What is needed in order for the Italian small-medium sized tourism business to become more competitive? 
Could investing in knowledge give a new impulse to the development of small and medium sized tourism companies? 
In order to answer these questions, four Italian regions Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Sardinia and Tuscany, which are responsible for approximately 30% of domestic tourist arrivals, have created the Interregional Project K Factor, where “K” stands for Knowledge. 
The final outcome of the project is to verify and demonstrate that the most competitive companies are those that invest most in intangible assets. These are activities which, in the financial statements of companies, are recorded under the heading “intangible fixed assets”.  In order to verify what return the small-medium sized companies might get from investment in intangible assets (for example marketing, training, research and development, etc.), the four promoting regions chose to investigate and study the two leading tourism regions of the Mediterranean, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (later referred to as “PACA”) in France and Catalonia in Spain with the aim of:

• Analysing and measuring the return on investments made by small-medium tourism companies in intangible assets
• Identify the requirements, expectations and results achieved by companies
• Identify new models for development based on the knowledge-based economy
• Become aware of new opportunities in international markets
• Improve the competitiveness of what Italian small-medium sized companies offer

Therefore, a process of analysis was started by studying 179 small-medium sized tourism companies in PACA and Catalonia. This led to the discovery of the ingredients for the success of the small-medium sized tourism companies with best performance, most profitable intangible investments and the most effective territorial development strategies.  Starting with these initial results, Emilia Romagna, Liguria, Sardinia and Tuscany are preparing to work together to discover new models of international growth and to contribute to the re-launching of tourism in their region. At the same time, having chosen to share the results of the research, the four K regions intend to contribute to the re-launching of the Italian tourism sector, in which the capacity to compete of over 231,000 small-medium tourist companies in Italy plays a very important role.

The project K Factor is divided into two stages:

• Exploration Stage
• Planning Stage

K Factor is an interregional project which is financed with funds made available by Law 135 of 2001.