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The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer’s acceptance toward product innovation in the agri-food sector, uncovering consumers’ characteristics able to encourage food innovation acceptance.

The analysis was carried out by administering a web-based structured questionnaire to a convenient sample of 443 Italian consumers. The study relies on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) to assess consumers’ acceptance toward the innovative product, while the Food-Related Lifestyle scale was applied to perform a cluster analysis aiming at detecting the attitude of consumers toward innovations in a traditional food.

The study findings showed a clear openness of consumers toward product innovation. Indeed, consumers’ WTP for the innovative product was far higher than the traditional one. Further, two out of three consumers’ groups detected (i.e. pro-innovation and rational adopters) exhibit a broad correlation between the innovative product attributes and consumers’ psychographics characteristics, revealing the existence of a large number of potential consumers.

The contribution of the paper to the current literature is twofold. First, it focused on an emerging topic for the agri-food sector (i.e. product innovation) whereby research works are still scarce. Second, product innovation was addressed toward a traditional food that is mostly reluctant to innovation due to consumers’ resistance and skepticism.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate sparkling wine consumption behavior and preferences of a large sample of US consumers (n=1,096) exploring the differences among genders and generational cohorts.

The sample has been drawn from Wine opinions, a specialized market research company with a large online panel of US wine consumers. Data were collected through a survey mailing model, administering a structured questionnaire.

Findings reveal that consumption frequency between genders is not statistically different and women generally prefer sparkling wines priced below $15. Baby Boomers is the generation with the lowest sparkling wine consumption frequency. Furthermore, Generation X and Baby Boomers have the highest consumption frequency in the price range $15–$19.99, while Millennials in the $10–$14.99 one.

The study sheds light on the changing consumer attitudes to create competitive advantages for wineries. Specifically, it provides valuable marketing insights into the peculiarities of sparkling wine consumption for each generation (e.g. price-point preferences and type of wine).

Social Farming (SF) is an expression of agricultural diversification and multifunctionality, due to its ability to create positive externalities through the inclusion of vulnerable individuals. For this reason, products derived from SF are characterized by social quality attributes, which, however, are not often recognized by the market. This study aims to investigate the reasons behind the lacked recognition of the value created by SF analyzing the willingness to pay (WTP) for such products and the factors affecting citizen-consumers' purchasing behavior.

Data were collected through a convenience sample (N = 350) via a web-based structured questionnaire. Psycho-attitudinal scales, previously validated in literature, were adopted to characterize the citizen-consumers interviewed. A logistic regression was run in order to determine those characteristics of respondents affecting their intention to purchase SF products, while an ordered logistic regression was performed to uncover the determinants of consumers' WTP for SF products.

The results show the relevant role of the level of education, household size and ethical self-identity in affecting the willingness to support SF activities by paying a price premium for its products. Lack of availability and information about SF products are the main factors limiting their purchase.

The study offers interesting results outlining future research fields about market penetration strategies and policy implications.

The paper offers a comprehensive understanding of how digital transformation affects business models and how firms operate and compete effectively and successfully in a digital economy.

The research adopted an abductive approach (Dubois and Gadde, 2002) through constant movement between theory and empirical evidence. A systematic literature review led the first conceptual development and examples of practices from cultural heritage sectors were used in the theorizing process.

This paper depicts a digital model framework through a set of assumptions about how an organization creates and delivers value in an interconnected way by orchestrating new interactive processes, and providing experience propositions to customers, and about how value is framed in terms of economic, social and cultural outcomes.

The study contributes to the scientific debate by discussing the role of digital business models as enhancements more rather than replacements of traditional business models; it frames a digital business model as consisting of three main pillars: value orchestration, experience propositions and value sharing.

With the aim to enrich the ongoing debate about healthcare management, the paper has a twofold intent: [1] to emphasise the interpretative contribution that intellectual capital can provide to a better understanding of the relevant role of patients in the healthcare sector and [2] to investigate the relationships between the three main dimensions of intellectual capital – human capital, relational capital and structural capital – and patient satisfaction in the healthcare sector.

The intellectual capital framework is contextualised in the healthcare sector, and the relationships among patient evaluations of human capital, relational capital and structural capital and patient satisfaction are tested via structural equation modelling (SEM) using primary data collected with reference to a sample of 561 Italian patients involved in post survey treatments in three Italian hospitals.

The role of intellectual capital in supporting a better understanding of processes and dynamics of patient satisfaction in the healthcare sector is underlined. The empirical research provides possible guidelines for recovery patients centrality in healthcare management.

The paper shows how an intellectual capital framework can support a better understanding and management of dynamics and processes through which patient centrality and satisfaction in healthcare management can be enforced.

This research focuses on establishing relationships between eco-innovation and organisational innovation and innovation in general to characterise organisational eco-innovation in European Union companies. We also aim to investigate the forms of innovations that eco-innovative companies use as well as the factors or determinants of eco-innovation in the corporate environment that impel the use of organisational innovation.

We use the estimation of different binary logistic regression models with maximum likelihood applied to a sample obtained from the Eurostat's Community Innovation Survey 2014 database as a starting point.

The results suggest that the type of organisational innovation most closely related to eco-innovation is found in work responsibility and decision-making methods. Some less frequently studied significant factors are highlighted, such as training or aspects related to intellectual capital and knowledge management, since significant indications of the importance and acquisition of existing know-how have appeared, in contrast to internal knowledge generation.

The study seeks to observe what specific quantitative drivers (external or internal) are used for organisational eco-innovation, as a specific subtype of eco-innovation. This can improve our understanding of the ways in which organisational innovation can be used by corporations to provide environmental benefits. The academic literature provides information on the drivers and determinants for both organisational innovation and eco-innovation separately, but we believe this article offers a new approach by looking at the specific eco-innovation drivers achieved through organisational innovation.

The paper aims to explore the nature of initiatives and strategies of inter-organizational cooperation to cross the valley of death in the biopharma industry.

The authors conducted an exploratory case study analysis in the Biopharma Innovation Ecosystem in Greater Boston Area (USA), which is one of the oldest, and most successful IE in the US, specialized in the Biopharma domain, by conducting a round of expert interviews with key informants in the area, chosen as representatives of the different types of actors engaged in the drug development processes at different stages.

Main findings suggest that cooperation can contribute to surviving the valley of death by reducing the barriers within the drug development pipeline through the promotion of strategic relationships among actors of different nature, including the establishment of government-led thematic associations or consortia, agreements between university and business support structures, proximity to venture capitalist and the promotion of a general culture of academic entrepreneurship within universities.

The authors believe that this paper contributes to the literature by shedding light on the nature of the specific cooperative initiative the barriers in drug development and help to survive the valley of the death.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how the intellectual capital (IC) approach and concepts could be fruitfully adapted to study the smart city phenomenon from a managerial point of view.

This study is based on a long-term, in-depth ethnographic exploration of the vast global community, which is created around the smart city movement.

The analysis suggests that, in order to effectively analyse a smart city context through the IC lens, the traditional IC framework needs to be extended for: expected outcomes, which should also include sustainability, resilience and quality of life; categories of key resources, which should also include institutional capital and environmental capital; units of analysis, which should also include territorial systems, such as transportation or waste; and key managerial challenges implied. As a final result, a smart city intellectual capital (SC-IC) framework is proposed.

Most of the cases analysed in this study are European; further studies are advisable to better investigate non-European smart city contexts.

The paper suggests that the knowledge management, project portfolio management and network management approaches are crucial to better support managerial practices in smart city organizations.

The SC-IC framework allows for a clear definition of the smart city organization, as a new knowledge-based, project-oriented, network-shaped type of organization. Therefore, the SC-IC framework provides smart city research with a consistent rooting in management studies. Further, this paper contributes to the fourth stage of IC research.