Participative processes and citizens’ empowerment are considered crucial aspects of social innovation (SI), involving collaborative activities between the private, public, and third sectors. This article discusses the principal trends in the literature on the concept of SI, its aims and differential characteristics related to the identification of people's needs, citizen participation processes, and improved quality of life. We present an exploratory case study of SI focusing on the gap between elderly people's needs and the generation of business opportunities, using a living lab (LL) methodology for collaborative placed‐based innovation. Our results suggest that LLs are a useful instrument to detect community needs and improve local development and support and integrate technological and social innovations in policies and local governance processes.

This paper examines the evolution in the conceptualization of Social Innovation (SI) with a view to elucidating the multiplication of uses of the term over the last half century. We performed a comprehensive and systematic literature review extracting 252 definitions of SI through a search of 2,339 documents comprising academic papers, books and book chapters, together research and policy reports. To guide the inductive analysis of plurivocal discourses we assume innovation to be a learning-based process involving actors' interactions and social practices. We apply mixed qualitative methodologies, combining content analysis based on an interpretivist ontology with cognitive mapping techniques.Our findings show that SI was introduced as an analytical concept by incipient academic communities and has spread in the last decades as a normative concept fuelled by development and innovation policies. SI is defined by a set of common core elements underpinning three different and interrelated discursive 'areas': processes of social change, sustainable development and the services sector. We point to some policy implications and a number of promising avenues for research towards the advancement of a broader socio-technical theory of innovation.

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This paper examines the succession of formal and informal channels of university-industry knowledge transfer, and the local economic impact of their dynamic interaction. To do so, we investigate a highly cited university patent over an extended period of time through a case study methodology. Our work provides three fundamental insights. First, local economic impact can be achieved only after a complex, temporally unfolding sequence of interactions between formal and informal channels of knowledge transfer. Second, in the course of this dynamic interaction, knowledge generated during formal transfer activities may be transferred via informal channels. Third, the method developed can provide information on the variety of knowledge transfer channels related to highly cited patents.

This paper discusses the role of team collaboration as a building block for cultivating capabilities in technology-based startups. This conceptual framework draws on a literature review of innovation and entrepreneurship research to understand the intra-organization collaboration mechanisms among team members in technology-based startups. Introducing the concept of team collaboration capabilities represents a new approach to understanding the interaction conditions that give rise to new capabilities from a venture team as its organizational base. Rapid new capability building represents a competitive advantage in environments characterized by innovative technological change, known as dynamic capabilities.

This paper provides an in-depth case study of the ink-jet printing (IJP) technology that emerged from the ceramic industry in a Spanish region (Castellon) in the first decade of 2000. We propose an analytical framework that combines the theoretical perspectives of Industrial Districts and Innovation Systems, and exploit a qualitative methodology that includes information from patent and scientific article databases and 21 in-depth interviews. Our results show that IJP is a major innovation that breaks with the tradition of machinery innovations in this industry in Spain. Micro-level evidences show the complex external and internal relationships in the sharing of knowledge and innovation process, being the role of internal ties, trust, secrecy and strong in-house R&D strategies determinants of the IJP innovation.

This paper examines co-operative innovation and Research and Development (R&D) behaviour between Argentine and Spanish firms. Based on theoretical perspectives from the literature, we present empirical evidence obtained from 104 firms of patterns of cooperation in several processes and out-puts, highlighting firm characteristics, the motives of the collaborating parties, types of partners, R&D and innovation activities, leadership, and obstacles to cooperation. Our results reveal that the determinants of success differ considerably among countries depending on the sector, the firm specific characteristics and funding. These differences have important implications for public policy and instruments to support R&D and innovation activities.