The Greek Crisis: Causes and Consequences

Greece has reached a point where, under any plausible macroeconomic scenario, public debt will continue growing faster than GDP. Fiscal consolidation alone cannot close the solvency gap. A substantial reduction in the stock of debt is needed. Even post-debt restructuring, there is no guarantee that the government will succeed in its dual goal of restoring fiscal solvency and closing the competitiveness gap. Yet we think Greece stands a better chance of accomplishing these goals from inside the EMU rather than outside it. This chapter takes stock of the factors that led to the explosion of public debt, the loss of competitiveness, and the failure of the first EU-IMF programme. We also present our views on the likely debt restructuring (and post-restructuring) scenarios.

Disclosing the role of IT Suppliers as Digital Innovation enablers for SMEs: a strategy analysis of the European IT Sales Channel

As Information Technologies (IT) play a growingly strategic role in several industries, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) adopt IT solutions to trigger Digital Innovation supporting their processes and improving their products and services. SMEs' scarce resources and inadequate IT competencies forces them to demand support from IT suppliers in the IT adoption and Digital Innovation journey, however, little attention was paid to the business models and strategies of IT suppliers in the academic and professional literature, and SMEs find it difficult to assess and select IT suppliers that best responds to their needs and aims. This study's goal is to provide a detailed picture of the IT Sales Channel and its players in the European market. A classification framework is proposed and eleven different business models are identified. The study leverages multiple case studies relying on semi-standardized interviews with Chief Executive Officers and Marketing Managers of leading European IT suppliers

The Relationship between Open Innovation and Strategy: Data-Driven Analysis of the Mobile Value Services Industry

As academic and practitioner studies on the subject amassed in the last decade 2003 - 2013, Open Innovation (OI) has gained growing importance in the broad field of Management and Information Systems. However, existing literature lacks a comprehensive understanding of the relationship existing between OI and a firm's Strategy. Employing a data-driven research approach, based on forty-five qualitative interviews on firms operating in the Mobile Value Services Industry involved in OI undertakings, this study originally highlights six cross-themes the OI-Strategy relationship revolves around: 1) OI and Competitive Advantage, 2) OI and Strategic Positioning, 3) OI and Business Models, 4) OI in Networks, 5) OI and Co-opetition.; 6) OI and Resilient Business Advantages. For each theme, insights are provided concerning: sub themes, findings, criticalities, and areas of development. This reorganization of the real-world OI initiatives constitutes a comprehensive research agenda or roadmap, with value for both academics and practitioners

Business Model Adaptation: Evidence of Lean Experimentation in Digital Startups

Digital startups frequently adapt their business model, but in doing so they face resource scarcity and need to “make-do” in validating and implementing their design changes at a practical level. We thus argue that digital startups employ a Lean Experimental approach when adapting their BM to contextual conditions. By means of an exploratory multiple-case study on Digital startups, this research investigates the factors driving the deployment of an experimental approach and proposing some factors that may drive differences in its application. Results suggest that most startups dealing with BM adaptation engage in experimentation practices that can be identified with the Lean Startup Approaches (LSAs), although with different extents of application. In this sense, startups move from scarce resource availability in resembling selected elements of the framework, whereas those with higher resource availability seem to be more prone to adopting LSAs in a structured and customized way at the organizational level

A comparative study on the impact of business model design & lean startup approach versus traditional business plan on mobile startups performance

usiness Model Design (BMD) & Lean Startup (LSA) approach are two widespread practices among entrepreneurs, where many Mobile startups declare to adopt them. However, neither of the two frameworks are well rooted in the academic literature; and few studies address the issue of whether they actually outperform traditional approaches to new Mobile Startups creation. This study's aim is to assesses the contribution to performance of the combined use of BMD and LSA for two startups operating in the highly dynamic Mobile Applications Industry; performances are then compared to those achieved by two Mobile Star-ups adopting the traditional Business Plan approach. Findings reveal how the combined use of BMD and LSA outperforms the traditional BP in the cases analyzed, thus constituting a promising methodology to support Strategic Entrepreneurship

Students’ Entrepreneurial Orientation in Italy: do digital and coding skills matter?

The literature presents several papers regarding students’ entrepreneurial intention. However, only a few papers have recently analyzed student entrepreneurship. This paper aims at improving our understanding on this by testing if digital and coding skills matter for entrepreneurial orientation and student entrepreneurship. Adopting a Human Capital and Social Capital Theory perspective, we hypnotized that these individual skills may have a statistically and positive impact on entrepreneurial orientation and student entrepreneurship. Based on Logit and Probit regression analyses on more than 2000 Italian university students, we confirmed our hypotheses

A strategic Analysis of the European Companies in the ICT Sales Channel

The strategic role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is growing in various companies. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) adopt ICT solutions to support their processes and to improve their products and services. Because of SMEs’ scarce resources and inadequate ICT competencies, they need support from ICT suppliers in the ICT adoption process. Little attention has been paid to the business models and strategies of ICT suppliers in the academic and professional literature, and SMEs find it difficult to determine the characteristics of available ICT suppliers and to choose the supplier that best responds to their needs and aims. The goal of this paper is to provide a detailed picture of the ICT sales channel and its players in the European market. A classification framework is proposed and eleven different business models are identified. The paper is based on a case study methodology that included 53 semi‐standardized interviews with CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) and marketing and communications managers at leading European ICT suppliers coupled with the literature review

A Syntactic-Semantic Approach to Incremental Verification

Software verification of evolving systems is challenging mainstream methodologies and tools. Formal verification techniques often conflict with the time constraints imposed by change management practices for evolving systems. Since changes in these systems are often local to restricted parts, an incremental verification approach could be beneficial. This paper introduces SiDECAR, a general framework for the definition of verification procedures, which are made incremental by the framework itself. Verification procedures are driven by the syntactic structure (defined by a grammar) of the system and encoded as semantic attributes associated with the grammar. Incrementality is achieved by coupling the evaluation of semantic attributes with an incremental parsing technique. We show the application of SiDECAR to the definition of two verification procedures: probabilistic verification of reliability requirements and verification of safety properties.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures. Corrected typo

A role for startups in unleashing the disruptive power of social media

As social media attract increasing attention from executives and find varied applications in different industries, research on the subject has been investigating the antecedents, moderators, mediators and outcomes of social media adoption, as well as impacts on the organizational and individual level. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the discussion of the new sources of social media innovation-i.e., the upstream originators of social media solutions. Such innovations of a possibly disruptive nature often originate from startups, which can constitute a significant driver for social media development and can influence the adopting incumbents' behaviors. This study aims at shedding first light on social media-based solutions developed and delivered by startups. By surveying the Crunchbase database, we identified 724 funded social media startups, which were further classified into six categories, namely: (i) social network; (ii) social commerce; (iii) social recruitment; (iv) social management; (v) social loyalty and advocacy; (vi) contact management. Our findings show how the large majority of startups deliver social network solutions to incumbents, followed by social media management applications. The findings also shed light on emerging approaches to value generation and open innovation from social media related to and driven by startups