The empirical studies relative to the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) case stress the important role played by psychological and social motivations. However, the theories elaborated to cope with this dimension, such as “gift economy”, “epistemic community” or “community of...

This paper casts light on the role of initial code release for providing coordination of joint search processes, i.e., search processes that involve several agents who search together. We develop hypotheses about the role of initial code release for providing coordination, and for whether...

The Italian industrial sector is characterized by a number of peculiarities compared to other advanced countries. One of these is the small average size of its firms. This particular model of organization of production, based on the small dimension and often on informal relationships within and...

This paper analyzes the contribution of Virtual Design Tools (VDTs) to the processes of knowledge replication and recombination in the context of product innovation. On the basis of an in depth case study of two automotive firms engaged in two comparable new product development projects, we show...

This paper examines whether location in strong industrial clusters translates into a higher probability of innovating. A firm-level analysis of the UK and Italy is performed. Innovative activities of firms (European patent data for 1988-98) are related to regional employment, other...