Purpose – This paper attempts to interpret Foresight in the light of the Triple Helix concept. Design/methodology/approach – The paper explores, in the light of the Triple Helix framework, the architecture of a Technology Foresight project which was carried out in Piemonte (Italy) in 2006,...

It is widely acknowledged that firms performing R&D investments are very likely to undergo financial constraints due to their specific characteristics, which make external debt an imperfect substitute for internal finance, especially for small sized enterprises (Carpenter and Petersen, 2002; Hall,...

This paper investigates the relationship between finance and R&D for a panel of more than 1000 Italian manufacturing firms. While Italian firms obtain a significant share of their financing from debt, the results from a unique survey show that firms use virtually no debt to finance R&D. Because...