In the increasingly knowledge-based economy, the role of the service sector, and in particular, of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS), is widely acknowledged. KIBS are considered 'bridges of innovation'. Furthermore, in addition to this pivotal role in supporting the competitiveness...

In today's business and academic arenas, design is more and more viewed as an important strategic resource. In fact, over the last couple of years, we have seen a real explosion in business and research literature that see scholars and companies alike trying to continuously link design to...

Today, more than ever, products determine their own market presence through the meanings that they assume and the symbolic value that they exude. For this reason, an increasing number of companies are trying to enrich brands and products with new cultural values and messages. The cultural...

Since the beginning of the 1990s, innovation management literature has attempted to overcome some oversimplified dichotomies coming from well-established theories (e.g., open vs. closed, external vs. internal, cooperation vs. competition, knowledge vs. learning). The design-push approach to the...

In the ‘knowledge economy’, knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) are a key driver for innovation and competitiveness. The internationalization of these businesses raises challenges given their specificities such as knowledge intensity, the importance of customer interaction and...

New Product Development (NPD) service providers have assumed a prominent role in enabling a more widespread use of Open Innovation strategies, thanks to their ability to acquire, recombine and sell specialized knowledge and technologies. This paper adopts the point of view of the NPD service...