Digitalization based innovation - A Case Study Framework

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been leading innovation processes, where the upsurge of digital technology has overpowering implications on competitive positioning, ̄rm's value chains and overall business model. Value creation facilitated by emerging digital technologies alters costs, as well as process performance. Due to ̄eld research and in-depth interviews with owners and managers of SMEs in North-East Italy area, we combine and analyze evidence of the contingent challenges companies face while trying to redesign their business model. Our results point out that being able to accumulate and put into action external ideas can be vital in supplementing internal knowledge base and therefore crucial in escaping technological lock-ins; thus, imposing efforts toward digital transformation offers favorable outcomes

Crowdsourcing to co-design meaningful social change

Old Town Bari is the center of Bari City and the main city of Apulia region, in the southeast of Italy. For ages, it was a place neglected to its own community due to the high criminality level. This study follows a social innovation initiative launched by a young Bari collective to leverage education using crowdsourcing knowledge, in order to better understand how to develop crowdsourcing for effective social innovation. To address this research question, the author conducted action research on a 12 days workshop, organized by the collective, in the Old Town of Bari. The workshop aimed to create a School Open Source with the help of the crowd, which was engaged on promoting and co-creating the social initiative. Furthermore the researcher collected and analyzed the online discussions, paths and topics from the days of the workshop to the opening of the School. The study reveals how crowdsourcing acted as an opportunity to build a new community which revitalized the local social environment. The author also found that design processes played a major role on the community creation and instructed new governance models. Additionally, digital communications built a network, which is able to generate and regenerate the local socio-economical fabric and connect it with the rest of the world. These results indicate a first step towards a proposal for an open innovation model for social innovation which combines online crowd engagement with offline activities and where design processes nurture the sense of belonging between community and territory

Bend but don’t break: a case study on the cultural entrepreneurial process in the publishing industry

Research on cultural industries has attracted considerable interest on cultural entrepreneurs as agents in complex interaction with multiple and evolving contexts. The study aims to capture the complexity and intensity of these relationships, exploring entrepreneurship as a journey driven by cultural and social dynamics on one side, and economic needs on the other. The investigation is an inductive inquiry carried out through an in-depth analysis of a single revelatory case in the publishing industry. Focusing on the relational process through which the entrepreneur and the context are co-created, the paper analyzes the entrepreneurial journey through the identification of three major stages: Divergence, Identity construction, and Institutionalization

BEND BUT DON’T BREAK: A CASE STUDY ON THE CO-CREATING STRATEGY OF A CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURIAL PROCESS

Cultural entrepreneurship dynamics have attracted considerable interest of management scholars in the last years. Research in this field has so far focused the level of analysis on the cultural entrepreneur as individual or network agency, without extensively examining a broader concept of collective agency. By investigating the case study of a three-dimensional entrepreneur in the field of the publishing industry that acts as a bookseller, as an independent publisher and as a cultural mediator, the study explores the actual possibilities of cultural entrepreneurship. We developed content analysis of three corpora of documents, tracing the evolving of the narratives in the entrepreneurial journey. Our findings position the cultural entrepreneurship on the level of a recursive collective co- creation narrative between the entrepreneur himself and different stakeholders over time. In a journey of continuous experimentation, the cultural entrepreneur evolves to a cultural mediator, in order to overcome the duality between his cultural and economic aspirations through the immersion in the social context where he works and through the use of the book as a cultural and social artifact

How future surgery will benefit from SARS-COV-2-related measures: a SPIGC survey conveying the perspective of Italian surgeons

COVID-19 negatively affected surgical activity, but the potential benefits resulting from adopted measures remain unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the change in surgical activity and potential benefit from COVID-19 measures in perspective of Italian surgeons on behalf of SPIGC. A nationwide online survey on surgical practice before, during, and after COVID-19 pandemic was conducted in March-April 2022 (NCT:05323851). Effects of COVID-19 hospital-related measures on surgical patients' management and personal professional development across surgical specialties were explored. Data on demographics, pre-operative/peri-operative/post-operative management, and professional development were collected. Outcomes were matched with the corresponding volume. Four hundred and seventy-three respondents were included in final analysis across 14 surgical specialties. Since SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, application of telematic consultations (4.1% vs. 21.6%; p < 0.0001) and diagnostic evaluations (16.4% vs. 42.2%; p < 0.0001) increased. Elective surgical activities significantly reduced and surgeons opted more frequently for conservative management with a possible indication for elective (26.3% vs. 35.7%; p < 0.0001) or urgent (20.4% vs. 38.5%; p < 0.0001) surgery. All new COVID-related measures are perceived to be maintained in the future. Surgeons' personal education online increased from 12.6% (pre-COVID) to 86.6% (post-COVID; p < 0.0001). Online educational activities are considered a beneficial effect from COVID pandemic (56.4%). COVID-19 had a great impact on surgical specialties, with significant reduction of operation volume. However, some forced changes turned out to be benefits. Isolation measures pushed the use of telemedicine and telemetric devices for outpatient practice and favored communication for educational purposes and surgeon-patient/family communication. From the Italian surgeons' perspective, COVID-related measures will continue to influence future surgical clinical practice

Towards Design Thinking as a Management Practice: A Learning Experiment in Teaching Innovation

There is an increasing need to make management knowledge more consistent with the “messiness” and complexity of actual organizational phenomena and contexts in today’s world, calling for a refoundation of mainstream management theories. The paper focuses on the contribution of design thinking approaches in this sense, particularly addressing the question of how the predisposition for a design thinking approach can be shaped in management education. Following a qualitative inductive research design, it will report the experience of the introduction of new teaching practices inspired by design thinking in a class of students from a Master program on Innovation and Marketing in an Italian University. Based on the empirical findings, the challenges and opportunities of innovating business school teaching towards the construction of a design thinking mentality will be discussed

New Basic Design: la tradizione del nuovo - workshop 2006

Weimar, Chicago, Ulm, Venezia con Albers e Munar

La collaborazione ad alta intensità tra imprese corporate e imprese innovative: il Corporate Venture Capital in Emilia-Romagna

Il Report Open Innovation in Emilia Romagna 2023 offre una panoramica dettagliata sull'Innovazione Aperta nella regione, sviluppata attraverso una doppia riflessione quantitativa e qualitativa. L'obiettivo principale del report è sostenere la competitività del territorio regionale rispetto ad altri ecosistemi urbani, promuovendo una cultura collaborativa già presente ma suscettibile di ulteriore sviluppo e supporto nella regione. Il report 2023 nasce dalla collaborazione tra Oper.Lab, ART-ER e Crif, che hanno lavorato in convenzione alla mappatura dell’innovazione aperta (MIA) in regione. L'indagine quantitativa esamina le relazioni tra imprese, intermediari dell’innovazione e start-up regionali. ART-ER ha mappato i comportamenti delle imprese (MIA imprese), Oper-lab degli intermediari di innovazione (MIA intermediari), e CRIF della relazione tra imprese innovative (incluse start-up) e imprese (MIA imprese innovative). La parte qualitativa del report esplora casi studio di organizzazioni partner di Oper.lab, offrendo una visione dettagliata di come l'Open Innovation si manifesta e come le aziende si organizzano per ottenere risultati

Conducting Action Research to Address Social Innovation

This case is an example of qualitative research in action. We followed the unfolding of a bottom-up process to develop a social innovation initiative. Launched by a young collective, in Bari, a town in the South of Italy, the initiative aims to leverage education using crowdsourced knowledge. The study is based on the results of an action research on a 12 days workshop and on the analysis of online discussions, paths, and topics over a 14-month longitudinal period. The study reveals how crowdsourcing acted as an opportunity to build a new community that revitalized the local social environment, and how design processes played a major role in community creation and instructed new governance models. It emerged the role of digital communications in building a network, which can generate and regenerate the local socio-economic fabric and connect it with the rest of the world. These results indicate the first step towards a proposal for an open innovation model for social innovation which combines online crowd engagement with offline activities and where design processes nurture the sense of belonging between community and territory. As a pedagogical tool, this case will help other researchers and students learn how to collect data when dealing with a social change open process and a longitudinal analysis: in particular, we introduce and discuss design thinking, observation, and coding issues