THE ROLE OF THE INDUSTRIAL POLICY IN ITALY

The aim of this paper is to match the Italian small-medium firms’ (SMEs) need for technological innovation and the state and regional aid programs aimed at supporting innovation and technology. The purpose is to highlight existing capabilities and new opportunities in support of Italian SMEs requirements in innovation. The paper reports the results of two empirical research projects recently carried out at Ceris-Cnr (Institute of Economic Research on Firms and Growth – Italian National Research Council). After a framework of the most important innovation policies the Italian aid programmes for innovation and technology are described. In particular the role of the Italian Regions is analysed in depth. The empirical research confirmed that the approach to innovation of Italian SMEs tends to satisfy the demand of existing market in the best possible way ompared with competitors. Product improvement follows incremental processes. The most common way of introducing new technology is the purchase of new machines and equipment to reduce costs and improve quality. All the industrialised countries tend to favour the linking of the SMEs with external sources of knowledge. The research shows that such a policy clashes with the SMEs’ capacity for absorbing innovation. Most of them lack the technical structures (technical office, design department, R&D laboratory, prototype department, etc.) and graduate staff capable of interfacing with the research world.

International Venturing by Indian IT Firms: A Motive Analysis

This paper examines the motives underlying recent cross border M&A activity undertaken by Indian IT firms during 2000-2006. It hypothesizes that overseas acquisition is the IT firm\u27s response to a dynamic competitive landscape in which it simultaneously leveraged existing capabilities to capture new markets and acquired new capabilities through strategic asset and product seeking acquisitions. The study uses secondary firm level data to undertake a content analysis of public information establishing the multiplicity, diversity and dynamic nature of M&A motives. The study establishes the multiplicity, diversity and dynamic nature of M&A motives, establishing that they are simultaneously asset seeking and asset augmenting

Integration of operations in process systems

The problem of system Integration in the context of an Industrial Enterprise is a multidimensional problem with fundamental dimensions those of: (i) Purpose, goals and objectives, (ii) Overall process operations, (ii) Overall System Design/Redesign, (iii) Information, Data and Software, and (iv) Verification, validation and assurance. Each of the above areas is addressed by respective groups which consider their area as representing the entirety of the problem and they frequently ignore the other important dimensions. The aim of this paper is to consider first the general problem of integration from all its fundamental aspects and focus on the key paradigm of Global Operations. Within this area we consider the issues of system organization and in particular the problems relating to hierarchical organization of the different operational functionalities, the issues of aggregation and disaggregation and the related problems of the "top-down" and "bottom up" approaches. System complexity is considered within this framework and the notion of emergent properties is then considered as a problem of aggregation of behaviours, which may be also seen as projections within the setup of a control and information architecture. Such an architecture is defined for the multi-level hierarchical organisational structure that we consider. We show that systems and control concepts and problems play a central role the development of an overall integration methodology and interpreting the features of the different emergent properties. The subject of modelling emerges with a central role in the effort to develop a methodology for systems integration, as well as quantifying the predictors of relevant emergent properties. The approach introduced here is intimately linked to Multilevel hybrid systems (Hierarchy of Operations), and provides a complementary dimension to issues of System Design (and Re-design) dominated by the theory of Structure Evolving systems [10] (in the total Design and Life-cycle analysis) emerges as the central approach. This paper provides an overview of the subject area and focuses on the development of the general conceptual framework for integration. We additionally develop and propose a systems framework for the evolutionary integration in this paper

On Semi-Industrialized Countries and the Acquisition of Technological Capabilities.

The last decades have witnessed a breaking down of the hitherto quasi-monopoly in industrial and technological development by highly industrialized countries. Man-made changes in comparative advantage due to rapid accumulation of human capital, development of technical institutions, and public policies in support of enterprise development and innovation, have led to the emergence of advanced technical capabilities in a number of semi-industrialized countries. Study of selected instances of their technological achievement show that they cannot be adequately interpreted as necessarily requiring the working of a well integrated national innovation system. They seem to be instead, path, or process, dependent, and determined by the circumstantial convergence of requisite skills, appropriate institutions and supportive public policies.Industrialization; technology; semi-industrialized countries; innovations