In this paper the authors want to verify, in a sample of seven European countries, if there is a relationship between firm size and the ability to obtain product, process and organisational innovation. If such relationship exists, they try to understand if this may be attributed to a different allocation of key resources or to some "intrinsic" differences. Besides the analysis of the overall sample, the authors look specifically at Italy, making a comparison with the international context. The authors find that small firms (from 10 to 15 employees) have a disadvantage respect to medium and large firms in the innovative capacity; with partial exception of process innovation, this can be explained by a different allocation of key resources, like R&D, human capital and professional management. The international comparison let conclude that the above results substantially hold for Italy too; there are anyway some peculiarities medium (from 16 to 50 employees) Italian firms have an higher capacity in process innovation respect to the average of the sample, while all dimensional classes suffer in organisational innovation; in the end, in all kinds of innovation the distance between small and medium/large firms in Italy is not significantly different than the average of the sample.
This paper analyses the relationship between institutional and geographic distance in scientific collaborations, evaluating the possible changes when a long period (sixteen years) is taken into consideration and discussing the use of some alternative measures of institutional distance. The main result, obtained by analysing the publications of the Italian biotech firms, is that international publications present an higher institutional distance than national papers, particularly in the early years, while there is no significant difference in institutional distance between regional and extra-regional papers, suggesting that opposite incentives are in action at different geographic scales and in different periods.
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