The paper aims at explaining the changes in how economic actors and their organizations acquire and coordinate innovative and productive capabilities. Through the illustrative evidence of organizational change occurred in the automobile industry in the area of Turin over the last 50 years, the...

The design and development of electric vehicles (EVs) is a complex and distributed process that has led to the creation of large partnerships the aim of which is to learn and acquire selective technological competencies, including those developed outside the car industry. The introduction of...

The article investigates the effects of the agglomeration of technological activities on the growth in regional productivity, applying the notion of pecuniary knowledge externalities. Pecuniary knowledge externalities enable one to appreciate both the gains and losses associated with the...

This unique Handbook explores both the economics of the firm and the theory of the firm, two areas which are traditionally treated separately in the literature. On the one hand, the former refers to the structure, organization and boundaries of the firm, while the latter is devoted to the...

This Handbook brings together 49 international specialists to address an issue of increasing importance for the world’s post-industrial economies; innovation as it relates to services.

Technological knowledge can be understood as a collective good only when its production requires the absorption and integration of external knowledge. Such external knowledge is the outcome of R&D investments that cannot be fully appropriated by firms and generate spillovers. The exploitation of...

This paper articulates the hypothesis that there is an optimal size of knowledge pools. Too little a density of innovation activities reduces the accessibility of external knowledge. Too large a density enhances congestion and reduces appropriability. Firms can benefit from actual increasing...