Towards a phenotype of the amphibious company:an illustrative case from the chemical industry

The paper explores the phenotype of the amphibious company, which is intended as the fittest economic species in today’s hypercompetitive business arenas and hence the most likely to survive and prosper. Four behavioral traits are proposed and discussed as distinctive of amphibious companies: doing different jobs good, diversifying in multiple market arenas, brokering and bridging across business networks and absorbing knowledge from the outside. The paper illustrates these arguments through a paradigmatic case study of an Italian firm operating in the chemical industry, which has been able to survive a challenging crisis by adopting an amphibious behavior.<br

ECMO for COVID-19 patients in Europe and Israel

Since March 15th, 2020, 177 centres from Europe and Israel have joined the study, routinely reporting on the ECMO support they provide to COVID-19 patients. The mean annual number of cases treated with ECMO in the participating centres before the pandemic (2019) was 55. The number of COVID-19 patients has increased rapidly each week reaching 1531 treated patients as of September 14th. The greatest number of cases has been reported from France (n = 385), UK (n = 193), Germany (n = 176), Spain (n = 166), and Italy (n = 136) .The mean age of treated patients was 52.6 years (range 16–80), 79% were male. The ECMO configuration used was VV in 91% of cases, VA in 5% and other in 4%. The mean PaO2 before ECMO implantation was 65 mmHg. The mean duration of ECMO support thus far has been 18 days and the mean ICU length of stay of these patients was 33 days. As of the 14th September, overall 841 patients have been weaned from ECMO support, 601 died during ECMO support, 71 died after withdrawal of ECMO, 79 are still receiving ECMO support and for 10 patients status n.a. . Our preliminary data suggest that patients placed on ECMO with severe refractory respiratory or cardiac failure secondary to COVID-19 have a reasonable (55%) chance of survival. Further extensive data analysis is expected to provide invaluable information on the demographics, severity of illness, indications and different ECMO management strategies in these patients

Il futuro ha una storia antica. Casi di imprese innovative in Toscana

no abstrac

When large companies build ecosystems, should small companies join? A role for open innovation

The rise of the open innovation paradigm has encouraged the creation of innovation networks (ecosystems) involving a mix of partners: universities, research laboratories, start-up companies, small and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs), multinationals and governments. Physical proximity is an essential driver of open innovation e ectiveness. It enables the exchange of ideas and inside/outside exploitation of knowledge and resources. This paper investigates how some large companies invested in key relationships with external innovation partners through the creation and the orchestration of open ecosystems (e.g. open research campuses). By contrast, small companies cannot a ord to create and orchestrate their own local research ecosystem, but they do have the option to join or co-locate within existing ecosystems. This paper draws lessons from two of 13 case studies we collected, and compares and contrasts the experience of ecosystem builders and ecosystem joiners

The role of accelerators in firm survival: An fsQCA analysis of Italian startups

Accelerators are a recent yet rapidly growing phenomenon within entrepreneurial ecosystems. The distinctive characteristics exhibited by accelerators, relative to previous incubation models, imply that accelerators may play a different role and have a different impact on the survival rates of participating firms. In this study, we explore the relationship between participation in an accelerator program and firm survival using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with key variables related to firm survival. We analyze 38 accelerated startups from five Italian accelerators and a control group of 38 non-accelerated Italian startups. Our findings support the business accelerator literature that regards accelerators as a new and distinct generation of business incubators. Our results suggest that participation in accelerator programs on its own does not influence firm survival. However, we found a relationship between firm survival and accelerated technology-based firms that do not export and between firm survival and accelerated firms in the service sector with a small team that do not export. We conclude that factors affecting the survival of accelerated firms are different from factors affecting the survival of incubated firms, providing further evidence of the characteristics that distinguish accelerators from incubators