Exploring causal interactions between blood pressure and RR interval at the respiratory frequency

The mechanisms underlying the relationship between RR interval and systolic arterial pressure (SAP) variability at the respiratory frequency are still object of discussion. In this study, the information on directionality provided by causal cross-spectral analysis was exploited to infer possible influences of respiration on cardiovascular parameters variability. The ability of causal analysis to account for directionality in RR-SAP interrelationships in presence of respiratory exogenous effects was first tested on model simulations. Hence, real data measured on healthy subjects during spontaneous and paced breathing at 0.25 Hz were analysed. The results obtained in real data were consistent with simulations, thus supporting the hypothesis of different influences of respiration on SAP and RR interval variability under different physiological conditions

Pursuing innovative actions during Covid-19 crisis: a qualitative analysis of family firms’ resilience

Purpose: The study aims to broaden and refine the extant theory in the area of resilience in family firms during a grand challenge such as Covid-19. More specifically, the study aims to explore how characteristics that normally contribute to the resilience of family businesses also influence their innovative actions when facing a grand challenge Design/methodology/approach. This study reviews what has been written on resilience in family firms and their innovative actions in the exceptional context of Covid-19. Then, through an inductive approach based on multiple case studies, qualitative data (primary and secondary sources of information) collected from five Italian family businesses that have demonstrated success in responding to Covid-19 are triangulated. Findings. The findings seem to reveal that, during Covid-19, some features that normally contribute to the resilience of family firms (i.e. trust, long-term orientation, centralized and personalized authority structures, and patient capital) also contribute to their resilience, through innovative actions, to react to the Covid-19 grand challenge. Originality of the study. The study reveals that a further element (namely purpose driven orientation) not previously discussed in family business literature allowed the firms analyzed to be resilient during the Covid-19. Drawing on these findings, our paper aims to enrich the current understanding of family firms’ resilience for both academics and managers

How to Develop Collaboration in Drug Development Process: The Role of Professional Service Firms

The innovation chain of the pharmaceutical industry is more and more complex. In particular, a new type of players, the start-ups founded by researchers (Academic Start-ups) have proven to be particularly effective in the first steps of exploring new, radically innovative technologies. These small start-ups miss the financial resources and the industrial experience necessary to embark in the later stage of technologies‘ development. To overcome these limits, what academic start-ups require the most is a collaborative linkage with large biotech and pharma companies. To such end, Business Development Professionals are offering their services to academic start-ups, to set up a collaborative linkage with potential partners. Our article investigates the process of engagement between Academic Start-ups and Business Development Professionals and in particular, we focus on the factors that influence collaboration between the two actors. In order to investigate the development process of collaboration we conducted an exploratory study trough the submission of a semi-structured questionnaire covering different aspects of the engagement process to a sample of business professionals. The study provide first evidences about the main factors that prevent the development of collaborations and provides some suggestions to overcome the challenges that both parts found in the collaboration process

The Entrepreneurial University: How to Develop the Entrepreneurial Orientation of Academia

In the last years, universities have assumed a prominent role in the science and technology-based economic development. The concept of entrepreneurial university, a key concept in the triple helix model developed by Etzkowitz, identifies the evolution of the university role with the addition to the traditional missions of university (education and research) of a third mission that is to contribute to the economic development through the transfer of research results from the laboratory to the economic system. The objective of the research is to analyze how universities are implementing this new mission and investigate factors affecting their entrepreneurial orientation. More specifically, our paper aims to investigate the existence of a relationship among the entrepreneurial orientation of university and some factors representing the internal and external context in which the university is involved

The human side of entrepreneurship: an empirical investigation of relationally embedded ties with stakeholders

Purpose – Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt) is strongly purpose-oriented and characterized by a focus on inclusiveness and social and environmental sustainability, with attention to both internal and external stakeholders and their needs. In the attempt to provide new research in this field, this study aims to conduct an empirical investigation within the theory of HumEnt and, in particular, of the Human Resource Orientation (HRO) model among Italian Small and Medium-size Enterprises. Design/methodology/approach – Based on quantitative data, this study used a deductive approach to investigate the relationship between the HumEnt model and firms’ relational embeddedness with different types of stakeholders (value chain stakeholders and societal stakeholders, respectively). More concretely, to investigate the relationships between the dimensions of the HumEnt model and firms’ relational embeddedness, partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied.Findings – Findings of this study suggest that Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) directly contributes only to value chain embeddedness. However, the results also show that if EO is mediated by an HRO (i.e. companies with a high HRO), a high level of societal embeddedness is also present. Originality/value – This study represents a first attempt to provide comprehensive empirical evidence about the different dimensions characterizing the HumEnt theoretical model, and to highlight their relevance in supporting companies’ relational embeddedness capacity with different categories of stakeholders

Adopting new technologies during the crisis: An empirical analysis of agricultural sector

Research and development in agricultural sector are becoming a crucial issue, especially to answer to growing global market needs and, in general, for rural innovation development. The innovation process involves stakeholders of all levels and rural development requires both personal farmers' characteristics along with favourable socio-political and infrastructural environment. Many countries and governments have executed innovation projects for agricultural firms, involving a number of actors from the public and private sectors. However, the literature lacks of studies that investigate the identification of the main factors that determine the agricultural entrepreneurs' probability to adopt new technologies during a crisis context. Thus, through the adoption of the Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour, this study aims at filling this lack. More specifically, the exploratory empirical analysis focuses on a sample of 130 agricultural entrepreneurs operating in a rural developing Italian region, during the historical context of global pandemic crisis of COVID-19. The results provided several insights showing the factors that influence the adoption of technologies, such as the Attitude to Environmental-Economic Sustainability and the Planned Behavioural Control. An important role is also assumed by the past farmer's technological experience. The paper offers implications for entrepreneurs and public governmen

Identifying entrepreneurial opportunities during crises: a qualitative study of Italian firms

Purpose – Recognizing novel entrepreneurial opportunities arising from a crisis is of paramount importance for firms. Hence, understanding the pivotal factors that facilitate firms in this endeavor holds significant value. This study delves into such factors within a representative empirical context impacted by a crisis, drawing insights from existing literature on opportunity recognition during such tumultuous periods. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a qualitative inspection of 14 Italian firms during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The authors collected a rich body of multi-source qualitative data, including 34 interviews (with senior managers and entrepreneurs) and secondary data (press releases, videos, web interviews, newspapers, reports and academic articles) in two phases (March–August 2020 and September– December 2020). Findings – The results suggest the existence of a process model of opportunity recognition during crises based on five entrepreneurial influencing factors (entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial proclivity, entrepreneurial personality and entrepreneurial purpose). Originality/value – Various scholars have highlighted that, in times of crises, it is not easy and indeed very challenging for entrepreneurs to identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities. However, recent research has shown that crises can also positively impact entrepreneurs and their capacity to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities. Given these findings, not much research has analyzed the process by which entrepreneurs identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities during crises. This study shows that some entrepreneurial influencing factors are very important to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities during crises

Creating Value from Purpose-Based Innovation: Starting from Frailty

In recent years, a growing number of firms have implemented the concept of shared value creation and recognized themselves as purpose-driven organizations. It is argued that such a dynamic will influence and eventually drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy and - most importantly - will also reshape capitalism and its impact on society. In this sense, the active participation of people, both users/consumers and businesses, to innovation processes is fundamental for producing wider value. In this study, we aim at providing a contribution by exploring the creation of value by purpose-driven businesses which introduce innovations in the field of the care of frail people (for example, people with disabilities) with a participative innovation approach using relatively simple technologies. More concretely, drawing on the literature about purpose-driven innovation management concerning innovation from frailty, we develop a conceptual framework for understanding how businesses create social value for society in order to investigate the facilitating factors and the obstacles they experience in implementing innovations from frailty

Neuroscience approach for management and entrepreneurship: a bibliometric analysis

This study focuses on the role of individuals in the innovation management process, by concentrating on leaders and associated behaviors. Specifically, Entrepreneurial Leadership (EL) represent one of the most important fields of innovation management that has become increasingly multifaceted and interdisciplinary with its evolution. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine a newly emerging research trend with a new lens that is “neuroscience”. This paper finds an evidence-based roadmap by reviewing the literature with a quantitative Bibliometric Analysis (BA) employing Co-Citation (Co-C) and bibliographic coupling analysis (BcA) to find linkages between the leadership and entrepreneurship literature and the neuroscience literature. This study identifies five promising groups of research areas such as the organizational approach, the biological approach, the cognitive approach, the emotional approach and it identify five future research topics such as dynamic skills in innovation exploitation process, the human aspect of leadership, the building process of leadership, the biological perspective of leadership and the application of neuroscience in the ecosystem. Moreover, we find an evidence-based roadmap for stimulating focused EL within the broad topic of innovation management research, to move the field forward. Although the past few years have observed the necessity of review studies on the subsets of biological factors, no reviews have sought to bring those different subsets together into a broader biological perspective. This study provides important indications on the interdisciplinary developments between the neuroscience aspects and EL, as a new emerging paradigm within the broad field of innovation managemen

Empowered or engaged employees? A fuzzy set analysis on knowledge transfer professionals

Purpose This paper combines the literature on knowledge transfer and that on organizational behavior to analyze how perceived empowerment and perceived engagement affect knowledge transfer offices’ (KTOs’) performance, measured in terms of the number of license agreements. Design/methodology/approach The authors measured the cognitions which constitute perceived empowerment and perceived engagement through a survey sent to Italian KTOs’ professionals. The authors performed “fuzzy set qualitative analysis” to investigate if this cognition, together or in isolation, may influence KTOs’ management performance, measured by the number of license agreements. Findings The results highlight the role of individual cognitions in influencing KTOs’ performance. Furthermore, an important finding from the analysis of the main configurations is that the co-presence of perceived engagement and perceived empowerment leads to more license agreements only in the presence of specific individual cognitions. More precisely, the level of organizational citizenship behavior, the degree to which an individual influences results at work (degree of impact) and the value of a work goal (degree of meaning) are the cognitions which lead to a higher number of license agreements. Originality/value Despite the growing interest in the investigation of the determinants of KTOs’ performance, a relevant research gap still concerns the explanation of KTOs’ performance considering individual cognitions such as attitudes, norms, perceived behavioral control and intentions. This study looks at the combined effect of the individual cognition of perceived engagement and perceived empowerment on KTOs’ performances