Silvia Massa

Innovation or imitation

Traditionally, benchmarking has been described as a practice that promotes imitation. However, according to a more recent approach, this paper suggests that benchmarking, looking outside the firm boundaries and enabling comparison with others, in terms of both practices and performances, enable the process of acquiring external explicit and tacit knowledge. Such newly acquired knowledge, once integrated with previous internal knowledge of the firm, creates new knowledge that may give rise to improvements and innovations. In order to study the innovative power of benchmarking, this paper presents a three‐year research undertaken in the maintenance‐services sector that is becoming more and more global and competitive. A model that integrates benchmarking, knowledge management and innovation is presented as the main result of the research.

The Role of Social Software for Customer Co-Creation: Does It Change the Practice for Innovation?

This article investigates a customer co-creation project at the front end of the innovation process at a large well-known Italian food manufacturer, which is enabled by social media. The purpose is to shed light on the role of such technology in transforming the characteristics of the FEI, in terms of boundaries and knowledge distance: what type of innovation ideas – exploratory or exploitative – does the practice enable? Could social media be used to manage the explore-exploit paradox, thus transforming the practice into an ambidextrous one? The empirical analysis highlights that the investigated customer co-creation practice has evolved from the initial stage of idea exploitation to a stage in which both exploitation and exploration are simultaneously accomplished.

The role of ideology in brand strategy: the case of a food retail company in Italy

Purpose – This paper aims to study the role of ideology in brand strategy with reference to large‐scale food retailing. By means of a thorough case study investigation of highly ideology‐focused food retailer Eataly, the paper aims to enrich existing theory on retailer branding. The various elements of Eatalys brand have been studied in order to identify how they enact the ideology for which the retailer stands. This topic is particularly relevant in a context where consumers appear increasingly committed to social responsibility and business ethics. So the final goal of the paper is to identify ideology‐focused brand choices that lead to a preference towards the retailer.Design/methodology/approach – In order to address this papers research aim, a well known framework developed by Esbjerg and Bech‐Larsen is adopted to conceptualize the retail brand. Case study methodology is applied.Findings – This paper provides both research‐related and practical contributions. From a research perspective, it provide...

Unveiling the intellectual origins of Social Media-based innovation: insights from a bibliometric approach

This article uses a bundle of bibliometric and text-mining techniques to provide a systematic assessment of the intellectual core of the Social Media-based innovation research field. The goal of this study is to identify main research areas, understand the current state of development and suggest potential future directions by analysing co-citations from 155 papers published between 2003 and 2013 in the most influential academic journals. The main clusters have been identified, mapped, and labelled. Their most active areas on this topic and the most influential and co-cited papers have been identified and described. Also, intra- and inter-cluster knowledge base diversity has been assessed by using indicators stemming from the domains of Information Theory and Biology. A t test has been performed to assess the significance of the inter-cluster diversity. Five co-existing research streams shaping the research field under investigation have been identified and characterized.

How do Miles and Snow's strategic types differ in their knowledge assets? Evidence from Italian SMEs

This paper takes a knowledge-based view of firms and discusses the importance of linking organizational knowledge assets into corporate strategy. In order to conceptualize knowledge assets, the paper adopts the intellectual capital (IC) framework, which distinguishes three IC components: human, structural and relational capital. As regards business strategy, the paper adopts Miles and Snows model, which identifies three strategic types of successful organizations: Defenders, Analysers and Prospectors. The paper explores the ways in which the three strategic types differ in weighting the single components of their IC. This study represents an attempt to extend the Miles and Snow typology including the aspect of knowledge assets. The link between knowledge asset management and strategy is investigated by means of three case studies conducted in Italian small and medium enterprises from the food sector. The paper argues that firms of different Miles and Snow strategic types have different mix of IC components.

Knowledge domain and innovation behaviour: A framework to conceptualize KMSs in small and medium enterprises

Purpose – This study aims to develop a categorization framework for knowledge management systems in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Framework dimensions have been identified as company knowledge domain (organization, marketing and technology) and company innovation behaviour (high and low).Design/methodology/approach – The framework is derived by means of a qualitative approach based on a set of 20 case studies. The cases regard Italian SMEs in the food sector.Findings – Data seem to suggest that knowledge domain and innovation behaviour permit significant distinctions between different kinds of knowledge management systems (KMSs). The features of these KMSs as configurations of technical, organizational and managerial tools are described in this paper with reference to the main knowledge process they are intended to support.Originality/value – The research provides a variety of insights into new ways of conceptualizing KMSs. Moreover, the paper provides some practical examples of successful implemen...

An Application of Data Mining to the Problem of the University Students' Dropout Using Markov Chains

A new application of data mining to the problem of University dropout is presented. A new modeling technique, based on Markov chains, has been developed to mine information from data about the University students’ behavior. The information extracted by means of the proposed technique has been used to deeply understand the dropout problem, to find out the high-risk population and to drive the design of suitable politics to reduce it. To represent the behavior of the students the available data have been modeled as a Markov chain and the associated transition probabilities have been used as a base to extract the aforesaid behavioral patterns. The developed technique is general and can be successfully used to study a large range of decisional problems dealing with data in the form of events or time series. The results of the application of the proposed technique to the students’ data will be presented.

Collaborative network of firms: antecedents and state-of-the-art properties

The concept of collaborative networks has attracted considerable attention, especially in two knowledge domains: innovation and operation management. Although collaborative networks have evolved into many forms, their central role in triggering debates has not gone unnoticed. In this paper, we aim to contribute to these debates through a bibliometric review of a decade of research on collaborative networks (2002–2015). By using a combination of document co-citation and bibliographic coupling analyses, we unveil the origins and evolution of collaborative networks over time by analysing the references from the most important academic contributions. Our goal is threefold: first, to systematise the state of the art in the Input-Process-Output (IPO) framework; second, to elucidate the antecedents of the research field on collaborative networks (research streams originating from the field, main authors and journals) by organising them in six thematic clusters; and third, to show how the antecedents shaped the IPO framework. While ‘collaborative networks’ used to belong to two distinct domains, the research agendas seem to converge because of the interactions between their most active authors. As such, cross-fertilisation occurs with the International Journal of Production Research, which plays a central role in this process.

A New Modeling Technique Based on Markov Chains to Mine Behavioral Patterns in Event Based Time Series

A new modeling technique to mine information from data that are expressed in the form of events associated to entities is presented. In particular such a technique aims at extracting non-evident behavioral patterns from data in order to identify different classes of entities in the considered population. To represent the behavior of the entities a Markov chain model is adopted and the transition probabilities for such a model are computed. The information extracted by means of the proposed technique can be used as decisional support in a large range of problems, such as marketing or social behavioral questions. A case study concerning the university dropout problem is presented together with further development of Markov chain modeling technique in order to improve the prediction and/or interpretation power.

Knowledge management systems and task uncertainty: is Perrow's model a good lens?

This paper focuses on the effectiveness of Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) in settings characterised by different task uncertainty. Drawing on Perrows model of technology and structure, four case studies have been developed. User satisfaction is introduced as a proxy for KMS effectiveness and then as a test of the theoretical propositions developed. The main contribution of the study is that Perrows model can be used to describe the tasks performed by knowledge workers and provide guidelines for the design of the KMS in terms of the degree of control and codification. Where Knowledge Management (KM) tools fit Perrows model, user satisfaction (measured in terms of usefulness, appropriateness to the business and frequency of use) is high. Otherwise, where criticisms are stronger, conflicts with Perrows model emerge.