This timely book brings together cutting-edge research on the important subject of science and innovation (S&I) 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. They provide an extensive overview of the most advanced methods for designing, monitoring, and evaluating S&I policies, and analyze current applications in a wide-ranging selection of fields along the innovation supply chain, from legal and institutional landscapes to the industrial sector. Topics discussed include technology transfer from higher education institutions, innovation support at industry level, measures sustaining venture capital, and firm internationalization processes. Bridging policy research and policy making via authoritative 'real-world' studies, this book will be warmly welcomed by both academics and policy makers with an interest in the design and implementation of public policies supporting S&I. Contributors: C. Amorim Varum, C. Antonelli, F. Bertoni, M.G. Colombo, A. Croce, C. Franzoni, A. Geuna, L. Grilli, A. Hughes, P. Landoni, B. Lepori, B. Leten, B. Moore, S. Murtinu, L. Piscitello, E. Reale, C. Rossi-Lamastra, S. Slipersaeter, T. Ulrichsen, B. Van Looy

This book offers a distinctive analysis of the relations and interplay between the internal activities of firms, their changing boundaries, and increasing reliance on networks and alliances with other firms. The contributors offer a blend of theoretical and empirical studies; they are based on a set of related perspectives in modern economics, including transaction cost economics, competence and resource-based theories of the firm, evolutionary economics and the theories of foreign direct investments and the multinational enterprise. The unifying concern shared by the different studies is the need to model firm behaviour and inter firm cooperative activities in terms of knowledge growth and competence building rather than merely in terms of cost-reduction; they emphasize learning processes and dynamic efficiency rather than efficient allocation of given resources.

Series Information:
Routledge Studies in Organizations and Networks

This book addresses the organizational design of entrepreneurial ventures. While many definitions of organizational design exist, the authors consider it as consisting of two main dimensions - the organizational structure of the firm and the human resource management practices. The authors focus on entrepreneurial ventures operating in high-tech industries because these firms have characteristics that generate salient organizational challenges and require appropriate design choices. First, high-tech entrepreneurial ventures operate in high-velocity environments where rapid changes require decision-makers to timely process a large amount of information and cope with uncertainty. Moreover, most high-tech entrepreneurial ventures are founded by teams of high-skilled individuals, who, in turn, hire highly skilled employees. The human capital of founders and key employees, as reflected in their education and work experience, is the main source of competitive advantage for these firms but creates major organizational challenges. After the initial introduction, Section 2 illustrates the general contextual characteristics of high-tech entrepreneurial ventures that pose organizational design challenges different from those of both incumbent firms and low-tech ventures. Next, the authors present the state of the art on the main dimensions of high-tech entrepreneurial ventures' organizational design. Section 3, in particular, focuses on the relevant elements of organizational structure while in Section 4, the literature on human resource management practices is reviewed. Section 5 moves from the premise that high-tech entrepreneurial ventures are heterogeneous across several dimensions and highlights prominent factors that shape their organizational design. Section 6 concludes by summarizing its main points and suggesting directions for future research.