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The purpose of this paper is to focus on tracheal stent production with the aim of investigating the available devices and improving their performances. The biomedical field is a continuously growing area of the market always in search of the most innovative and competitive solutions for healthcare. Beside the actual critical period of the world economy, it shows continuous improvements in research and innovation.

Within a market analysis and the collaboration between engineering and biomedical research fields, it was outlined a new product concept able to satisfy the patient’s and physician’s requirements with the focus on the enhancement of the stent anchorage. As a result, the concept of a custom- or tailor-made stent was identified as a potential solution. Moreover, additive technologies were identified as the economically sustainable processes for manufacturing these innovative stents. In the present paper, different types of stents were derived from the proposed concept, they were designed, manufactured and their anchorage capability was tested. In particular, the procedures adopted for their design are described and discussed. Moreover, silicone fused deposition modelling was adopted and two types of deposition method, namely, layer-by-layer and continuous, were used to manufacture the devices identifying their pro, cons and limits. Finally, the stents were tested against migration and results were compared with one of the most widely used today.

The results show how additive manufacturing allowed to manufacture more efficient and migration resistant stents.

It is expected that this new stent design will reduce the risk of complications in stenting, as granulation, thanks to a more uniform stress distribution on the trachea tissues. These improved characteristics will allow to enhance the quality of both the product and the patient’s healthcare.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key factors for successful creation of social value using the social business model (SBM) as an explanatory framework.

This study follows the Krippendorff and Gioia’s methodology seeking the rigor while examining the selected case study – a social cooperative named La Paranza, in the city of Naples in the south of Italy. In doing so, the SBM canvas is used to present the research’s results in a systematic way.

The existence of a strong “identity” with the local context, the “enthusiasm and the wish to change things”, the presence of a “visionary”, acting as an orchestrator and the ability to provide for responses to the local needs were identified as key factors in the successful creation of social value in the examined case.

The main research limits stem from the single case study methodology approach, which embodies the researchers’ subjectivity. A comparative study based on the collection of multiple successful case studies is therefore suggested to develop a generalization of the key drivers underlying the process of social value creation.

The study’s originality results from its use of the SBM framework in presenting a successful example of social value creation. The examined empirical evidence is also original in itself, mainly because of its inner uniqueness as a new and innovative formula: this allows an in-depth investigation and the inspiration for new ideas in the ground of SBM and, in a broader sense, in the field of social innovation and social value creation.

This paper aims to explore the effects of two drivers, namely, the received fundings and its interaction with the specialized competences owned by the managerial board, on the R&D activities performed by start-ups.

This paper tests hypotheses on a sample of 405 innovative start-ups established in Italy and registered into the Chamber of Commerce official database. This study uses the R&D expenses as a measure of the innovative performance of start-up, and the authors also collected the number and total amount of grants received by them and the presence of high qualified team in their management board.

The analysis reveals that both the number and total amount of grants received by start-ups positively impact the innovative performance. The same is for the integration of the total amount of grants with the presence of high qualified team in the management board.

This study did not distinguish between different types of grants adopted by start-ups, while it would be interesting to study whether any difference does exist among them in terms of their influence on innovative performance. Also, this paper considers the total number of specialized people in the team while it would certainly be interesting to analyze people’s background and competences in relation to the innovative performances.

This paper allows us to offer some provisional conclusions such as having funds in the preliminary phase of start-up life cycle, and investments mainly for R&D expenses. The start-up must also leverage its skills and therefore it is necessary to invest in human capital.

Findings suggest that policymakers should introduce integrated measures to support start-ups throughout the entire life cycle, from the creation of the idea to incubation up to industrial consolidation.

This paper focuses on the determinants of start-up innovative performance because both external (such as political, economic, social and technological) and internal (such as organizational) influencing factors have to be considered as crucial for start-ups innovation and growth. Finally, this study is one of the few attempts exploring the phenomenon by using an empirical methodology based on real and certificated data.

Although strategic changes and management control systems are relevant, there is the need for an evolution in the tools of performance measurement, analysis and control to understand the ability of the firms, at first, to face environmental variability and, then, to achieve objectives through the strategic change management. This study was dedicated to the issue of what measures are relevant during the strategic change process. It also proposes a multidimensional control system for strategic changes. The framework is based on: the literature review and analysis about strategic change, change management and performance measurement; a two-stage empirical research. Overall, the proposed control system can help firms in managing strategic changes.

The first problem is to assemble the works of Pucci; for there is no complete edition. His writings, some still unpublished, are scattered in a large number of manuscripts and these contain many variants, resulting from the popular nature of his verse, for much of it was meant to be recited in the streets and squares of his native town and in the oral tradition it has been considerably changed and modified. The Pucci manuscripts, with the exception of four (one in the Bibliothèque Nationale and three in the Bodleian), are to be found in various libraries in Italy, and editors and compilers of anthologies have taken material from them—a bit here and a bit there—in a haphazard way, printing what suited their purpose and often consulting only one of many manuscripts. Consequently there are different versions of some poems and few are edited critically, though the publication last year of Professor Sapegno's anthology Poeti minori del trecento with its 117 pages devoted to Pucci has remedied this state of affairs for some of the most important. The only collection of Pucci's verse—if we discount a group of sonnets and a sonnet sequence, both published by A. D'Ancona—is that of F. Ferri in La poesia popolare in A. Pucci (1909), and this is a very incomplete and uncritical work; but as it includes many poems not found elsewhere, it is essential for reference. Pucci's work in print must therefore be sought in many places: in F. Ferri (op. cit.), in anthologies, in periodicals, in editions of single or of two or three poems, and in many rare publications—often per nozze and therefore particularly difficult to come by, because of the few copies printed.

This essay aims at retracing the intellectual and biographical events of the economist Gino Arias (1879–1940), examining more in detail the two seasons at the opposite ends of his life: the early one that saw him considerably committed to the Zionist cause and the one that, thirty years later, would force him to confront the racial laws of the Fascist regime.

Despite the seeming tragic continuity of these two phases, Arias’s case is a real historiographical paradox since, over the long span between the opposite ends of his biography, not only did he distance himself from the Zionist movement, but he also gradually laid the foundations for his upcoming and immediate dedication to Fascism; indeed, within the Fascist regime he would stand out as an authoritative and influential theorist of corporatism, the institutional solution Mussolini tried to exploit to organize the national economic life.

After carefully examining Arias’s early contributions to the Zionist cause (that include the establishment of the Florentine Zionist Group and that led him toward strongly nationalistic stances), this essay sums up Arias’s intellectual biography during the next years and then, thanks to unprecedented documents from the Italian Ministry of Interior, closely looks into his fate after his conversion to Catholicism in 1932 and up against the racial laws of 1938, as well as into his attempts to escape persecution. A few final observations will then try to highlight the dramatic exemplarity of his case.

Free guided walking tours are one of the most successful tourism segments in the digital platform economy. It is beginning to be associated with negative impacts in some of the destinations where it is spreading rapidly. Although the platform economy is generating increasing academic interest, the free tour model remains largely unexplored area in the literature. This study aims to examine how such activity affects cultural destinations.

Focussing on the largest Free Tours platform operating in Spain, GuruWalk, the methodology used analyses its impact in six cultural destinations on two of the sustainability dimensions: the territorial dimension and the governance, through an exploratory study.

The findings help to understand the differences that such activity generates in each destination depending on the phase of its life cycle, and to implement, if necessary, corrective measures. The research confirms that the impacts differ according to the tourist destination’s maturity, concluding that such activity contributes to the increase of tourist agglomerations and the overcrowding of cultural destinations in their middle and mature life cycles. The findings highlighted the importance of the role of local governance on free tour activity.

The main contribution is the association of the impacts they produce (especially in terms of massification) with destination life cycle phases. There were no similar precedents with a spatial or territorial analysis to reliably demonstrate not only that this activity has an impact on the territory but also what type of impact is produced.

Gamification is the use of game elements in different contexts. It is also a tool with potential application in several areas, including training and development. From this reference, this study has a main objective to identify a perception of efficiency and the measurable results in the process of gamification in training and development actions.

The quantitative stage of the research sought to investigate the perception of efficiency of professionals who have already undergone gamified training, collected through an online form with responses on a Likert scale and treated with the Minitab Statistical Software. The qualitative stage, on the other hand, identifies the perception of results through classification with professionals who develop gamified training, with the results found in the content analysis techniques.

The compiled results confirmed the presence of engagement and its influence on motivation as one of the advantage points for the application of gamification. It was also possible to find in these results the relevance of design care for the game/training interaction to work effectively.

Among the trends of greatest incidence found in the research, are the possibility of associating gamification with virtual reality and augmented reality, as well as with simulators to enhance the experience lived by the player during training.

The study investigates the use of early forms of environmental accounting in the implementation of environmental strategies in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany between the 16th and 17th centuries.

The study adopts the Foucauldian concept of raison d’État to shed light on the ways in which environmental accounting practices were used by Tuscan Grand Dukes to form a detailed knowledge of the territory to be governed and act accordingly.

Financial and non-financial information relating to environmental issues enabled the Grand Dukes to “visualise” the territory to be managed as an enclosed disciplinary space whereby the conduct of people living therein could be decisively influenced. Accounting practices as a tool for the implementation of environmental strategies did not merely aim to protect the environment but were a means to reinforce the power of the State.

The paper can inform future works that investigate the ways in which environmental policies and accounting are used to pursue far-reaching governmental goals. It encourages scholars to examine further the origins of environmental accounting and its early forms.

The study documents how environmental strategies and the related use of accounting can have a significant influence on how individuals are allowed to conduct themselves. It also shows that environmental accounting practices can be an important tool in a State’s machinery of power.

The study offers a novel perspective on the use of environmental accounting information as a tool in the exercise of State power. It explores explicitly the interrelations between accounting, sustainability and power. It also adds new evidence to historical research that has engaged with early forms of environmental accounting.