According to the last GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) surveys, Italy has one of the lowest rates of entrepreneurial activity among innovation driven countries. Moreover, Italy is characterized by large territorial differences in the entrepreneurial rates. The main aims of this paper are to...

This paper analyzes whether belonging to a business group enhances firms' propensity for and intensity of R&D based on the greater opportunities to finance and co-ordinate R&D strategies and internalize knowledge spillovers. Compared with the existing literature, this paper has the following...

The smart specialisation strategy (S3) requires the identification in each region of one or more thematic areas where R&D and innovation policy should be focused on to create and sustain a competitive advantage. Not necessarily the chosen areas will belong to the core, general purpose technology...

The aim of this paper is to empirically verify the hypothesis of a U shaped relation between size and unrelated diversification. Specifically we test the so called “survivalist hypothesis” according to which unrelated diversification is observed not only in large firms but also in small...

Several empirical papers have shown that firms belonging to business groups have a higher propensity to engage in R&D. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate that this higher propensity depends on the ownership share of controlled companies, besides the presence of co-ordination mechanisms....

In this paper we analyse whether belonging to a business group enhances firms’ R&D propensity and intensity as a result of the greater opportunities to co-ordinate R&D strategies and internalize the positive spillovers. We analyse the organization of R&D management within a business group and...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are supposed to be less likely to conduct formal R&D because of the lack of financial resources, weaker competencies, and the absence of scale and scope economies. These limitations may be overcome when an SME belongs to a business group. Empirical...