Raffaella Manzini

Raffaella Manzini
University Carlo Cattaneo | liuc · School of Industrial Engineering

About

118
Publications
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Introduction
The management of innovation is a great topic of research, always dynamically changing, always a stimulus for new reflections. I'm currently investigating: - Innovation performace as it emerges from patents - the challenging practice of open innovation - sustainability oriented innovation

Publications

Publications (118)
Article
In a dynamic world, full of opportunity, the development of tools able to support companies in the decision-making process plays a crucial role. In this paper, a new decision support system is presented. The tool developed is an agent-based simulator, which helps managers and decision maker in formulating choices to improve firms’ performance in te...
Article
Full-text available
Technology intelligence is regarded as a strategic tool to support open innovation to identify promising niches of technologies, opportunities and threats, potential partners, future customers and markets. However, it has often been neglected by SMEs due to their constraints in money, time, skills and competences. Hitherto, the literature documente...
Article
Purpose The study aims to test the success of university-industry (U-I) collaboration in terms of innovation process efficiency. Then, this study explores the moderating role of a set of organizational routines in the U-I relationship, which can help in overcoming the issues undermining the collaboration success. Design/methodology/approach The st...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In this workshop run by the Engineering skills SIG, attendees were given the opportunity to learn about emerging professional competencies, and strategies to overcome teaching barriers.The workshop format was “world cafe” with several tables for small groups to informally discuss these strategies within a time limit. Each table focussed on an emerg...
Article
Firm performance is an important output that managers should control. Of the several perspectives taken to analyse performance within companies, innovation performance and economic performance are especially relevant. Joint patents are an important but overlooked strategy that firms can use to improve their performance. In this paper, an agent-base...
Article
This study investigates sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) in the agri-food sector, which is one of the most influential industries in a country, through empirical analysis involving patents. Specifically, the causal relationship between SOI outputs and economic performance in the agri-food sector, as well as the moderating role of co-patenti...
Chapter
The purpose of this work is to highlight how companies operating in the building industry design a circular business model (CBM) and how collaborative relationships across the building supply chain enforce this CBM. Thereby, first, based on the literature, a framework is designed, and subsequently, is validated based on the historical analysis of t...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The measure of companies' Innovation Performance is fundamental for enhancing the value and decision-making processes of firms. The purpose of this paper is to present a new measure of Innovation Performance, called Innovation Patent Index (IPI), which makes it possible to quantitatively summarize different aspects of firms' innovation. De...
Chapter
Full-text available
The interest about Research Spin-Offs (RSOs) has constantly increased since the last fifteen years and their number is augmenting all over Europe. RSOs are also expected to not escape from the consequences of the digital revolution. But the potential impact of digital technologies on academic entrepreneurship is actually an under-researched field o...
Article
Purpose Radical innovation is still a debated concept in the field of innovation management. Very often, firms cannot pursue radical innovation due to the lack of access to markets, right expertise and financial resources. This issue is even more relevant nowadays, as companies have started to open their innovation activity to external partners. De...
Article
Innovation capability (IC) is a fundamental firms’ strategic asset to sustain competitive advantage. In this article, relying on patent data, patents forward citations are used as proxy of IC and the main patents numerical and categorical variables are considered as proxy of IC determinants. The main purpose of this article is to understand which p...
Article
Full-text available
Technology intelligence is regarded as a strategic tool to support open innovation to identify promising niches of technologies, opportunities and threats, potential partners, future customers and markets. However, it has often been neglected by SMEs due to their constraints in money, time, skills and competences. Hitherto, the literature documente...
Cover Page
R&D Management conference 2020: call for abstract is now open! Please submit your abstract to our special track "From Research to Industry and Society : Investigating the role of collaborations with companies". This is the link of our track: https://www.rnd2020.org/Conference-Tracks/id/257
Chapter
Capabilities and, in particular, Innovation Capability (IC), are fundamental strategic assets for companies in providing and sustaining their competitive advantage. IC is the firms’ ability to mobilize and create new knowledge applying appropriate process technologies and it has been investigated by means of its main determinants, usually divided i...
Article
This work investigates the obstacles that arise in the collaboration between Public Research Institutes (PRIs) and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), when they are involved in Big Science projects. PRIs are valuable scientific partners for industry and even more for SMEs. However, sometimes the collaboration with PRI is not as profitable as expec...
Conference Paper
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework that highlights the phases and procedures that ought to be followed by companies to embrace circular business models (CBMs). In doing so, the paper shows how companies are facilitated in circular economy (CE) implementation by building collaborative relationships across the phases of the...
Article
A circular business model represents a holistic system of co-evolving managerial practices for collective value creation, delivery and capture, which provide solutions for sustainable development. Previous research on circular business models aimed to understand value creation mostly in terms of a single managerial practice or in a relatively isol...
Article
Participation in Big Science projects, such as ITER, and the exchange of technology and knowledge with science-based partners are fruitful environments for industry. By integrating the use of quantitative and qualitative data and methods of analyses applied to a sample of Italian industries, the present work illustrates how participation in ITER, t...
Conference Paper
One can observe an exponential growth in Technology intelligence literature recently which enriches current state of knowledge with interesting research topics, approaches, findings and conclusions. However, we believe that all of these different literature streams are fragmented and do not provide a consolidated overview of the research field only...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The interest about Research spin-offs (RSOs) has constantly increased since the last fifteen years on average, as their number is augmenting all over Europe and, consequently, several academic debates about the effective success, convincing strategy, and real performance of this peculiar kind of start-up company are open and arouse tricky questions...
Conference Paper
The research stream on circular economy business model tries to investigate the managerial practices that companies need to implement in their business model to address the principles of circular economy. Several studies have highlighted two main dimensions of business model on which companies can leverage to implement circular economy principles....
Conference Paper
Technology intelligence is regarded as a robust tool to support Open Innovation to identify promising niches of technologies, opportunities and threats, potential partners, future customers and markets. However, it has often been neglected by SMEs due to their constraints in money, time, skills and competences. Hitherto, the literature documented v...
Article
In a context of limited resources, in terms of time, competencies and money, companies face the problem of being ambidextrous, i.e. to manage and achieve both radical and incremental innovation, by adopting both technology push and market pull approaches. The paper tries to enrich the empirical evidence on the topic, with the practical experience o...
Conference Paper
In the context of Open Innovation, Public Research Institutes (PRIs) represent a valuable external partner for industry innovation. However, the literature seems to have devoted scant attention to the collaboration PRIs-Industry and to the specific collaboration PRIs-SMEs. By grounding in the open innovation and technology transfer literature, the...
Article
Purpose Intellectual Property Protection Mechanisms (IPPMs) include a variety of methods suitable for protecting valuable intangible assets of companies and it is of great relevance to study how companies use these mechanisms to ensure the appropriability of innovation, in a context in which innovation is increasingly open. Indeed, there is a tens...
Conference Paper
SMEs try to keep abreast of all possible information in order respond to uncertainties and insecurities arising from development and appliance of new technologies. Patent Intelligence can be a robust tool for SMEs to mitigate this need. However, due to lack of resources, competences and time, SMEs have to look for semi-permanent or ad hoc assistanc...
Article
Purpose Focusing on some relevant constructs defined by the open innovation (OI) literature (i.e. determinants of openness; openness choices operationalized in terms of collaboration depth with scientific and business partners; organizational and social context; innovation performance in terms of novelty and efficiency), this paper investigates the...
Preprint
Full-text available
This paper presents a systematic literature review of empirical studies on Technology intelligence with an objective to identify main characteristics and trends of the literature on the implementation of Technology intelligence. To achieve this, we reviewed 138 documents systematically (following a scientifically robust methodology) in terms of res...
Article
Objectives: Hospital Based Health Technology Assessment (HBHTA) practices, to inform decision making at the hospital level, emerged as urgent priority for policy makers, hospital managers, and professionals. The present study crystallized the results achieved by the testing of an original framework for HBHTA, developed within Lombardy Region: the I...
Article
The success of the open innovation (OI) paradigm is still debated and literature is searching for its determinants. Although firms’ internal social context is crucial to explain the success or failure of OI practices, such context is still poorly investigated. The aim of the paper is to analyse whether internal social capital (SC), intended as empl...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Starting from the relevance of knowledge in the context of the “knowledge-based society” to enhance firms’ competitiveness and, in turn, national economic development and well-being, this paper aims to study the process of Knowledge and Technology Transfer (KTT) process between an Italian research center and a network of local and national companie...
Article
Is opening up the innovation process a "must", or rather an opportunity? This paper discusses whether closed innovation models are still suitable in the era of increasing technological networking, or is some degree of openness actually imposed. Starting from the premises given in the enormous amount of literature on open innovation, this paper inve...
Article
Open innovation literature suggests that firms can improve their innovation performance by learning from different actors and, among them, universities, research institutes and innovation intermediaries can play a relevant role. However, the success of such collaborations is still debated. In particular, the firms' internal organisational context s...
Article
The success of collaboration between firms and scientific partners is still debated. Although a firm's social context seems to be crucial to explain the success or failure of such collaboration in terms of innovation performance, a deep analysis of the context role is still lacking. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse whether a firm's in...
Article
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to shed further light on determinants of the openness degree to give a more conclusive evidence to the research in the field. In particular, the influence exerted by the technological strategy is still debated, in that evidence on the relationship between the technological strategy and openness is conflicting....
Article
The purpose of the paper is to illuminate the costs and benefits of crossing firm boundaries in inbound open innovation (OI) by determining the relationships among partner types, knowledge content and performance. The empirical part of the study is based on a survey of OI collaborations answered by R&D managers in 415 Italian, Finnish and Swedish f...
Article
Intellectual property (IP) is widely recognized to be a critical issue for implementing open innovation and collaborative research in new product development (NPD). Several intellectual property protection mechanisms (IPPMs) can be employed by companies to protect their critical technology and know-how (patents, designs, trade secrets, trademarks,...
Article
The subject of this paper is Open Innovation (OI) in the food and drink industry (FDI). Both academics and managers are pushing for improved knowledge in the practice of OI. To this end they have invited researchers to include traditional, low-tech industries in their analyses, since these have been poorly investigated (Gassmann, Enkel, and Chesbro...
Article
Full-text available
This paper considers open innovation strategies in the food and drink industry and seeks to examine the determinants of openness and the impact of open behaviours by companies on innovation performance. The study clusters food and drink companies in terms of their degree of openness measured across two dimensions, namely, collaboration breadth (bro...
Article
Empirical evidence is presented on how openness in an organization can be managed and supported, by analysing the experience of Heinz, a company that embraced the philosophy of open innovation about three years ago and started a contextual process of organizational change. The human and organizational factors and managerial tools are discussed alon...
Article
In this chapter, an exploration is presented of the tension generated in companies following a very traditional approach to managing R&D and innovation (mostly based on internal resources, competences and activities) even when globalization and the rapid pace of innovation driven by market forces, leads them to involve external actors in their R&D...
Article
This chapter focuses on collaborative innovation with a specific set of partners whose unique business activity is developing technology and know-how, such as universities, research centres, technical and scientific services. After discussing the specific characteristics of these partners and the potential benefits and issues in collaborating with...
Conference Paper
Opening the innovation process represents a new opportunity for SMEs to increase the internal innovative capacity and to raise their overall innovation performances. Until today, open innovation in SMEs has been poorly studied, as certified by the high number of papers presenting case studies in large and multinational firms. This paper is aimed at...
Conference Paper
Literature suggests that family firms are characterized by specific values and resources (i.e. risk aversion; family identity and SEW preservation; limited cognitive resources; social capital) and that these values/resources exert a role in shaping family firms’ behaviour also as concerns strategic partnering. However, literature recognizes also th...
Conference Paper
Technology intelligence is becoming increasingly relevant in this economic crisis, as a managerial process that stimulates and supports radical innovation and the creation of new business. Technology scanning, i.e. “learning about any technological development which could have an impact on the future” (Mortara et al., 2008) is probably the most dif...
Article
Full-text available
The paper explores the concept of Open Innovation (OI) and evaluates whether, why and how it is adopted in the automotive field. The study attempts to enrich the existing empirical evidence because few studies about the topic were conducted. With this aim, we studied the experience of three well-known companies operating at different levels in the...
Chapter
This chapter investigates the topic of how open innovation is actually implemented by companies, according to a conceptual approach in which open and closed models of innovation represent the two extremes of a continuum of different openness degrees; though, these are not the only two possible models. By means of a survey conducted among Italian ma...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, the objective is to explore the relationship between intellectual property and open innovation along the innovation process. The study is based upon a literature analysis and a multiple case study involving three Italian companies which adopted an open approach to innovation. As a result, this paper proposes a framework which explain...
Article
R&D activities are increasingly costly and risky and, as a consequence, measuring their performance and contribution to value becomes critical. This paper illustrates a formal model for measuring R&D performance, based upon a balanced and synthetic evaluation of quantitative indicators from five different perspectives of performance: financial, cus...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Many companies claim they are adopting an open approach to innovation, but each of them with its own way. This paper aims to explore the different models for opening up the innovation process adopted in practice. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs an extended survey among Italian manufacturing companies; cluster analysis; and AN...
Article
Full-text available
From the recent studies about open innovation paradigm, it emerges that the choice of the governance mode “right” to cooperate is still an interesting topic. Theoretical frameworks about the topic are available, suggesting the need for coherence among a series of factors and the governance mode to be selected. However, applications on concrete case...
Article
Open Innovation (OI) is emerging as a new alternative in opposition to the closed approach: its key tenet is that not all good ideas emerge within organisations and not all good internal ideas can be successfully commercialised by the same firm. In the last years, even with an attention to OI, most researches have focused on theoretical considerati...
Article
This chapter investigates the topic of how open innovation is actually implemented by companies, according to a conceptual approach in which open and closed models of innovation represent the two extremes of a continuum of different openness degrees; though, these are not the only two possible models. By means of a survey conducted among Italian ma...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Many companies claim they are adopting an open approach to innovation, but each of them with its own way. This paper aims to explore the different models for opening up the innovation process adopted in practice. Design/methodology/approach The paper utilises an extended survey among Italian manufacturing companies, cluster analysis and AN...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Implementing a performance measurement system (PMS) for research and new product development (R&NPD) is fundamental for supporting decision making but is a challenging task, because effort levels are not measurable and success is highly uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the design of a PMS in R&NPD in a case study based...
Conference Paper
The concept of “Open Innovation” is often studied supposing an artificial dichotomy between closed and open approaches, whilst the idea of exploring different degrees and types of openness in a sort of continuum seems to provide a more interesting and rich avenue to investigate. In vein of these premises, we analyse different open innovation models...
Article
Full-text available
Starting from the several conceptual and empirical studies about open innovation modes, this paper attempts to integrate them by suggesting a framework which reveals four basic ways to collaborate. Two variables are considered that represent the degree of openness for a company: (i) the number/type of partners with which the company collaborates, b...
Article
Measuring research and development (R&D) performance has become a fundamental concern for R&D managers and executives in the last decades. As a result, the issue has been extensively debated in innovation and R&D management literature. The paper contributes to this growing body of knowledge, adopting a systemic and contextual perspective to look in...
Article
Full-text available
Although measuring the performance of a firm's R&D activities is a very challenging task, the critical role played by R&D in creating and sustaining a firm's competitive advantage has raised the need to adopt appropriate performance measurement systems (PMSs) in R&D units. Therefore, management scholars have been studying this issue and PMSs have d...
Article
Measurement in soft systems generally cannot exploit physical sensors as data acquisition devices. The emphasis in this case is instead on how to choose the appropriate indicators and to combine their values so to obtain an overall result, interpreted as the value of a property, i.e., the measurand, for the system under analysis. This paper aims at...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose This paper aims to study the problem of designing a Performance Measurement System (PMS) for R&D. In particular, it aims at investigating the influence exerted by the type of activity being measured (i.e. Basic and Applied Research or New Product Development) on the design of the PMS constitutive elements. Design/methodology/approach First...
Book
This book develops and illustrates a comprehensive, multi-level framework for the evaluation of industrial R&D activities and the measurement of their performances. The framework encompasses a set of hierarchical, interrelated levels at which R&D evaluation and performance measurement could be undertaken. This enlightening book focuses on the singl...
Article
In the last decade, firms have increasingly relied on external sources of technology to support their innovation process. A number of scholars have investigated several aspects of this phenomenon. Little attention has been paid to those companies that offer Technical and Scientific Services (TSS), although their number is increasing and it seems th...
Article
Technology assessment has an increasingly critical role to play, in light of the fact that technology is the ultimate source of competitive advantage for companies, and of economic and social development for nations. In this paper, we present a methodology for a “quick and dirty” technology assessment, developed with reference to a real-word case s...
Article
Designing a performance measurement system (PMS) for R&D activities is a very critical but challenging task for supporting decision making and people motivation. Therefore, the subject is widely discussed in literature, but the use of a PMS for R&D is still uncommon among companies.The paper aims at making a step further in the field, elaborating a...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The successful establishment and management of an effective innovation network is often a critical challenge for SMEs, meanwhile basic for performance outcomes. In fact for small organizations, extramural collaborations represent a key element in developing product/process innovation. An empirical study in the calibration industry provides some ins...
Article
Full-text available
It is widely recognized nowadays that intangible assets represent the crucial base for business development and companies are often required to value them. The paper aims to analyze the critical problems emerging from the empirical application of available valuation approaches through a case study on a medical device patent pending.
Article
Full-text available
In the last few years the relevance of the intangible assets of companies have clearly intensified, and the corresponding market, in which intangibles are exchanged among companies, has grown more and more. Several authors have deeply analysed each single commercial agreement involving intangible assets (such as licensing, franchising, etc.), but t...
Article
Full-text available
It is widely recognized nowadays that intangible assets represent the crucial base for business development and companies are often required to value them. The paper aims to analyze the critical problems emerging from the empirical application of available valuation approaches through a case study on a medical device patent pending.
Article
Implementing a performance measurement system (PMS) for research and development (R&D) is fundamental for supporting decision making and motivating researchers and engineers; however, this is a very challenging task, because effort levels are not measurable and success highly uncertain. Even if the subject has largely been debated in academic and p...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study nanotech technical and scientific seminars (TSS) companies from a managerial perspective. Specifically, it means to: firstly, understand how TSS firms manage the sale of their services; and secondly, to identify the implications that different approaches in the TSS sale management have on the client fir...