The paper investigates the diversified patterns of outsourcing in the Lombardy region and relates them to the probability of introducing product and process innovation. Based on a large firm-level survey, we show that outsourcing processes are strongly regionally embedded and that offshoring is...

Pervasive outsourcing is transforming business models and productive relations in advanced manufacturing areas. In particular, the international dimension of outsourcing, off-shoring, has been attracting great attention, as it leads to the emergence of global value chains and internationally...

The paper focuses on some organizational dynamics that have characterized pharmaceutical industry in the last thirty years, when biotechnology and the development of life sciences have defined a new technological paradigm, reshaping many aspects of the industry, especially the organization of...

This paper presents a critical review of the Global Value Chain literature in light of the “Technological Capabilities” approach to innovation in LDCs. Participation in GVC is beneficial for firms in LDCs, which are bound to source technology internationally. However, the issues of learning...

This paper investigates the skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world’s largest incubator of open source software activity. We test the hypothesis that skill variety of...

This paper has been prompted by an increasing sense of dissatisfaction with the current fashion of criticising the so-called “Linear Model” of innovation. LM). The frequency and hostility of remarks against the linear model raises the suspicion that something is wrong indeed. Why so much...

We investigate the trade-off between FDI and international outsourcing of interme-diate inputs by a producer of a final good. To this extent, we characterize an industry equilibrium where fixed sunk costs exist for the setting up of foreign subsidiaries and the latter are heterogeneous in...

Modularity has gained recently a growing attention in the management literature as a key to explain the contemporary trends of industrial dynamics, according to which external «market-based» economies have become predominant over internal «bureaucracy-based» economies. Nowadays global...

This paper examines entry and survival in the US software market of a sample of firms based in India, Ireland and Israel. Our investigation focuses on pre-entry technological capabilities, international linkages and home based experience as determinants of the firm entry decision and post-entry...

The aim of this paper is to look at knowledge integration as an organizational capability which leaves traces in intra-organizational networks. To do so, this paper develops a methodology to identify and capture with quantitative data the key characteristics of those organizations that integrate...