Ivan De Noni

The combined effect of technological relatedness and knowledge utilization on explorative and exploitative invention performance post-M & A

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the combined effect of Mergers and Acquisitions (M & A) partners’ technological relatedness and the acquirer’s effective utilization of the target’s knowledge on explorative and exploitative invention performance post-M & A. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the knowledge perspective of an M & A, this study measures how much of the target’s knowledge acquired in an M & A has been effectively transformed into new knowledge. A negative binomial regression on a cross-sectional data set of 152 bio-pharmaceutical firms (59 European firms and 93 North American firms) completing at least one M & A in the period between 2001 and 2005 is conducted. The effect of knowledge utilization is assessed by comparing performance six years before the M & A and six years after. Findings – The effective assimilation and utilization of acquired knowledge positively affects both acquirers’ explorative and exploitative performance post-M & As. The combined effect with te...

Knowledge utilisation drivers in technological M&As

Several contributions look at the effect of technological M&As on the acquirers technological performance. The knowledge-based perspective highlights the critical role that the acquirers targets knowledge absorption plays as the main driver in enhancing post-M&A technological performance. However, absorptive capacity is a rather complex construct, which includes assimilation, utilisation and transformation of the acquired knowledge. In this paper, we focus on knowledge utilisation and investigate two factors whose effects on post-M&A technological performance have been extensively highlighted: technological relatedness and managerial experience. We contribute to the existing literature with a better understanding of the factors underlying the utilisation of the knowledge acquired in M&As. This should help managers to enhance their capacity to manage integration process post-M&As. Our results are based on a cross-sectional data set of 152 biopharmaceutical acquirers that completed at least one M&A between 2001 and 2005.

Out of the crisis: an empirical investigation of place-specific determinants of economic resilience

ABSTRACT This article attempts to isolate the structural characteristics that affect the resilience of a regional economy. It focuses on the role played by related/unrelated variety and differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience and originally explores their interdependences. Italy is the empirical setting, and Italian local labour systems the unit of analysis. Regional resilience is measured as growth of the employment rate after the Great Recession that began in 2008. Results confirm the importance of related variety and of differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience. We found support of the creative capacity of culture argument, providing evidence that a moderate concentration in symbolic knowledge-based economic activities contributes to resilience. Synthetic and analytical knowledge-based activities provide positive and no support to regional resilience, respectively. Finally, the relatedness of the symbolic knowledge-based activities increases regional economic resilience. Some policy implications are then derived from these findings.

Immigrant entrepreneurship in the Milan metropolitan area: results from an empirical analysis

Immigrant entrepreneurship is increasingly regarded as a potential source of sustainable development. But even while this potential is gaining popularity, the available data are still not sufficient to establishing ad-hoc policies that would support the development of this form of entrepreneurship. This drawback of the current data is mainly due to its descriptive nature and macro character, which do not allow policymakers to address key factors in the start-up of new ventures, such as motivations for becoming an entrepreneur, barriers and enabling factors, and social and economic impacts at both the urban and regional level. The objective of this paper is to advance this area of research by investigating these issues in the context of 118 entrepreneurs currently working in the metropolitan area of Milan. Our results contradict some of the key assumptions generally accepted in literature.

Coalition loyalty-programme adoption and urban commercial-network effectiveness evaluation

Purpose – To counter the proliferation of out-of-town shopping centres, a spontaneous or planned coalition loyalty programme (CLP), one involving most retailers in an urban network, may positively affect a town centres capacity to entice customers and may enhance its competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of CLP implementation in town-centre management (TCM) as a tool for enhancing urban commercial-system attractiveness. Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical framework used in this study is supported by the evaluation methodologies of an empirical case study: the Savigliano Card project. CLP performance analysis uses a dynamic network-competitiveness index, an approach based on Laspeyres-type decomposition. The effects on each retailers profitability are then tested by matching network and regression analyses. Findings – The results suggest that CLPs implementation in a TCM scheme can produce benefits and positive externalities for customers, retailers and urban...

The evolution of the social understanding of ethnic entrepreneurship: results from a bibliometric analysis of the literature

There is growing attention toward the role of ethnic entrepreneurship as a potential source of social integration and economic growth. Despite this recent interest, there is in fact a long tradition of studies focusing on ethnic entrepreneurship. Furthermore, there are also a number of qualitative literature reviews that attempt to systematise the main findings in this field of study. We contribute to existing literature by providing a more objective representation of how this concept has evolved on the basis of a bibliometric review of the literature. Our results are based on a sample of 102 publications published on this topic since 1990. Our main contribution is to show that the concept of ethnic entrepreneurship has evolved into three phases. In the first phase, scholars focused mainly on cultural factors in order to explain the differences in entrepreneurship across ethnic communities. In the second phase, the focus shifted toward the structure of opportunities available in the host society. Nowadays, scholars are focusing on the role of networking and embeddedness, and on the creation of seedbed conditions for the development of ethnic entrepreneurship in metropolitan areas.

Mapping Inventors’ Networks to Trace Knowledge Flows Among EU Regions

Recent literature on technological changes has highlighted the role of knowledge recombination in innovation. Evidence suggests that the production of scientific and technological knowledge is becoming an increasingly collective phenomenon. Thus, in rapidly developing industries, it is almost inevitable to develop inter-organizational collaborations to identify new opportunities for new technologies.

Factors influencing German and Italian farmland prices – a spatial econometric analysis

A spatial econometric model of German and Italian farmland prices is estimated to identify the determinants of farmland prices. It explicitly takes spatial dependencies among neighbouring areas into account, not only in form of spatially lagged farmland prices (spatial lag model) but also in form of spatially lagged explanatory variables (spatial Durbin model). Results show that both agricultural and non-agricultural factors are important for explaining farmland prices in both countries. Differences seem to be stronger within the member states than between the countries.

The rise of the Chinese regional cluster specializing in fashion in Lombardy: An evolutionary analysis

This paper aims to investigate the rise of a Chinese fashion cluster in Lombardy.,Three approaches and descending levels of analysis are integrated: a quantitative analysis based on demographic data to highlight the evolution of the regional distribution of the Chinese community and Chinese entrepreneurship in Lombardy; a literature review to reconstruct the historical development of Chinatown in Milan; and few in-depth interviews and a survey to represent how the Chinese living in Chinatown perceive the changing role of the enclave.,The Chinese in Lombardy are rising as a regional ethnic fashion cluster. This cluster is rising out of three major drivers: ethnic social capital as a source of community-based entrepreneurship; the crisis of traditional industrial districts in the 1990s as a trigger opportunity; and the trans-regionalization of the fashion industry as a main driver of its current development. The rise of this cluster is bottom-up.,The findings are based on a single case study. There are evidences showing that the Chinese are rising as regional and/or inter-regional clusters in other institutional settings. However, this study may benefit from comparisons with other institutional and national contexts.,Chinese entrepreneurship may foster regional growth as a complementary source of cultural variety, internationalization and multi-regional co-specialization.,Entrepreneurship may foster social cohesion and collaboration.,This paper contributes to existing literature by proposing a would-be theory of the evolution of regional ethnic clusters.

Exploitative and Explorative Innovative Performance: The Effect of Technology-based M&As

It has been suggested in the literature that the acquisition of external sources of knowledge may enhance the capacity of firms to combine exploration and exploitation. This study focuses on this issue by analyzing the role of technology-based M&As. More specifically, we investigate the effects of knowledge relatedness, realized absorption and managerial experience on the level of exploitative and explorative innovative performance. Based on a sample of 152 global M&As between firms in the bio-pharmaceutical industry, our findings confirms that technology-based M&As have a positive influence on the level of exploration and exploitation. Moreover, we found out that the level of realized absorption and managerial experience have a positive effect both on exploration and exploitation. The relationship between knowledge similarity and explorative innovation is an inverted U, whether the one between knowledge complementarity and explorative innovation is U shaped.