Lorenzo Ardito

This study investigates the association between the intensity of innovation activities that firms perform offshore with host-country inventors (IHCI) and the time before back-shoring, a rising form of de-internationalization. IHCI is viewed as a pull factor that alleviates liabilities of both foreignness and outsidership, hence creating incentives for more extended offshoring stays. Additionally, the study investigates whether specific types of IHCI are associated with offshoring duration, namely IHCI leading to exploratory innovation and IHCI leading to an innovation portfolio with a broad scope. The study employs a Cox model to analyze 301 offshoring initiatives implemented by US firms, partially or totally ended through back-shoring. Results suggest that IHCI is associated with longer offshore duration. Further, duration is longer when IHCI leads to a broader innovation portfolio.

While it is acknowledged that higher capacity utilisation results in efficient resource allocation, which could improve firms' productivity and innovation in emerging markets, research on which firms maximise their capacity to improve their innovation is unexplored. We draw insights from the resource-based view theory to develop and test a theoretical model to examine how various ownership structures (i.e., domestic, foreign, and state) moderate the relationship between capacity utilisation and product innovation. The empirical model is based on a sample of 80,587 firms from numerous emerging markets. Results reveal that capacity utilisation negatively influences product innovation, considering the specific context of emerging economies. Furthermore, we find that (i) domestic ownership positively moderates the relationship between capacity utilisation and product innovation, such that any increase in domestic ownership weakens the negative effect of capacity utilisation; (ii) foreign ownership negatively moderates the relationship between capacity utilisation and product innovation, such that any increase in the extent of foreign ownership strengthens the negative effect of capacity utilisation; (iii) state ownership negatively moderates the relationship between capacity utilisation and product innovation, such that any increase in state ownership strengthens the negative effect of capacity utilisation. Some implications for theory, practice, and policy are further discussed.

The relevance of the sharing economy model has attracted the academic interest, leading to distinct lines of inquiry. However, an empirical examination of the factors influencing customer satisfaction in the sharing economy context – regarded as the degree to which a customer is willing to recommend a purchased service – is yet to be conducted. We aim to fill this gap by examining the influence of some relevant barriers related to the adoption of sharing economy on customer satisfaction across diverse sectors. We conduct our analysis based on data from the Flash Eurobarometer 467. Results reveal differences in the barriers-customer satisfaction relationships across sectors. Lack of trust and confidentiality issues negatively affect customer satisfaction in all sectors, inadequate ICT infrastructure has a significant negative effect only in the accommodation sector, and the remaining barriers mainly have a negative influence in sectors as transport, accommodation, food-related services.

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been skyrocketing the field of photovoltaics (PVs), displaying remarkable efficiencies and emerging as a greener alternative to the current commercial technologies. With the ongoing European Green Deal and the REPowerEU Plan, the European Union (EU) emphasizes the need of creating a novel, strong PV value and know-how chain, which PSCs could provide. Here, we provide a map of the EU-funded projects related to PSCs and rationalize them into seven main research domains. Furthermore, drawing on the identified frame, we conduct a worldwide patenting activity analysis, with a focus on the European context, to highlight the development trends of the technological outcomes originating from research on PSCs. Overall, our analysis delineates the current stage of PSC research and technology development, which can become a reference for not only researchers and technologists but also stakeholders and policymakers aiming at developing a European sovereignty in this fast-moving field.

Challenges and opportunities:

• In order to attain perovskite solar cell (PSC) commercialization, further investments in lead-free PSC development as well as the adaptation of toxicity-related policies to regulate PSC disposal might result strategic. Furthermore, scalability issues could be overcome with the formation of an innovation ecosystem that merges academic research and industrial knowledge.
• Although European organizations own highly valuable patent families, the global patent activity on PSCs is excessively abundant. We propose that European organizations invest in the already-existing patent activity and proceed by developing domains where Europe has the lowest patent activity (physicochemical characterization, lead-free PSCs, and flexibility).
• Because the majority of inventions originate in the academic field, we suggest that policymakers move toward more academia-industry cooperation and technology-readiness-oriented funding strategies

The European Commission (EC) has funded perovskite solar cell (PSC)-related projects since 2013, promoting their advancement within several subject areas. In this work, we provide a map to navigate PSC-related projects sponsored by the EC, dividing them into seven major topics and framing them into the global state of the art. Moreover, we delineate PSCs’ innovation stage through a worldwide patent analysis, which reveals that although European patent families are considered to be of greater quality, most patent families originate outside Europe.

Smart city transitions are a fast-proliferating example of urban innovation processes, and generating the insight required to support their unfolding should be a key priority for innovation scholars. However, after decades of research, governance mechanisms remain among the most undertheorized and relatively overlooked dimensions of smart city transitions. To address this problem, we conduct a systematic literature review that connects the fragmented knowledge accumulated through the observation of smart city transition dynamics in 6 continents, 43 countries, and 146 cities and regions. Our empirical work is instrumental in achieving a threefold objective. First, we assemble an overarching governance framework that expands the theoretical foundations of smart city transitions from an innovation management perspective. Second, we elaborate on this framework by providing a thorough overview of documented governance practices. This overview highlights the strengths and weaknesses in the current approaches to the governance of smart city transitions, leading to evidence-based strategic recommendations. Third, we identify and address critical knowledge gaps in a future research agenda. In linking innovation theory and urban scholarship, this agenda suggests leveraging promising cross-disciplinary connections to support more intense research efforts probing the interaction patterns between institutional contexts, urban digital innovation, and urban innovation ecosystems.

This paper examines brokerage dynamics in technology transfer networks (TTNs), i.e., hybrid networks of different actors operating in the transitional area between knowledge and business ecosystems (i.e., innovation ecotones), with research organizations as anchor tenants. This particular type of network is gaining increasing attention. However, despite evidence of the importance of brokerage dynamics for knowledge mobility anchored in science and technology research, three main questions remain open: Who acts as network broker in TTNs? What are their specific functions? What mechanisms do they adopt to support these functions? To answer these questions, we conducted an in-depth multi-case study focusing on three European centers of excellence in scientific research, namely the University of Cambridge (UK), the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), and the Italian Institute of Technology (Italy). We find that institutional actors as well as individuals act as network brokers in TTNs, and that brokerage manifests with varying degrees of formalization related to the TTN's level of maturity. We also identify six network brokerage functions, namely conflict resolution, spreading knowledge, linking idea fragments, connecting problems to solutions, expanding the network, and strengthening the network, and five mechanisms, namely endorsement, mediation, events, antennas, and digital support systems, that support these functions.

Recent technological advances have contributed to the rise of a new economic paradigm, the so-called sharing economy (SE), where peer-to-peer digital platforms allow individuals to temporarily share their assets. It has involved several industrial sectors generating significant economic impacts worldwide and attracting interest of the academic community. Much emphasis has been put on studying the conditions affecting its growth or establishment. However, these studies have been focused on one or few sectors, or on specific platforms. Moreover, most studies have mainly investigated factors affecting the participation in these platforms at the individual (i.e., user) level even if it has been hinted that the institutional context (i.e., cities or countries) may also affect the state of a SE model. As a result, there is much knowledge about micro-level factors explaining the state of SE, but a comprehensive macro-level analysis is still overlooked. Thus, we aim to fill this gap by performing an empirical analysis on European countries to scope the state of SE and its institutional antecedents.

The present paper aims at understanding whether and under which circumstances leveraging scientific knowledge helps teams to develop technologies that can be applied to diverse domains (i.e., more general purpose technologies). Specifically, the relationship between the presence of scientists within inventing teams and the generality of the technologies they create is examined. Furthermore, we asses if the degree of team internationalization and the extent of team experience impact the above-mentioned relationship. We develop a set of hypotheses and test them on a sample of 5,390 patents belonging to the aerospace sector and granted by the USPTO. Our results outline that the presence of scientists within inventing teams is negatively related to the development of more general purpose solutions. In addition, we highlight that this negative effect is mitigated when scientists work within an international team, while it is amplified when scientists repeatedly work together.

Debate surrounding the performance outcomes of a firm’s strategic commitment to digitalization and environmental sustainability (namely, digital orientation and environmental orientation, respectively) is gathering pace. Despite progress, there remains no conclusive evidence on whether, and how digital orientation and environmental orientations enhance innovation outcomes, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, this paper examines the direct and complementary effects of digital and environmental orientations on the likelihood that SMEs introduce product and/or process innovations (i.e., product and process innovation performance). The study tests its hypotheses on a sample of 369 North American SMEs. Results demonstrate that digital and environmental orientation have a positive direct effect on product and process innovation performance. Instead, the complementary effect of pursuing a dual strategy towards digitization and environmental sustainability has a negative impact on process innovation performance and is not significant for product innovation performance. These results add new insights to theory linking strategic orientation to innovation performance, with specific regard to smaller firms.

Extant research has neglected an in-depth examination of the relationship between external knowledge sourcing and the ability of firms to balance radical and incremental innovation activities (i.e., innovation ambidexterity). Therefore, the present paper seeks to reveal the effects of knowledge sourcing activities directed toward three relevant supply chain stakeholders (i.e., suppliers, customers, and competitors) on innovation ambidexterity. Based on a sample of 5897 firms that participated in the Italian Innovation Survey (IIS) (2008–2010), we reveal that sourcing knowledge from suppliers, customers, and competitors has a positive influence on innovation ambidexterity, hence confirming our hypotheses. Specifically, suppliers represent the most relevant knowledge source, followed by customers and, then, competitors. These results expand the literature discussing the relationship between inbound open innovation and ambidexterity performance, which falls short of a clear understanding of whether and the extent to which sourcing knowledge from supply chain stakeholders facilitates achieving innovation ambidexterity.

Developing marketable products based on proprietary technologies is the key to success in many firms, but it is still a big challenge. Factors explaining when technologies are more likely to lead to a marketable product are not fully understood yet. This gap calls for further research on this important topic. The present paper addresses this issue by focusing on specific characteristics of technologies - i.e., their nature as breakthrough technologies and their generality - which can be considered as suitable predictors of new product introduction (NPI). Specifically, we study if and how these characteristics affect the likelihood of NPI. Moreover, in our research model, we argue that the effects of technology characteristics on NPI are contingent upon the degree of a firm's R&D internationalisation. We examine this moderating firm-level factor in a cross-level study design. We develop several hypotheses and test them with objective patent and novel trademark data. In detail, the analyses are based on a unique and longitudinal sample of 11,385 patents and 1,783 trademarks registered at the USPTO in the energy conservation sector by 696 different companies. By adopting hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), we reveal that the likelihood of NPI is positively related to the breakthrough nature of technologies; this effect turns negative when the level of breakthrough nature is very high. Instead, technological generality has a negative influence on NPI. Finally, the degree to which firms internationalise their R&D activities negatively moderates those relationships.

This paper investigates the Augmented Reality (AR) technology with a novel approach based on patent research. We searched the USPTO for AR-related granted patents in the period 1993–2018, we selected and manually browse a total of 2,373, we classified them in five key technological classes i.e., display device, tracking, user interaction, application, and system, and we finally analyzed the results. The main contribution of this paper is the investigation of the technological trends, with outcomes that can be useful for researchers and developers for technical steering, but also for policymakers, managers and entrepreneurs for technology scouting and forecasting. Our study found that AR technological development has especially increased in the last decade. In particular, we evidenced a remarkable steady of 82 % annual growth rate of the number of granted patents after 2012. From geographical distribution, we found that North America is the leader (68 %); Asia (18 %) and Europe (13 %) are lagging behind despite dedicated Industry 4.0 policies actuated by the governments. Another nontrivial result is the incoherency between the owners of a high quantity of patents and those highly impacting. In fact, only Microsoft Corporation and Amazon Technologies are at the same time in the top 10 of the most patent-intensive organizations and the top 10 of highly impacting organizations. Moreover, the majority of the patents are owned by companies, albeit some of the highly impacting ones come from universities or research centers. These findings provide theoretical, managerial, and policy implications for future research activities in the AR domain.

The present paper seeks to unveil the influence of the decision to ally with partners of diverse types and from different geographical locations (i.e., the internationalization of alliance portfolio diversity) on the ability of firms to balance radical and incremental innovation efforts (i.e., innovation ambidexterity). We address this goal by embracing the microfoundational approach since we recognize that, eventually, the ability/willingness of a firm's employees allow leveraging the opportunities of strategic alliances. With this in mind, it is also scrutinized the contingent effects of the adoption of motivation-enhancing human resource management (HRM) practices, as individual incentives (financial and non-financial), on the relationship between the internationalization of alliance portfolio diversity and innovation ambidexterity. Results reveal that the internationalization of alliance portfolio diversity has an inverted U-shaped effect on innovation ambidexterity and that the adoption of financial incentives positively moderates (threshold shift) this effect. Instead, no conclusive results may be provided concerning the moderating effect of the adoption of non-financial incentives.

This paper, by analysing technology attributes, examines the degree to which companies build on environmental technologies generated by public research organisations (PROs) to develop the related technological solutions. Three main technology attributes have been considered: (i) the level of establishment, (ii) the scope of application, and (iii) the technological breadth. We have then developed three hypotheses about the influence exerted by these characteristics and have chosen the green energy as the field of investigation. The analysis is based on a sample of 4363 green energy patents registered by PROs at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in the 1976–2011 period. The results of a set of Tobit regression have revealed that the level of establishment, the scope of application and the technological breadth of public environmental technologies are positively related to the technological development of an industry. Hence, these findings can help advance the current debate on whether the green outputs of public research can stimulate firms to generate environmental technologies.

The development of smart cities is becoming more and more based on knowledge management (KM) frameworks. This leads to new managerial challenges, which reflect the complexity of KM governance and processes issues of smart city projects as well as the need to manage knowledge that originates both within and beyond projects' boundaries. However, in-depth research on the development of smart cities from a managerial and KM perspective has remained scant. In detail, although universities are deemed to be responsible for the competitiveness and superiority of knowledge-based ecosystems, like smart city projects, the different roles they play in such projects when dealing with KM governance and processes issues are still understudied. Therefore, by conducting an exploratory case study of 20 smart city projects, this paper aims to scrutinize how universities manage the KM governance issue when internal knowledge is used, the KM governance issue when external knowledge is used, the KM processes issue when internal knowledge is used, and the KM processes issue when external knowledge is used. Results reveal that universities act as knowledge intermediaries, knowledge gatekeepers, knowledge providers, and knowledge evaluators.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging paradigm in the ICT sector and it is at the center of many current political and economic debates. Scholars, executives, and policymakers are becoming increasingly interested in understanding how to turn the IoT into reality, since various technological constraints (e.g., standardization and interoperability) limit the possibility of realizing an inclusive IoT information network. These constraints are exacerbated by the lack of a clear picture of the innovation dynamics and technology evolution of the IoT. This paper seeks to address this gap by mapping the development of IoT technologies. In particular, we have collected 61,972 IoT patents filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty in the period 2000–2012. We analyze temporal trends, cross-country dynamics and identity of the applicants. Moreover, we provide insights about the development of the most relevant IoT technologies by looking at triadic patent families.

This paper investigates whether and how the relationship between knowledge maturity and innovation value depends on firm age and size. Thus, we seek to advance the search and recombinant perspective of innovation by revealing that the successful recombination of knowledge inputs of different ages is strictly related to structural characteristics of innovating firms. Specifically, we contend that older firms outperform younger ones when they employ mature knowledge; conversely, younger firms are more able to exploit nascent and middle-aged knowledge. Regarding firm size, we expect that larger firms present a greater capability to innovate by using both nascent and very-well mature knowledge, while smaller firms develop more valuable innovative solutions when they build upon knowledge with a moderate level of maturity. These ideas are empirically tested on a sample of 5575 patented inventions registered by 298 biotechnology firms at the U.S.PTO., and our results offer support for the proposed conjectures.

Prior research has argued that external knowledge sourcing can be supported by effective strategic human resource (HR) practices. However, whether and how the adoption of new organizational mechanisms in group settings influences the relationship between external search strategies and innovation performance represents an unanswered question. Therefore, the present paper aims to explore the relationship between the breadth of external knowledge sourcing (i.e., external search breadth) and product innovation by unveiling the moderating effects of strategic HR practices, as represented by the implementation of heterogeneous work groups and brainstorming sessions. On the basis of data from the Italian Innovation Survey, our results reveal that external search breadth is curvilinearly (inverted U) related to product innovation, and its negative effects occur later in the presence of heterogeneous work groups and brainstorming sessions.

This study analyzes how general purpose technologies are developed within the green energy field, by examining the relationship between search breadth across diverse knowledge domains and the technological generality of the resulting inventions. Particularly, we investigate if this relationship is moderated by the R&D team composition, focusing on size and degree of geographic dispersion across countries. Based on a sample of 88,748 green energy patents, we demonstrate that search breadth is curvilinearly related to an invention’s technological generality, and that large and dispersed teams allow organizations to benefit from a wider search breadth.

Eco-innovations are being recognized as fundamental means to foster sustainable development, as well as to create new business opportunities. Nowadays, the eco-innovation concept is gaining ground within both academic and practitioner studies with the attempt to better understand the main dynamics underlying its nature and guide policymakers and companies in supporting its development. This paper contributes to the extant literature on eco-innovation by providing a comprehensive overview of the evolution of a specific type of eco-innovations that are playing a crucial role in the current socio-economic agenda, namely low-carbon energy technologies. Accordingly, we focus our attention on the related patenting activity of different countries and organizations over time, as well as on influencing policy initiatives and events. Hence, we collected 131,661 patents granted at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (U.S.PTO.) between 1971 and 2010, and belonging to the “Nuclear power generation”, “Alternative energy production”, and “Energy conservation” technological classes, as indicated by the International Patent Classification (IPC) Green Inventory. Our findings report the development trends of low-carbon energy technologies, as well as identify major related environmental programs, historical events, and private sector initiatives explaining those trends, hence revealing how these different circumstances have significantly influenced their development over time.