Luciano Pilotti

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.

Does Business Succession Enhance Firms' Innovation Capacity? Results from an Exploratory Analysis in Italian SMEs

Our main objective with this paper is to explore business transfer as as potential source of innovation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The literature on the subject has mainly focused to business succession as process through which ownership and control is transferred between generation of entrepreneurs. In this paper we argue that nowadays the aim of business succession should not only replace existing entrepreneurial resources, but enhancing firms’ innovation capacity. Our contribution moves into two major directions. The first explores the relationhip between business succession and innovation from a theoretical point of view. The second deepens such an understanding by assessing it on a sample of micro and small enterprises located in Emilia Romagna. We show that business transfer/succession in SMEs is not perceived as potential source of innovation. Business transfer still takes place mainly within the family. SMEs show little propensity to saparte ownership form management as way to enhance firms’ likelihood to survive to business transmission. Senior entrepreneurs’ show little propensity to invest on juniors’ training. As result juniors lack of an autonomous business vision and do not perceive themselves as the main driver of innovation. Such a perspective is even supported by seniors, who do not expect business succession to make any difference on the way business is currently managed

Knowledge creation and codification in Italian Industrial Districts

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the various mechanisms of knowledge creation, diffusion, and assimilation which are visible within the Italian local production systems. The term “local production system” adopted in this paper concerns that class of phenomena related to the spatial concentration of specialised industry, often defined in the economic and business literature as: industrial districts, multi-district areas, system-areas, local systems governed by leading networks firms, “clusters”, “milieux innovateurs”, and so on. The paper discusses the evolutionary pattern of tacit and codified knowledge within the institutional complexity of the Italian local systems, where not only firms are active agents in knowledge producing and distributing, but also local institutions contribute to the process of socialisation of information and knowledge.

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.

A Scoreboard to Evaluate Clusters' Competitiveness in the Knowledge-Based Economy - An Empirical Study on Emilia Romagna Region

Abstract: Our main objective with this paper is to propose a scoreboard useful to assess clusters’ competitiveness in a knowledge-based economy. Our scoreboard is grounded on the concept of ecology of value. This concept highlights that the competitiveness of a network of small and medium enterprises depends on its capacity to leverage on firms’ strategic autonomy and self-determinacy by providing a context of interaction that is socially rich and adapted to sustain the development of intense ongoing relationships. In our scoreboard the concept of competitiveness is structured into two levels. The top level is made of a matrix that synthesizes cluster’s competitive position in terms of quality of the social capital available and of the learning process activated. The second level is made of three matrixes useful to deepen the reasons that contribute to define a cluster’s competitive position. We test our scoreboard in seven clusters of Emilia Romagna. Our scoreboard proves itself a useful benchmarking tool and a potential good support for policymaking. JEL Classification:

Local Embeddedness and Internationalization of SME: A Comparative Analysis of Nine Local Production System in Emilia Romagna

The purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate how the embedded-ness can influence the processes of internationalization among technology-based SME in nine industrial districts in Emilia Romagna. The analysis will be conducted using a statistical sample of SME extract from each district. Some papers demonstrate that many technology-based smaller firms are engaged in a range of internationalization network and internationalization processes, including internationalization of markets, research collaboration, labor recruitment, ownership and facilities location. Technology-intense firms reporting high levels of internationalization also differ significantly from those which are more nationally-oriented, for example in terms of size, age, research intensity, university links, and innovativeness. There are also differences with respect to recent growth rates. So, as a final conclusion, we would like to understand if these considerations can be applied to the Emilia Romagna environment and, more in general, to the Italian market. If it cannot work it would be our purpose to define the reasons why the Italian market would be different in term of relationship between local embedded-ness and degree of internationalization in a technology-oriented perspective.

On the Civic Role of Firms in Emerging Ecologies of Value

Knowledge is the main competitive assets in today economy. This resource, differently from the others firms have traditionally managed, increases its value through sharing and diffusing. Adoption, in fact, does not only contribute to increase its trustworthiness, but also to broadening its scope and application. The development of global digital infrastructures such as Internet has even enhanced the potential advantages that may derive from sharing knowledge. In this paper the development of ecologies of value, context of knowledge sharing where parties partecipate to the production of a collective value, is presented as alternative strategy to protecting the value of knowledge through intellectual property right. Being able to leverage on the potential disclosed by collective interaction in ecology of values requires participants not exploiting open accessibility to their own advantage. This calls for the emergence of a new ethic. An ethic of the abundance, where people develop a complete consciousness of the potential deriving from sharing knowledge for their own success and happiness. The role of firms in emerging ecologies of value is to promote the development of such an ethic by setting up context of interaction that are open, based on tolerance and mutual transparency