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Diverse cultures may make people behave differently and this, in turn, can impact project management. While the relationship between culture and project success has been widely explored, there is a need of addressing the gap in the relationship between culture and project management performance outcomes, that is, the performance in implementing project management processes and practices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this gap by studying the role of cultural dimensions on project management performance.

An explorative survey including 200 observations relating to the experiences of project managers with a big experience on projects involving many different national cultures has been conducted to collect primary data on the relationship between the nationality observed and the project management performance outcomes shown. Nationality has been used as a proxy to link individual cultural dimensions and project management performance.

The results of this paper show that individualism impacts project dynamics and project control positively. Moreover, masculinity impacts project dynamics positively, and uncertainty avoidance impacts project control negatively. When recognized, different cultural dimensions can drive project management performance outcomes. The increasing awareness on this topic can be a valid instrument to control the cultural effect and take advantage of it to enhance project success.

This study contributes to the theory of project management by recognizing linkages between cultural dimensions and project management performance. Moreover, this study overcomes the concept of nationality, focusing on individuals and their unique set of cultural dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the context of open innovation offered by accelerators can affect the successful growth of start-ups. The authors explore accelerators practices and tools in sustaining start-ups and increasing survival probability in their innovation process, with the aim of addressing the following research question: how can start-ups benefit from participation in an accelerator programme from an open innovation perspective?

A review of the literature on start-up successes and failures and on major practices in the open innovation paradigm was carried out, delineating them in the context of accelerators. Given the absence of literature on accelerator practices for supporting start-ups, and aiming at a comprehensive understanding of how the open environment within the accelerator influences a start-up’s survival (or even success) by mitigating the probability of failure, the authors conducted an exploratory case study in an English accelerator.

The open innovation practices mediated by an accelerator and the ones that are not covered, but that can benefit a start-up’s survival, are shown. On the one hand, main effective practices, such as dyadic co-creation with accelerator network partners and crowdsourcing, are revealed to address mostly the lack of, or wrong direction in, product, marketing and relative managerial abilities, which are not usually owned by a start-up due to its “newness”. On the other hand, some causes of failures, such as the intrinsic characteristics of founder teams, do not seem to be addressed by an open approach and neither does participation in an accelerator programme.

This paper is the first to study and link the literature on accelerators, start-ups and open innovation.

This work provides new insights into possible managerial choices and development directions for practising open innovation (OI) in companies. The purpose of this paper is to explore the different practices, actors and tools adopted for opening up the innovation process, in particular, by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are still facing difficulties in its implementation.

The paper is based on a literature review and an exploratory survey of a sample of 85 European SMEs.

The study identifies a total of 23 practices, 20 actors and 11 tools involved in the OI processes of companies. It highlights, through literature and empirical evidence, how different combinations of practices, actors and tools are put into practice.

The developed framework offers new insights both from OI literature and from practitioners’ point of view into the supporting decision-making processes regarding which practices to implement, tools to adopt and actors to collaborate with. A wider investigation is recommended to include more variables to define the differences among the combinations of practices, actors and tools in terms of types of innovation (e.g. product, process, etc.), the openness degree and other contextual factors.

The originality of this paper is based on the fact that it focusses on a practical perspective of OI implementation, building a framework of reference from previous literature and empirical investigation.

The purpose of this study is to extend the knowledge on sustainable organisational learning (OL) in sustainable companies.

Sustainability is examined from an OL perspective and was based on Edward’s integral cycle of learning. An in-depth analysis of the literature was carried out, and a list of OL characteristics, such as openness to new ideas and participative policymaking, were compiled. To identify which OL characteristics are used for sustainability, a multiple-case study was designed for sustainable companies operating in the food and beverage industry.

This study found a wide variety of sustainable practices, such as experimentation and information-sharing systems, related to learning processes, and learning leadership appears to be the least developed dimension. It was also found that sustainable companies learn through social rather than reflective learning, in relationships with internal and external stakeholders, and by concrete actions to implement environmental and social impacts.

This study is one of a few that explore sustainable OL and contributes to categorising OL characteristics that sustainable companies use to facilitate and support sustainability in the mid–long term.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and discuss a new regional foresight methodology.

The first part describes the methodology and the organizational process adopted for implementing foresight at the regional level and highlights the criticalities. The research methodology is based on a case study. The case is the analysis of the industrial and regional sectors and the technological families in the Lombardy region.

This methodology analyses trends, technologies and industries, returning a set of qualitative and quantitative indicators. Then, it aggregates them, building two matrixes (trends/technologies and technologies/industries). Finally, it evaluates the future importance of a technology (the attractiveness of a technology for the long-term competitiveness of the regional main industrial sectors) and the capabilities of the regional industrial, technical and scientific system to develop specific technologies (feasibility for the regional system to develop the chosen technology).

The originality lies in an integrated analysis of the possible futures and their relation with the industrial world. Its value is as a tool to suggest policies and R&D investments. It is possible to provide a sound basis for science and technology policymaking.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an in-depth analysis of online communities of practice that support the innovative development of web applications. The analysis is aimed at understanding the preeminent characteristics of communities of practice that can favour the process of innovation (conceptualisation and realization of a web application) and if these characteristics differ in the diverse phases of a software development project (requirement specification, design, implementation and verification).

The authors adopted a multiple case study research design, selected 29 communities of practice related to the development of web applications and classified them recognizing the different practices that refer to the different phases of the innovation process of web-applications software development. Finally, the authors focussed on seven communities comparing five important dimensions for each one.

The results of the empirical analysis show that the best practices are different, considering the different phases of the project, and that these practices can be strategies directed at members to attract them and also, strategies directed at the community to permit collaboration.

The paper proposes an important and new insight into the management of virtual communities of practice (VCoP). The authors supposed that the ways to manage a VCoP could depend on project phases. In particular, the management practices of community should differ according to the different project phases, i.e. requirements specification, design, implementation and verification of the software. Literature in this sense presented only research focussed on the different effects of virtualness on teams depending on the length of team duration and on communication efforts.

Adopting lean principles can unleash several opportunities for firms seeking to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their product development (PD) process. This study aims to investigate the implementation paths of lean tools in the innovation process of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A set of 47 lean tools are identified from the literature and ascribed to the five lean thinking principles, i.e. Value, Map, Flow, Pull and Perfection. Their practical adoption – in terms of “when” and “how” – is then explored in a multiple case study of three SMEs in the manufacturing industry.

SMEs adopt multiple lean tools in different phases of their innovation process. They are still at the beginning of the holistic adoption of lean PD, but some core lean tools, such as A3 reports and visual management, are adopted systematically. Results reveal that specific sets of lean tools and supporting principles are more valuable in certain phases of SMEs innovation process. Specifically, the lean tools concerning the principle of Value and Map can enable the phases of Innovation inputs, Concept development and Solution implementation; the ones ascribed to Flow and Pull the phases of Concept development, Testing and experimentation, and Solution implementation; the Perfection tools to the final phases of Testing and experimentation, Solution implementation and Market introduction.

Results provide a reference for SMEs already adopting lean tools in their production process to be extended to the PD process, especially when the delivery of new products is pivotal. Innovative SMEs could evaluate the introduction of specific lean tools in one or more definite phases of their PD process.

The study contributes to the literature on the complementarity between lean and innovation by studying the context of SMEs with a process perspective, thus unveiling the potential paths of a widespread application of lean innovation in SMEs.

This paper aims to study the extent of the transformation of European manufacturing companies towards the factory of the future (FoF) and related concepts, e.g. Industry 4.0 and digitalisation.

A qualitative survey design was used to investigate the areas, patterns and elements for implementing FoF. A total of 92 responses from manufacturing firms of Alpine regions were collected and analysed, followed by in-depth interviews with a subset of respondents to identify common challenges, drivers and opportunities for the transformation.

Manufacturing companies are gaining awareness on their needs and gaps in the FoF path, the implications on business strategy and the rates of innovation and technology adoption. Nevertheless, they still need to shape their organisational structures (e.g. from highly centralised to more collaborative ones) and nurture their managerial capabilities in operations and supply chain management, and customer relationships, only partially based on FoF technologies.

This study aims to contribute to recent literature and practice of FoF (and related concepts) by depicting a picture of the possible areas of intervention, main issues and gaps (especially in terms of skills, supply chain and customer relationships) of manufacturing companies in their digital transformation. The qualitative research design and its scope represent the main limitations.

This paper provides a systemic overview for FoF by encompassing the technological, strategic, managerial and organisational perspectives of digitalisation in manufacturing and integrating the insights from a multi-sectorial and multi-dimensional analysis.

In the stream of works studying complexity from an organizational viewpoint, literature is focused mainly on describing new organizational forms (holonic organization, circular organization, virtual corporation, …) and on conceptual works identifying new managerial principles to manage emergence (job enrichment, de‐regulation, …). But literature still lacks “actionable knowledge” on management of emergent processes. Therefore, the authors seek to propose an empirical analysis with the aim of finding the organizational design drivers that enable self‐organization. As creativity could be understood as an important precondition for both adaptation and innovation in an age of complexity, the authors focus on creativity emergence process.

The analysis is based on a framework of self‐organization principles. The authors derived it from the literature and used it to empirically analyse open innovation web‐based platforms for creativity. They are deemed particularly important because their open and collaborative innovation process is often self‐organized and their collaboration relationships seem to be loosely coupled. Therefore, they are a good ground to investigate the alternatives to managerial hierarchy and the knowledge‐based organizations associated with emergence and self‐organization.

The results highlight important organizational design choices to enable self‐organization process: organic structure composed by activity systems to enable reconfiguration; roles enlargement and enrichment and cognitive diversity to enable redundancy; collaboration and participatory decision‐making and social capital and networking to enable interconnection; values adaptation, motivations and rules to enable sharing principle.

The paper contributes to the empirical knowledge on emergence process, translating the principles of self‐organization in managerial actions.

Managing organizations in complex environments is a major challenge. Complexity is not only due to the external environment (market and/or technological turbulence) but also to the internal configuration and specificities. A recent stream of studies in organizational literature suggested that organizations should develop and deploy specific capabilities for facing complexity, namely dynamic capabilities. This means becoming more flexible. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper proposes four main capabilities to face four dimensions of complexity. It then investigates if it is more appropriate to focus on a specific capability when facing higher levels of a specific dimension of complexity. The research methodology is a multiple case study in seven different organizational units of the same super-store corporate.

Data showed some important results. First of all, internal complexity is unit specific rather than corporate or industry specific. Moreover, it can derive not only from unpredictability and rate of change, but also from variety of elements and their interactions. All these elements form complexity. Internal complexity is characterized by four main elements: uncertainty, dynamicity, diversity and interdependence. Finally, for each of these elements, different organizational strategies are used: in case of uncertainty, for example, a strategy used by the companies is the sharing of information and the development of redundancy.

Originality lies in linking different capabilities with different dimensions of internal complexity.