LIBRI DI CRISTINA ROSSI

As the world economy battles a global crisis of historical breadth and depth, NTBFs (new technology-based firms) are navigating in rough seas. In fact, the radical changes in the competitive arena triggered by the crisis are prompting NTBFs to change their strategies in order to reorient resources and capabilities. The paper adopts the dynamic capabilities perspective to shed light on two research questions: (i) What is the impact on the growth of an NTBF of its dynamic capability to reorient the firm’s strategies to deal with the crisis? and (ii) What are the precursors of this dynamic capability? The paper develops and tests a set of hypotheses using a unique dataset of Italian NTBFs. The econometric results of our analysis show that such dynamic capabilities have a positive effect on NTBF growth and, moreover, that these are positively correlated with the industry-specific technical work experience of the founders of the NTBFs, the NTBFs’ presence as insiders in the international markets, their forging of technological alliances, and their limited resources.

The study explores the impact of the local endowment of both human and infrastructural capital on the creation of new technology-based firms (NTBFs) in the 103 Italian provinces in the 1996-2005 period. Our empirical results indicate that both human and infrastructural capital have a significant positive effect on NTBFs’ entry rates, although the impacts are different depending on whether the industry is manufacturing or services. More specifically, the impact of human capital is weak on the manufacturing industries, while infrastructural capital plays a key role in services. The results also show the absence of complementary effects between human and infrastructural capital, either in manufacturing industries or in services.

The book offers an overview of the economic research dealing with the process of firms’ internationalisation and the impact of multinationals’ activity on local competitiveness, by presenting a set of theoretical and empirical contributions characterised by high methodological rigour and scientific excellence. This volume is the fifth of an ongoing series that aims at handing down to the readers the wealth of theoretical and empirical contributions stemming from DIG Lunch Seminars.

The paper discusses three key economic problems raised by the emergence and diffusion of Open source software: motivation, coordination, and diffusion under a dominant standard. First, the movement took off through the activity of a software development community that deliberately did not follow profit motivations. Second, a hierarchical coordination emerged without the support of an organization with proprietary rights. Third, Linux and other open source systems diffused in an environment dominated by established proprietary standards, which benefited from significant increasing returns. The paper shows that recent developments in the theory of critical mass in the diffusion of technologies with network externality may help to explain these phenomena.