This paper explores the drivers of inter-firm R&D collaborations in a particular type of innovation network, the technological districts created in Italy under a specific public policy to promote innovation. The empirical analysis used an original database containing information on research...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the technology transfer between public research institutes and users, in particular to measure the absorption intensity of technology within a regional system of innovation. This research uses data from the balance sheets (e.g. turnover, etc.) of the...

The National Council of Research (CNR), the largest public research body in Italy, has, from 1995 to 1998, tried a technological transfer (TT) virtual network with the aim of stimulating and coordinating initiatives for matching the supply of public scientific research and the innovation demand...

In recent decades firms have intensified the exploration of external sources of knowledge to enhance their innovation capabilities. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the factors that affect the importance of academic knowledge for firms’ innovative activities. An integrated approach...

The numerous studies made of the persistence of the co-operative movement during the course of the 20th century, have often distinguished between economic efficiency and the ethical values (or ideologies) in question, as if the two were separate phenomena moving in parallel directions. However,...

After a quick profile of Italian foreign direct investments since 1900 and a short review of the main explanations of the lagged multinational growth by Italian manufacturing companies, a quick glimpse of business histories is given to the only two still today living "old protagonists" (Pirelli,...

The economic performance of a country depends, among other things, on the strategies and structures of its firms. In the framework that is designed by institutions and policies and determined by technology and macroeconomic cycles, entrepreneurs decide how to allocate available resources in...