In recent years, firms in an increasing number of industries are experimenting new "Open" ways of managing Intellectual Property Rights in viable business opportunities, that aim at fostering, rather than limiting, the access to information. Promoting collective ownership and information sharing in on-line communities has proved to foster creativity, dynamic capabilities and global competitiveness of companies.
The three sections of the book offer an overview of such issues, by presenting a set of theoretical and empirical contributions characterized by high methodological rigor and scientific excellence. Some of the chapters were based on works presented during the Lunch Seminars organised by the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale (DIG) of Politecnico di Milano, and benefited from comments and suggestions from the participants.
This volume is the third of an ongoing series that aims at handing down to the readers the wealth of theoretical and empirical contributions stemming from DIG Lunch Seminars.

Chiara Franzoni, is associate researcher at DISPEA (Department of Production Systems and Business Economics) of Politecnico di Torino. She was formerly associate researcher at CNR and visiting post-doc at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies (GSU, Atlanta, USA). Her interests include Technological Change, Intellectual Property Rights, Technology Transfer and Economics of Science and Innovation.
Cristina Rossi Lamastra is researcher at Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale of Politecnico di Milano. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics of Innovation from Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. Her work in Economics of Innovation and Applied Industrial Organisation was published in leading international journals and comprises empirical investigations of regional and sectoral innovation processes and firms' participation in the Free/Open Source Software movement.