Elisa Salvador

Are incubators and science parks effective for research spin-offs? Evidence from Italy

In recent years there has been an increasing focus on the research spin-off phenomenon. Spin-off firms are recognised as an important opportunity for universities. Notwithstanding the interest on this field at European and US levels, few analyses have focused on Italy. The goal of this paper is to contribute to the literature on research spin-offs by providing original empirical evidence on spin-offs from Italian research. More specifically, attention is focused on the relationship between science parks/incubators and spin-offs at regional level. The results of a linear regression model highlight that the higher the number of host structures the higher the number of spin-offs. This analysis is completed with the results of a questionnaire: 65 on-park and 90 off-park respondents provided similar answers with few conclusive differences. The debate about the effectiveness of incubators and science parks remains open in Italy (and elsewhere). Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Science park or innovation cluster

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the science park (SP) “physical” location and the innovation cluster (IC) “virtual” location, and aims at investigating: the motivations driving firms to settle in these two agglomerations; the main problems firms, belonging to the two structures, face in their growth process; similarities and differences between a “physical” and a “virtual” location; which forms of proximity (geographical, relational, social, cognitive, organizational, and institutional) play a role within the SP and the IC. Design/methodology/approach – A literature review on proximity is followed by an investigation of the Bioindustry Park and the IC BioPmed in Piedmont region in Italy, through a structured questionnaire, sent between February and March 2002, to firms co-located in the park and/or member of the cluster. Findings – From the analysis did emerge that the physical location in the park and the virtual location in the cluster might be complements rather than substitutes. Res...

Evolution of Italian Universities' Rules for Spin-offs: The Usefulness of Formal Regulations

Spin-off firms may be seen as a key mechanism for the external transmission of knowledge developed at universities. The proliferation of academic spin-offs in recent years has led universities to develop specific rules for the regulation and management of the spin-off process. This paper draws on the Italian experience. More than fifty Italian universities issued spin-off regulations between 2001 and 2008. The author looks at the reasons why Italian universities have decided to issue these specific regulations to control the research spin-off phenomenon, assesses the similarities and differences between the regulations of various universities and examines whether and to what extent the regulations are useful.

Are traditional industrial partnerships so strategic for research spin-off development? Some evidence from the Italian case

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on research spin-offs (SOs) and strategic alliances. The research SO phenomenon has attracted significant attention in recent years. Yet, research SOs might present a particular situation regarding their economic development. Therefore, the paper focuses on the relevance of traditional industrial partnerships and introduces a new and complementary approach for studying and analysing the role of alliances for this particular kind of firm. The results of a questionnaire investigation of Italian research SOs with and without a traditional industrial partner are investigated and supported by a linear regression model. Due to recent initiatives – a growing interest in the research SO phenomenon – and the increasing number of established research SOs, Italy is a suitable case study for such an investigation. Nonetheless, the results are generalizable beyond the Italian case. The findings demonstrate thought-provoking – and somehow unexpected – results regarding the role of traditional alliances in shaping the geographical and industrial environment as well as the performance, added value, age and production process of the company. This calls for a broader perspective regarding industrial partnerships and research SOs: it reflects new modes of relations for these particular firms in the form of business ecosystems, either they are physical or they are digital.

How and where the R&D takes place in creative industries? Digital investment strategies of the book publishing sector*

ABSTRACT The innovative and strategic models of creative industries (CIs) in the digital economy are capturing an increasing interest in recent years. Yet, most of the literature deals with creation and talent and very little with technological and innovation perspectives. Innovation is in general considered from a single viewpoint: a means to develop new creative contents. This article investigates an important issue that has been surprisingly neglected in scientific literature and public reports: the topic of R&D and technological innovations in CIs. The article characterises how and where R&D takes place in the book publishing industry. A systematic identification of R&D developments concerning e-book technology has been achieved using an original methodology set up to feature the technological strategic evolutions. The results provide a reliable cartography of the value chain through an adaptation of the open systems interconnection layers model. This framework helps to understand the new digital ecosystem of the book publishing sector and the strategies carried out by the editorial houses.

European SMEs and the Brazilian market

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the importance of networking for Italian and French small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Brazil. Business opportunities in Brazil have attracted a significant amount of interest in recent years. The country is moving towards market orientation, and it has recently experienced higher growth rates. Furthermore, upcoming events, such as the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, are attracting a significant amount of attention given the emergence of potential business opportunities in several sectors. Nevertheless, European companies wishing to enter the Brazilian market should address several constraints, including high barriers to entry, an extensive bureaucracy and a culture quite different from those in Europe. In this context, networking seems to be vital for success. Design/methodology/approach – The data were gathered through a survey undertaken between June and August 2012. After the questionnaire was prepared, each compan...

Small Firms and the Growth Stage: Can Entrepreneurship Education Programmes Be Supportive?.

Whilst entrepreneurship education is booming, it focuses largely on nascent entrepreneurs and company creation. In contrast, a major challenge in small business entrepreneurship is growth. The authors first position growth and its barriers in small firms in the context of current theory and practice in entrepreneurship education: from this analysis, they identify prerequisites and drivers for growth-related entrepreneurship training for small businesses. A pedagogical experiment focused on growth, targeted at a mixed audience of small firm entrepreneurs and graduate students enrolled in an entrepreneurship major in a business school, is then described. The experiment is presented as an integrated process model. The authors suggest that such programmes could be developed in three main directions: (a) changing the culture of business schools so that they become less individual-centred and more open and value-creating for their students and the external community; (b) strongly and regularly involving entrepreneurship students in the realities of business beyond start-up; and (c) making systematic and sophisticated use of the Internet for enhancing growth through e-learning and community-building.

The Race for Innovation in the Media and Content Industries: Legacy Players and Newcomers: Lessons for Policy Makers from the Video Game and Cinema Industries

ABSTRACT How do media industries innovate? How can they compete with powerful competitors from the information technology world? The article focuses on the video game and cinema industries. The findings reveal their contrasting specific forms of innovation and provide a fresh understanding of its twofold nature in these industries. It does not boil down to simply creating new content but is increasingly open to the investment and integration of technologies. The evolution of the development models and the changes brought by technology raise questions about how to (re)consider the role of public intervention in these industries.

Technological innovation and R&D. The disregarded dimension of the creative industries: the case of book publishing

Cultural and creative industries (CCIs) have excited increasing attention in recent years. Academic literature on the subject has been growing in parallel with the emergence of general reports aiming to support government strategies. Notwithstanding this increasing and comprehensive interest, what is often disregarded is the important matter of the characteristics of R&D management and how technological innovations function in organisational value chains. This issue is particularly underinvestigated in the book publishing sector. Paradoxically, innovations based on technology are often «hidden» in CCIs: actors in cultural industries rarely think specifically about technological innovations, which are perceived to be derived from outside the CCIs. Yet technology plays a key role in the current structure of cultural industries such as book publishing. Given this context, this article aims to retrace the key aspects of exceptional and recent changes to the «secular» book publishing industry due to the Internet and ICT revolutions. The analysis shows that digital technologies are not only regularly appropriated by editorial houses (e.g. e-books and e-readers) but that they should also be regarded as intrinsic industry developments. Nonetheless, publishers continue to play a marginal role, because the primary technologies are derived from outside their value chain, thanks to the involvement of new actors as intermediaries. This phenomenon calls for changes in the traditional vision of the policies and regulation of CCIs.

Clustering recent trends in the open innovation literature for SME strategy improvements

The literature on Open Innovation is booming. In recent years, more and more contributions have been published in several scientific reviews. This increasing trend calls for an approach that could lead to a classification of the specificities of these contribution contents. This is what this paper aims to do. More specifically, our goal is to provide not a simple catalogue of the hundreds of articles published in this field, but rather it tries by cluster analysis a classification of the most important key features of the typical articles published in the field of Open Innovation, with a specific focus on implemented methods in SMEs. Notwithstanding the limitations of our attempt, the cluster analysis results provide a reference paradigm to compare existing as well as future contributions and add new insights. This paper highlights how a path dependence approach in the literature has influenced the companies Open Innovation implementation, but some recent attempts at overcoming this process are arising. This recent trend focuses on SMEs as the real key challenge.