The role of knowledge service activities (KISA) in basic agro-food processes innovation: The case of orange packers in Eastern Spain.

he relevance of innovation in services has been outlined by the knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) concept, which has been empirically and theoretically developed in the context of service innovation. The conceptual and methodology approach of knowledge-intensive service activities (KISA) links the production of knowledge to innovative activities, and has become a relevant focus for the analysis of innovation within a firm. Though relatively new, it has been given a great deal of attention by practitioners and academics in the last five years. This paper will explore, analyze, and compare the ways in which knowledge-intensive activities occur in a small cluster of mature and low-tech industries: orange and lemon selection in Spain. The paper aims to assess the impact of KISA on the firm’s innovation and performance, as well as to analyze whether KISA occurrence is correlated with certain characteristics of firms such as size, organizational profile, market focus, and other characteristics. A model correlating these variables will additionally be proposed and validated

Analysing high technology adoption and impact within public supported high tech programs. An empirical case.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the body of knowledge in relation to the diffusion and adoption process of high technology. It intends to analyse those mechanisms that influence advanced technology transference and marketing, and those features that improve the impact of public programs supporting the adoption of high technology. The paper proposes a contingent construct that explains how advanced technology is transferred, diffused and adopted by users in a firm. In relation to the impact of technology transference this paper follows a novel approach: value mapping methodology adapted to the case of advanced technology. The article provides empirical evidence on the variables which contribute to the technology transference and commercialization process, and especially in the case of SMES. Key variables such as technology complexity, relationships between researchers, developers and final users, as well as market barriers appear to be critical for the transference process. Moreover, technology absorption by incumbent firms becomes a necessary requirement for its subsequent transfer. The paper has utilised the available experience from the GAME initiative, part of the European Commission IV Research Framework Programme, related to the promotion of microelectronics among Spanish firms. Using a representative sample and employing multivariable analysis methods, a model was developed in order to understand technology diffusion, absorption and transference knowledge flows. In addition, the model is useful for evaluating technology dissemination using the diffusion model to measure its social impact. The paper found that social impact can be explained by the creation of employment

A review of economic consequences and costs of male violence against women

This article focuses on male violence against women. As it takes place in what is often considered to be ‘the private sphere’ of the home, violence is difficult to prove, to measure, to prevent and easy to ignore. A multi-country study (WHO, 2005, WHO multi-country study on women’s health and domestic violence against women: Summary report of initial results on prevalence, health outcomes and women’s responses, Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization) shows that there are wide variations between countries resulting in 15 per cent to 71 per cent of women aged between 15 and 49 years saying that they have been victims of physical or sexual violence in intimate relationships. This article reviews and summarises literature that analyse types of economic costs that result from domestic violence and abuse perpetrated against women

Zooming into firms' location, capabilities and innovation performance: Does agglomeration foster incremental or radical innovation?

This study answers the question on whether areas of agglomeration or high industry specialization constitute supportive prone-to-innovation environments for the generation of radical innovation. By drawing on the CIS distinction between incremental vs radical innovation, we disentangle the effect of industry specialization on the occurrence of radical innovations, a phenomenon mostly overlooked. By analysing a large dataset of 3,602 firms from CIS and other geographic datasets, results show that a firm's location in high industry specialization areas primarily trims incremental but not radical innovation. Firms' internal knowledge bases do matter more for radical innovation to occur, rather than location in agglomerations. External knowledge available in regions of high industry specialization is redundant for improving a firm's internal knowledge base for radical innovation and it is more likely to merely enable incremental innovation

SME open innovation for process development: Understanding process-dedicated external knowledge sourcing

Small and medium enterprise (SME) open innovation has received attention only for new product development, overlooking the fact that process innovation is a strategy commonly pursued by SMEs which requires organizing search strategies or external knowledge sourcing for that purpose. Focusing on 3,348 process-oriented innovative SMEs, defined as those that usually and primarily only introduce process rather than product innovation, this study empirically identifies key external sources of SME innovation for process technologies, linking open innovation to SME performance, and highlighting a very important distinction to literature focused on product development. The results contribute to the literature on SME open innovation

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements