This paper explores how structural properties of small firms’ networks emerge from the ways firms exchange knowledge. In particular we are interested in analysing if and under which conditions the need for knowledge exchange within a set of co-located small firms is able to generate a more or...

Regional economic development has experienced considerable dynamism over recent years. Perhaps the most notable cases were the rise of China and India to emergent country status by the turn of the millennium. With time now for hindsight, this book identifies some of the key forces behind these...

Current traditional technologies, while enabling effective knowledge sharing and accumulation, seem to be less supportive of knowledge organization, use and consensus formation, as well as of collaborative decision making process. To address these limitations and thus to better foster collective...

While online conversations are very popular, the content generated by participants is very often overwhelming, poorly organized and often of questionable quality. In this article we use two methods, a text analysis technique, Vector Space Modeling (VSM) and clustering to create a methodology to...

In today economic environment, innovation is considered the primary source of competitive advantage for companies. The advent of Web 2.0 tools has provided organizations with new models and tools to improve collaboration and co-creation of new knowledge assets. In particular, the shift to Open...

The successful emergence of on-line communities, such as open source software and Wikipedia, seems due to an effective combination of intelligent collective behavior and internet capabilities However, current internet technologies, such as forum, wikis and blogs appear to be less supportive for...

Current research suggests that the process of knowledge creation is both networked and iterative. Synthesising the literature highlights a range of factors for analysis in knowledge-based industries. These factors are then used to examine the biotechnology sector in Queensland Australia,...

Literature about Industrial Districts has largely emphasized the importance of both economic and social factors in determining the competitiveness of these particular firms\' clusters. For thirty years, the Industrial District productive and organizational model represented an alternative to the...

This paper presents a fuzzy real option model for the estimation of the value of an investment in individual compe-tencies. The use of the real option technique is justified on the basis of the following hypotheses: i) either deve-loping or acquiring a competency is a financial investment; ii)...