
Francesco CaponeUniversity of Florence | UNIFI · Department of Economics and Management
Francesco Capone
MSc, PhD
About
95
Publications
49,956
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
2,314
Citations
Introduction
Associate Professor in Economics and management of firms at the University of Florence. His research interests deal with innovation in open context and network sciences (open innovation dynamics, inter-organisational collaborations for innovation, inventors' network, patents, etc.) in particular in local contexts (such as clusters and industrial districts).
Additional affiliations
March 2018 - present
December 2012 - December 2017
Education
January 2002 - January 2005
Publications
Publications (95)
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to investigate whether the structure of knowledge networks (within and across urban areas) is important for the inventive capacity of cities. Second, it analyses whether the diversity and variety of the industrial structures of cities influence local knowledge networks and, consequently, foster inven...
After decades of studies about pervasive, wide, and inclusive knowledge externalities and the advantages of being there, recent literature on management, industrial marketing, economic geography, regional studies, and related fields has stressed that knowledge spreads imperfectly, unevenly, and selectively within regional and cluster contexts. In t...
This paper studies the role of the inventors’ networks and the diversity of the local industrial structure for regional innovation, differentiating between regions' production of normal and breakthrough innovations. Our results suggest that, on the one hand, local related variety enhances the overall innovation rate, while unrelated variety support...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of firms’ features on innovation performance in Industry 4.0, focusing on the concepts of breadth and depth of openness in the innovation process.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data gathered from 96 firms active in Industry 4.0 (I4.0) in Italy, a Poisson regression analysis is conduc...
The hospitality and tourism industry has recently undergone a profound transformation driven by information and communication technologies developments thanks to innovations in Artificial Intelligence and its tools. However, although the literature on AI and tourism is growing, scientific research on these themes is still fuzzy and fragmented. This...
This paper investigates the innovative intensity (iMID effect) in the local production systems (LPSs) using dynamic territorial units that modifies their geographical boundaries and specialization over time. The paper is based on the idea that the local communities are the real unit of generation of innovation and that they are constantly changing,...
Purpose
This paper aims to test the existence of the so-called industrial district effect on innovation (iMID effect) in Spain and Italy and to compare the intensity of this effect between both countries. There is previous evidence of this effect for Spain, although, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it has never been measured for Italy.
Desi...
The relationship between culture and economy is facing a new phase based on an increasing connection between culture, creativity and technological innovation. A New Era is beginning where cultural organisations may face different challenges that emerged from the diffusion of digital technology. The digital revolution has pervaded and transformed no...
This article aims to enlarge the study of new technologies for monitoring visitors’ flows in cities of art. Based on data collected thanks to the use of the Firenze Card by city visitors, the article investigates the museums co-visits networks in Florence for understanding the visitors’ flows within the city, identifying the great attractors, the n...
This chapter aims to investigate how entrepreneurial passion (EP) increases individual dedication, commitment and also perseverance in situations of high levels of risk or adversity. The work focuses on a successful case of user-entrepreneur with a case study in sports business, that is gaining increasing academic interest as a growing industry.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relational dynamics for innovation and, in particular, the impact of the openness of innovation process on the innovation capacity of organisations in restricted geographical contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a negative binomial regression, the work analyses how the characteristic...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the different drivers of the establishment of innovation relationships in an aerospace cluster. In particular, the work investigates the impact of the various forms of proximity in the formation of inter-organisational collaborations for innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The a...
The aim of the research is to investigate whether the structure of knowledge networks and the variety of the local industrial structure are important for regional innovation and if the interplay between these two forces has an additional effect on local innovativeness.
The research analyses co‐patenting collaborations at firm level in the Italian p...
Notwithstanding the wide research on clusters and industrial districts, most of the preceding contributions tried to analyse and investigate past research and rarely tried to critique or propose any future trajectories of this stream of research. The aim of this special issue is to identify and discuss the main themes of research that populate the...
Research on cultural and creative industries (CCIs) is of growing importance in the field of the creative economy (Jones et al. 2015; Potts 2016).
Following the early contributions on creative cities or creative class (Landry 2000; Florida 2002), CCIs have come to represent an increasingly independent topic, with a shift in focus from ‘cultural ind...
The study investigates the creation of new ventures, starting from consumption and users. The research on user entrepreneurship has been rapidly developing in recent times, highlighting the importance of user communities and consumers’ passion for innovations that can satisfy unmet needs.
Notwithstanding this increasing research effort, most contri...
The role of proximity in innovation and inter-organisational networks has received increasing attention over the past decade. Despite the rich literature, most contributions principally focus on only one type of relationship and mainly consider formal relationships such as R&D partnerships, EU projects or patents.
The aim of the study is to investi...
Objectives. The aim of this paper is to investigate how firms develop the transition from closed to open innovation and how this process occurs throughout R&D project networks.
Methodology. The work develops a longitudinal case study analysis of 8 Tuscan companies that have developed R&D projects in inter-organizational networks in the period. It i...
The aim of the present research is to investigate the intellectual structure of creative economy research (CER) with a bibliometric analysis based on co-citation. Firstly, we try to reconstruct the evolution of academic research on creative economy with particular attention to the themes of regional and local economic development. Secondly, we inve...
Cultural and creative industries (CCIs) have recently become highly relevant with regard to creative economy research, as they are considered drivers of regional and urban innovation policies and economic growth. CCIs are a priority sector on the European agenda and represent an excellent opportunity to exit the current economic crisis. In the lite...
Liabilities affect a firm’s competitiveness. Currently, firms face increasingly fierce competition as they operate in a period of deep financial and economic recession. The industrial districts in developed countries are experiencing profound transformations because of globalization and because of competition from developing countries and local imm...
Objectives of the paper. The aim of this study is to measure the impact of various dimensions of proximity to form innovation networks.
Methodology. We use a novel statistical methodology for modelling networks based on a well-studied class of models called exponential-family random graph models.
Findings. Results underline the importance of vario...
The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the academic debate on the fashion city definition and foster some economic implications for tourism. First, two main approaches in the debate are discussed: a supply-side perspective, which defines a fashion city as a ‘manufacturing fashion city’ based on its physical image and presence of a garment indu...
This work analyses and measures the transformation of the industrial district of Prato in the last two decades, adopting the density dependence model of Organisational Ecology. The paper has two primary research aims: (i) to investigate the recent transformation of the Prato industrial district through the foundings and failure flows of its firms’...
Nell’ultimo decennio i processi innovativi delle imprese hanno subito profondi cambiamenti. L’acuirsi della crisi economica, l’intensificarsi della competizione globale, la riduzione del ciclo di vita dei nuovi prodotti e la conseguente difficoltà di sostenere le crescenti spese in Ricerca e Sviluppo sono solo alcune delle cause del cambiamento avv...
The aim of this chapter is to contribute to this debate investigating the evolution of Chinese and Italian firms in Prato after the second World War till today. Through a demographic analysis of firms’ foundings, failures and density, we analyse the process of transformation occurred in the ID of Prato, with a specific focus on the last two decades...
Objectives. The aim of this work is to investigate a case study of a university spin-off that contributes to the debate on the relevance of the use of ICT in contemporary economy, through the relevant case of digitization of cultural heritage of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Methodology. According to a long-term case study methodology, we analyse...
The aim of the present work is to investigate the role of fashion in branding a city as a fashion city, through an analysis of tourists’ and fashion consumers’ perceptions of Florence, Italy. The analysis was based on how the city’s fashion industry and image were perceived by tourists and how such perceptions influenced their decisions to visit Fl...
The role of proximity in innovation and inter-organisational networks has recently received increasing attention in management, organisational, economic geography and regional studies. Despite the rich literature devoted to these themes, most contributions on networks are mainly static, as they focus more on the network's structure than its dynamic...
The aim of this chapter is to analyse the academic research on tourist destinations and its evolution in tourism studies, though a bibliometric co-citations analysis on the ISI web database.
We have elaborated a database of journal articles on the ISI Web of Science database. The birth and evolution of research on tourism destinations and clusters...
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the factors behind the clustering of tourist firms and to analyse the reasons for the formation of clusters in tourist destinations. Recent studies exploring the growth of destinations have suggested that the presence of clusters is the main reason for their competitiveness. The chapter contributes to this...
The relevance of the creative economy continues to grow in recent years and important synergies with tourism are emerging, offering considerable potential for growing demand and developing new products, experiences and markets. This contemporary debate focuses on the shift from conventional models of cultural tourism to new models of creative touri...
In recent years, competitiveness in tourism has further intensified because of both the economic crisis and the process of globalization, so that the exploration of this phenomenon has shifted from the study of firms and networks of firms to that of competitiveness of destinations and among destinations. The aim of this chapter is twofold. On the o...
Despite the relevance of the cluster concept in tourism studies, the contribution of the agglomeration of firms to the performance of firms is often taken for granted and most researches on tourist clusters are limited to specific case studies. The aim of this research is to test and measure the effects of clustering in the tourism industry in a cr...
Purpose of the paper: The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship dynamics of innovation networks in the business of High Technology applied to Cultural Goods (HTCG) in Tuscany, in order to analyze the relevance of the actors’ position and their centrality in the networks. The study contributes to the wide research strand on the imp...
The Mediterranean region has been increasingly receiving attention in recent years. This is due to the heterogeneity of the countries composing it, which raises several problems in business collaborations, but also unfolds several cross-national economic opportunities among Mediterranean countries. The analysis of cultural and creative industries c...
The aim of the present work is to investigate the role of fashion in branding a city as a fashion city, through an analysis of tourists' and fashion consumers' perceptions of Florence, Italy. The analysis was based on how the city's fashion industry and image were perceived by tourists and how such perceptions influenced their decisions to visit Fl...
Over the last decade, the debate on local systems and innovation has been enriched thanks to the ecological approach, as well as to the application of the concept of resilience. Resilience is not only the capacity to absorb shock while maintaining function, but also the capacities for renewal, reorganisation and development. This “adaptive capacity...
The problem of defining the creative sector is crucial. Recent contributions in creative industries have reduced the sectors taken into consideration, increasingly focusing on industries with high creative intensity. Other contributions have widened the set of analyzed creative industries to include the tourism industry, cultural heritage activitie...
Over the last decade, the debate on Evolutionary Economic Geography has been enriched thanks to the ecological approach and its application to the concept of resilience to social systems. Resilience is not only the capacity to absorb shocks and maintain functions, but also includes the capacity for renewal, reorganisation and development. This “ada...
The Mediterranean region is receiving more attention in recent years. This was due because the heterogeneity of countries that compose it raises several difficulties in business collaborations, but it also unfolds several cross-national economic opportunities to develop among Mediterranean countries.
Within the Mediterranean region, the Turkish ca...
Creative industries are increasingly understood to contribute to localised innovation and dynamism. This paper provides a methodologically consistent comparison of creative industries across France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. We map spatial agglomerations of creative activities showing evidence of urban concentration, which for Britain and Fra...
Cluster life cycle is recently attracting increasing attention and notwithstanding some authors showed some criticism proposing alternative approaches, most scholars agreed the cluster evolution literature is still in search of an appropriate analytical frame work and is necessary to follow an evolutionary approach instead of a deterministic perspe...
This work intends to explore the innovation trajectories in the shipbuilding industry and
identify the key players of innovation in Europe, as well as map the industry’s possible
geographical clusters. The analysis is based on the EU CORDIS database of R&D projects
financed in FP6 and FP7 from 2003 to 2011. Fifty-nine EU projects have been analysed...
The paper aims to contribute to the debate on urban renewal, departing from the so-called Bilbao effect. Focusing on the resurgence of a societal function of cultural heritage, we discuss the idea of the museum as a societal engine through a case study. Although the literature has been mainly dedicated to assessing the economic impact of large art...
Creative industries and creative employment tend to concentrate around medium and large cities, forming creative local systems. We follow a multidisciplinary approach, based on cultural and creative economics, evolutionary geography and urban economics, in order to analyse the forces behind the clustering of employment in creative industries in a c...
The research tackles the lack of cross-country comparative studies on the geography of creative industries and provides their comparative geography in four European countries: France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. We use local labour markets as territorial units of analysis and divide creative industries in traditional and non-traditional. This a...
The field of laser application for the cleaning and restoration of cultural assets is thriving. Ablative-laser technological systems can clean and protect inestimable works of art that are subject to atmospheric agents and degradation over time. This new technology, which has been in development during the last forty years, is now available to rest...
The creative economy is a holistic and multidisciplinary concept that deals with the interaction between economics, culture and technology, and centred on the production of creative contents in goods and services. One of the most relevant dimensions of creativity is the territorial one. Despite the emphasis put on the theoretical definition of crea...
The field of laser application to the restoration and cleaning of cultural assets is amongst the most thriving developments of recent times. Ablative laser technological systems are able to clean and protect inestimable works of art subject to atmospheric agents and degradation over time. This new technology, which has been developing for the last...
Creative industries and creative employment tend to concentrate, forming creative local production systems around medium and large cities. We follow a multidisciplinary approach, based on cultural and creative economics, evolutionary geography, and urban economics, to analyze the forces behind the clustering of the employment in creative industries...
A recent contribution to the regional/local development is the regional development platform (RDP), a tool of local policy and governance meant for the planning and implementation of a regional innovation system (RIS) with a sustainable and long-lasting competitive advantage. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on local economic de...
The subject of cluster identification takes on a new value today: it is no more only a methodological question, but a point of tactical importance, since both firms and regional administrations are founding their present policies on cluster-based localization strategies. The shipbuilding industry constitutes an interesting case study, being general...
Tourism has been an important main industry in the world economy for many decades. While its importance is recognized, the study of the reasons why some tourist destinations expand and grow faster than others as well as the main factors affecting these dynamics is underdeveloped. The aim of this paper is to analyse the factors affecting the long-pe...
Creative industries tend to concentrate mainly around large- and medium-sized cities, forming creative local production systems. The text analyses the forces behind clustering of creative industries to provide the first empirical explanation of the determinants of creative employment clustering following a multidisciplinary approach based on cultur...
The aim of the present work is to investigate innovative processes within a geographical cluster, and thus contribute to the debate on the effects of industrial clusters on innovation capacity. In particular, we would like to ascertain whether the advantages of industrial districts in promoting innovation, as already revealed by literature (diffusi...
The aim of this work is to identify and map tourist localities seen as concentrations of firms specialized in tourism services and to analyse their employment evolution over the last decade (1991–2001). The industrial districts approach is applied to the tourism industry by introducing the concept of the ‘tourist district’ in the literature relatin...
An important debate on the role of creativity and culture as factors in local economic development is distinctly emerging. Despite the emphasis put on the theoretical definition of these concepts, it is necessary to strengthen comparative research for the identification and analysis of the kind of creativity embedded in a given territory. Creative...
Local development can assume many forms, depending on the environmental characteristics of places and the way they evolve
historically. Tourist resorts are concentrated on space, forming a well-defined geography of local productive systems which
show very different growth rates. The aim of this paper is to establish a geography of local tourist pro...
This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...
A recent contribution to regional/local development is the Regional Development Platform (RDP), a tool oflocal policy and governance meant for the planning and implementation of a regional innovation systemwith a sustainable and long-lasting competitive advantage. The aim of the present work is to contribute to the debate on local economic developm...
In last years, an important debate is more and more emerging on the role of creativity and culture as local economic development factors. Despite the emphasis on theoretical configuration of these concepts, there is a lack of quantitative analysis regarding which kind of creativity is embedded in cultural cities. The aim of this contribution is to...
Il turismo negli ultimi decenni è diventato una delle principali industrie dell'economia mondiale. In questo contesto, lo studio delle destinazioni turistiche si configura sempre più come un elemento critico per la competitività dei paesi a vocazione turistica. L'obiettivo di questa ricerca è stato principalmente individuare quali sono i sistemi lo...
At the end of the XIX Century, Marshall described the existence of some concentrations of small and medium enterprises specialised in a specific production activity in certain districts of some industrial English cities. Starting from his contribute, Italian scholars have paid particular attention to this local system of production coined by Marsha...
Since the past century, Marshall had described some industrial districts, in England, as agglomerations of small and medium enterprises specialized in a specific production activity. Starting from his contribute, in the last decades an immense literature has been written on industrial districts in Europe and around the World. Italian scholars gave...
Marshall (1890) described the existence of some concentrations of small and medium enterprises specialised in a specific production activity in certain districts of the industrial English cities. Italian scholars have paid particular attention to this local system of production coined under the term "industrial district". In other countries, relate...
Network
Cited