Alessandro Muscio

Università degli studi di Foggia | UNIFG

Much of the existing research on PhD entrepreneurship is focused on Academic Spin-Offs (ASOs) within the parent institution’s formal intellectual property (IP) structure. Cross-level analysis of a survey administered to 23,500 PhD students in Italy shows the heterogeneity of PhD students’ entrepreneurial activities, which, in addition to ASOs, incl...

The European Union (EU) has committed to becoming a global leader in renewable energy. Reaching this target implies fostering innovation activity to maximize the competitiveness of the European renewable industry. By relying on a case study approach based on a small number of in‐depth interviews with selected stakeholders, this paper illustrates on...

Science and Technology (S&T) is a key aspect of superhero comic books. Comics reach a vast audience and are rife with scientific references. They represent a valuable resource for communicating the value of science in popular culture. The Marvel universe has evolved exponentially since its birth in 1939, breaking into the cinema industry and reachi...

This paper investigates gender issues in Ph.D. entrepreneurship. The empirical analysis is based on data from a questionnaire survey run in 2014–15 in Italy. We analyse how Ph.D. students perceive the institutional entrepreneurial environment, the drivers and the factors hindering entrepreneurship and gender-equality among faculties at the parent i...

This paper investigates PhD entrepreneurship. We focus on the university factors most closely associated to: (1) students’ success in starting a business venture; (2) students’ startup intention; (3) students’ abandoning the entrepreneurial idea. The empirical analysis is based on data from a questionnaire survey, administered in 2016 in Italy. We...

Purpose Technological regimes define the environment in which innovative and learning activities take place in each sector of the economy. In this paper, the authors argue that technological regimes must be interpreted and elaborated by each organisation operating within a sector in order to be implemented rationally, which leads us to the concept...

Technology diversity is defined as the ability to perform research and development in different technological domains. We investigate the degree of technological diversity in the European regions, focusing on two main drivers: the regional capacity to obtain funding from the 7th Framework Programme, and the degree of regional network centrality in...

Prior empirical research is inconclusive in determining whether technology complexity influences the financial performance of research commercialization projects and how various types of organizational resources contribute to performance. We analyse research commercialization projects involving the collaboration between public research institutes a...

This paper investigates how the characteristics of university laboratories influence the propensity of Ph.D. students to entrepreneurship, and thus, contribute to the transfer of academic knowledge to society. As determinants of Ph.D. entrepreneurship, we focus on the lab scientific and social capital as well as on the business experience that Ph.D...

The shift from a linear model to a circular model can significantly reduce the negative pressures on the environment and contribute to restoring biodiversity and natural capital in Europe. In this view, research and innovation (R&I) play a relevant role in setting the modalities of this transition. Therefore, the European Commission (EC) recently p...

Support for technology clusters is an important element of innovation policy, with an increasing number of national and regional plans promoting Research and Development projects in collaborative networks. This promotes the need to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of these policies. Several methods and techniques have been proposed, but a...

Industry 4.0 is a word that identifies innovative technologies, processes and products, typical of a Fourth Industrial Revolution characterised by a massive and pervasive use of interdependent digital technologies and the rise of cyber-physical spaces or smart factories. European Member States are committed to adapting their innovation systems in o...

This work investigates the factors that affect the propensity of Ph.D. students to create their own firms. The paper uses data from the responses to 9062 questionnaires, administered in 2016 to Ph.D. students in Italy, focusing on five factors: the entrepreneurial environment; the existence of university policy frameworks dedicated to entrepreneurs...

Industry 4.0 is a name used to indicate a ‘fourth industrial revolution’, characterised by the emergence of smart factories in which cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes and communicate with each other and human beings in real time. European Member States and regions are committed to adapt their innovation systems to the trends of Indu...

This article describes questionnaire data on Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) entrepreneurship in Italy. The data includes (i) information recently collected via a questionnaire survey on Ph.D. students; (ii) background information on Italian academic institutions attended by students. We present here some descriptive statistics of the variables includ...

Technological diversity in Europe: empirical evidence from agri-food research projects. Regional Studies. Regional technological diversity is the capacity of regions to carry out research in multiple technology fields. Based on the analysis of 730 competitive research projects funded by the 7th European Framework Programme in agri-food, we show tha...

A revised version of this early working paper was published on European Planning Studies. Please quote: Andrea Ciffolilli & Alessandro Muscio (2018) Industry 4.0: national and regional comparative advantages in key enabling technologies, European Planning Studies, 26:12, 2323-2343, DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2018.1529145

The new shape of competition is pushing wine firms to invest into new technologies. Given the growing interests in this area, we provide evidence on the determinants of the adoption of the new technologies industry. On the basis of a survey on Italian companies, the main investments in innovations and their key drivers are investigated. We tested w...

The impact of hard and soft policy measures on new technology-based firms. Regional Studies. Entrepreneurship policies in support of new technology-based firms fall into two main categories of intervention: hard measures (financial-type support such as loans and grants) and soft measures (counselling and business advice services). This study invest...

Lombardy is, together with Emilia-Romagna, the Italian region with the largest number of companies manufacturing automated machinery and smart systems. Lombardy has a central position in European Advanced Manufacturing cooperation networks, excelling in the areas of advanced manufacturing systems (Industry 4.0 and smart systems). The region can be...

The academic systems of several countries are adapting to the consequences of progressive cuts in public research funding and the increasing engagement of academics in commercial contracts with both the private and public sector. While promoting the so-called third mission and encouraging university–industry collaboration agreements, there is the r...

The importance of eco-innovations to food manufacturing has risen exponentially in recent years. In this paper we investigate the drivers of different types of eco-innovation in the Italian wine industry, a particularly relevant sector both in terms of its economic performance and its use of natural resources. We focus on the internal knowledge sou...

The economics literature provides rich evidence on the convergence between the institutional factors and individual-level characteristics influencing the involvement of academia in knowledge transfer activities and spinoff creation. However, little is known about the effects of internal university regulations on academic entrepreneurship. In the la...

The regional innovation paradox is the greater need of lagging regions to invest in innovation and their relatively lower capacity to absorb funding compared to more advanced regions. Using data on regional public spending, industry composition and economic performance, we test empirically whether there is a differential impact of European funding...

It is generally acknowledged that the cuts in government funding for research implemented in several European countries will induce academic researchers to increase their interaction with non academic entities to promote the acquisition of external funding for research. Indirectly this implies that there will be a shift in the focus of academic sci...

Summary: The Effects of Public Research Funding on Academic Engagement (J.E.L. L24, L31, O32, O33) This paper provides an empirical investigation of the effects of public funding of academic research on external funding obtained via research contracts, consultancies and «research to order» activities more generally. These informal collaborations be...

In a context characterized by public spending reviews and research funding shortages, governments in several countries are putting pressure on universities to increase their applied research activity, intensify their interaction with industry, and attract funding from the nonacademic domain. The economic literature provides rich evidence on the con...

Although universities are generally under pressure to increase their interactions with industry, academic departments vary enormously in the extent to which they collaborate with businesses. There are several factors, which, to different extents, drive or hamper academics' capabilities to engage in collaboration with the private sector. On the basi...

Universities have long been involved in knowledge transfer activities and are increasing their efforts to collaborate with industry. However, universities vary enormously in the extent to which they promote, and succeed in commercializing, academic research. In this paper, we focus on the concept of cognitive distance, intended as differences in th...

The support to technological clusters has become a key element of public strategies for innovation. We observe a growing number of national and regional policies supporting R&D projects in collaborative networks. As a consequence, there is also a greater attention to a proper evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of such policies. Differen...

There is growing political pressure on universities to intensify their interaction with industry and to enlarge their own research funding options, in a context characterised by increasing constraints on public spending. However, whether the successful achievement of such a political desired outcome is consistent with a restriction of government fu...

There is increasing awareness that university–industry collaboration provides an important knowledge transfer channel and, thus, is a powerful driver of innovation. Universities are increasingly being asked to play incisive roles in the process of regional economic development. This paper assesses the extent to which university–industry collaborati...

In the last twenty years, universities' efforts to collaborate with industry and foster knowledge transfer have increased progressively. Many of these efforts have been directed at firms located at a distance from the university, and sometimes in a different country. Based on an original database of interviews with 197 Italian university department...

The most important purpose is to assess by a trial and error method the financial effects of efficient prevention programmes in our country. The study provides an empiric evidence that Government could reduce public spending thorough investments in projects of prevention about visual care. Authors focus on the economic impact of four eye diseases t...

Universities have come under increasing pressure to become key drivers of economic development in the age of the knowledge economy. Yet we know very little about the impact of university quality and scientific excellence on the probability of graduates finding jobs. This paper investigates the determinants of Italian graduates’ employability 3-year...

Purpose This paper aims to focus on understanding how demand for innovation is articulated in low‐tech industries, dominated by SMEs, where innovation is often based on informal processes and uncodified knowledge, relying on intangible assets. Design/methodology/approach The authors hypothesize that the problems found in the innovation area are ex...

Universities have come under increasing pressure to become key drivers of economic development in the age of the knowledge economy. Yet we know very little about the impact of university quality and scientific excellence on the probability of graduates finding jobs. This paper investigates the determinants of Italian graduates’ employability 1-year...

There is increasing political pressures on universities to raise research funding from industry and contribute actively to economic development. However, whether or not promotion of the so called third mission in universities, of interacting with industry, is effective without government funding remains an open question, and we do not know whether...

Over the last 20years, universities have made steady progress in their efforts to foster the process of technology transfer through collaboration with industry. The establishment of technology transfer offices (TTO) has become routine for supporting the commercialization of academic research. However, the literature shows that there are many factor...

Universities have long been involved in knowledge transfer activities. Yet the last 30years have seen major changes in the governance of university–industry interactions. Knowledge transfer has become a strategic issue: as a source of funding for university research and (rightly or wrongly) as a policy tool for economic development. Universities va...

The make-or-buy decision is analyzed in a simple two-task principal-agent model. There is a cost-saving/quality tradeoff in effort provision. The principal faces a dichotomous choice between weak ("make") and strong ("buy") cost-saving incentives for the agent; the dichotomy is due to an incomplete-contracting limitation necessitating that one part...

Muscio The aim of this paper is to assess the role played by Italian universities in the governance of technology transfer processes. Based on a survey of interviews with 194 directors of university departments, the paper examines how knowledge is transferred from university departments to firms, identifying the determinants of university-industry...

Absorptive capacity plays a key role in determining firms' capability to access and make use of external knowledge. However, little evidence has been provided about this important determinant of knowledge acquisition in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This article investigates the importance of absorptive capacity created...

Muscio A. and Scarpinato M. (2007) Employment and wage dynamics in Italian industrial districts, Regional Studies 41, 765-777. This paper is concerned with the analysis of differences in employment and wage growth rates inside and outside Italian industrial districts. On the basis of national statistical data, employment and wage differentials in m...

Research has proved how the industrial district model can deliver sustained economic growth and sustains firms' competitiveness. Studies have also shown how spatial proximity helps in the process of knowledge generation and diffusion. Indeed, the literature on industrial districts since the earliest studies has stressed how districts are “loci” whe...

The theoretical concepts of industrial district and regional innovation system though closely related, capture different aspects of regional economic development. Given the “nestedness” of a system in other systems, one regional innovation system can support several districts. However, in some cases, districts may be considered as local innovation...

Framework Programmes (FPs) play an important role in funding international collaborative research in Europe. However, country evaluations of FPs provide little evidence of the European Added Value (EAV) added value of research undertaken at the European level with the support of Framework funding. In this paper we report the main findings of our in...

This document reports our evaluation of the VS2010 – Value-Creation 2010 – programme. It was commissioned by the Research Council of Norway, which manages the programme on behalf of its funders: RCN; Innovation Norway; the Norwegian Confederation of Trades Unions (LO) and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO). This is a so-called ‘mid-te...

The European Union's (EU's) Framework Programmes of Research and Technological Development are subject to increasingly systematic evaluation. This paper reviews available evalua-tion evidence from the period 1999 to 2004, and concludes that the Framework Programmes appear to bring many benefits for their participants. In a broad sense, they promote...

In order to support policies for well functioning local and regional networks Technopolis has been asked to make a quick scan of available material on how some European countries support their regional hot spots or technology top regions. To do this we have chosen a number of well known hot spots in Europe and described the underlying factor for th...

In the last twenty years universities have progressively increased their efforts to collaborate with industry and foster technology transfer. Several research papers have addressed the reasons for this ever-growing involvement of Universities in third-stream activities. Yet, universities vary enormously in the extent to which they promote and succe...