Alessandro Marra

Digital Technologies for Social Innovation: An Empirical Recognition on the New Enablers

Even though scholars’ attention has been placed on Social Innovation (SI), little evidence has been provided with regards to which tools are actually used to address social needs and foster Social Innovation initiatives. The purpose of the article is twofold. Firstly, the article offers empirical recognition to SI by investigating, on a large-scale, social and innovative activities conducted by start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the world between 2001 and 2014. Secondly, the article intends to capture SI core businesses and underlying complementarities between products, markets, and technologies and show in which way digital media and IT are essentially tracing innovation trajectories over a multitude of industries, leading the current industrial patterns of SI, and continually fostering its cross-industry nature.

Data analytics nel comparto high-tech statunitense: impatti, evoluzione e tutela della privacy

Thank to smartphones, social media and data mining, collection and elaboration of information has never been so easy and low-cost. Such information produce a big impact on business performance in several industries, in particular in the high-tech. The purpose of this article is to offer a descriptive analysis of some metrics and trends relatively to a set of innovative start-ups in the US high technological industries that exploit data for business growth, and provide a link analysis by products, markets, technologies and applications, to emphasise the emerging innovation trajectories. Given the rising risk for consumers, a short overview of the US regulatory frame concerning privacy and data protection is offered.

Economic Diversity and Industry Patterns in Italian Provinces: An Empirical Analysis

This paper focuses on economic diversity in Italian provinces and tests whether it is associated to growth. First the degree of diversity of Italian provinces is measured. Data concern employment levels at provincial level over the period 1951-2001 across 47 industries. Second the correlation between diversity and growth by province and over the observed time period is estimated. Finally, after confirming the relevance of economic diversity, the industry pattern that boosted growth in the largest provinces is investigated and compared to that of the smallest ones.