This timely book brings together cutting-edge research on the important subject of science and innovation policies. The contributors – distinguished social science scholars – tackle the key challenges of designing and implementing public policies in the context of the new knowledge economy.

The paper analyzes a peculiar managerial practice, the delegation of decision authority to employees. The practice could enable firms to leverage the external knowledge developed by communities of users and developers. The work focuses on the interaction between firms doing business with...

Entrepreneurial ventures operating in high-tech industries are more and more adopting innovative business models, which are based on use of the market for ideas instead of the market for products or on the leveraging of communities of users and developers. A common characteristic of these...

The paper considers the acquisition of a high-tech start-up and analyzes how the allocation of innovation decision-making powers has an impact on the post-acquisition innovation activity of the target firm. These powers may be delegated to the key inventors of the acquired firm or centralized by...

For the first time, data on individual European higher education institutions (rather than data aggregated at the country level) is used in order to examine a wide range of issues that are both theoretically challenging and relevant from policy-making and societal perspectives. The contributors...

This paper investigates how far in space university knowledge goes to breed the creation of knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs), depending on the nature (either codified or tacit) and quality of this knowledge. We consider the impact of knowledge codified in academic patents and scientific...

This article examines how the scientific specialization of universities impacts new firm creation across industries at the local level. In accordance with the Pavitt-Miozzo-Soete taxonomy, we consider eight industry categories, which reflect the characteristics of firms’ innovation patterns...

In the framework of analyses on the relationship between geography and technological innovation, the role of universities has received considerable attention. Both theoretical and empirical literature has shown that university research positively influences the capacity for innovation of the...

The notion that Information and Communication Technology would have reduced the economic importance of geographic distance has been proposed with energy in the post-Internet literature (Cairncross, 2001). According to this view, the New Economy would work in a space rather than a place, cost of...

This book begins with a theoretical examination of regional innovation systems, agglomeration economics and knowledge spillovers, before going on to examine the same concepts within an empirical framework. Special emphasis is given to the importance of proximity in the formation of regional...