We here argue that patent brokers do not only stay in between supply and demand of innovation, but play in between executing complex transactions and taking entrepreneurial risk. In doing so they serve a support function to R&D managers of firms adopting various approaches to technological...

The recent increase in patenting by university researchers has concerned observers asking if increased patenting is associated with less open publication of research results by university researchers. Access to university-based research knowledge is critical to innovation in many areas of...

This paper aims at exploring the dynamics of industrial R&D activities in large companies. Through the use of four case studies of the largest R&D centers of Italian firms operating in different industrial sectors (telecommunications, automotive, rubber and plastics, and semiconductors), we try...

The case of Pisa, Italy, emerges as an effective representation of the possible difficulties and opportunities in the development of HT in peripheral regions, as well as of the challenges and phases that a knowledge-based local economic policy might face. The study by Scuola Sant’Anna (Di...

This paper discusses four types of strategic decisions in technology management in established firms. It is well known that deciding between exploration and exploitation in R&D, and eventually combining the two strategies, is a crucial issue. However, we argue that more attention, both from a...

Two bodies of literature converge to explain regions in the global knowledge economy and to identify the factors that lead to competitiveness and innovation of a local economic system. The first section of this statement summarizes the progress in regional studies from a purely locational...

It is now clear that emerging economies are gaining increasing importance in the global innovation system. Their actual role is perhaps the central question driving the growing interest in this topic and to which this paper attempts to respond. Although several authors have identified and...

Outlining and characterizing the antecedents of Radical Innovation is the only way to unveil the complex traits of the path to those innovations that dramatically and irreversibly alter the status quo of the economic and industrial context and structure in which they come to life. The two brief...

An intense debate is going on about more “open” strategies that are supposedly diffusing in industrial R&D. We here discuss the relationship between such practices and Human Resources Management (HRM) in industrial R&D Labs. The paper in fact aims at representing an original attempt of...

This paper investigates how companies are facing the social media revolution en course. Web 2.0 technology has forced firms to reconsider their business models and strategies. As well as it happened in the first digital revolution led by Web 1.0 technology, the advent of the second digital...