The dark side of ITALY

Android is a great project and I expect it would spur innovation in the mobile space.
Hopefully more and better option for us, the users, but also opportunities for new business to start.
Considering how the whole "widget development" mania is creating the next boom (at barely zero cost), this is no joke.

Google is sponsoring a 10M$ prize for the best ideas. Great.
However, we learn that Italy cannot participate. Reasons? too much bourocrazy.

In his blog, Fabrizio Giudici explains in details what it's all about.

We are not alone in the exclusion. Also Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma) are excluded but because of U.S. laws.
Italy is the only one (together with Quebec, that is not a country but a region) that is not included because of its absurd, medieval rules.

Here are my questions.

1. How can we expect to save this country that once was the hub of new ideas and now is literally dying of (natural) aging?
2. In the decade of the Viagra and Cialis, how is it possible that we are not able to reinvigorate our natural strenghts, no matter the age?
3. How short-sighted are we to realize that we are left at the bottom of the pyramid when talking profiting (not creating!) from opportunities to spur new business ideas?

The more I witness these matters from the outside, the more I'm convinced that we need a radical socio-economical change if we want to have a chance to lift Italy from the semi-conscious torpor in which it fell.