The main question that guides this paper is how governments are focusing (and must focus) on competence building (education and training) when designing and implementing innovation policies. With this approach, the paper aims at filling the gap between the existing literature on competences on...

Institutions (including regulations) are constitutive elements of innovation systems, and therefore cornerstones of innovation policy. Focusing on (soft and hard) regulation, the paper identifies the most salient regulatory areas from the perspective of the innovation system. When asking about...

In 2006 the European Commission introduced the concept of "Pre-Commercial Procurement" as an instrument to promote innovation and to mitigate grand challenges. One of the main motivations for the support of Pre-Commercial Procurement schemes was to use public needs as a driver for innovation....

Who produces scientific and technical knowledge these days? What type of knowledge is being produced and for what purposes? Why are firms and governments funding research and development? This chapter studies the role of knowledge production (especially R&D activities) in the innovation process...

The concept of a holistic innovation policy is defined in this article, with discussions of what it is, why it is relevant, and how it can be implemented to enhance product innovation. It is shown that the innovation systems approach has diffused rapidly during the latest decades and has...

The concept of a holistic innovation policy is defined in this paper, and it is discussed what it is, why it is relevant and how it can be implemented. One of the main conclusions is that the innovation policies in European countries are still linear (and not holistic), in spite of the fact that...

This paper proposes a new methodology for training in the field of organization development, named development-training. The approach on the base of the methodology come from a research project of Ceris-CNR and the Association Motiva; it is inspired by complexity, constructivism, personalism,...

This paper focuses on the diversification strategies of the largest manufacturing groups operating in Italy between 1987 and 1993. The analysis of diversification at the firm level and at the industry level is followed with an empirical investigation on the links between the different areas of...

Conventional explanations of diversification and multinationality both point to size/growth related motives and firm-specific intangible assets as the driving forces. However, previous empirical studies have rarely exploited this commonality by investigating multinationality and diversification...

This paper discusses the results of a research project on new technology-based firms. The aim of the project is to analyze the innovation activity of new technology-based firms. The focus is on the process of knowledge creation that fuels innovation. The analysis is based on an empirical...