptional platform for collaboration and exchange in this regard.
Source: INSME Secretariat, EURADA
