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The aim of this research is to elucidate the correlation between open innovation, digital strategies and networking in enhancing agricultural enterprises within the new perspective of Agrifood 5.0. As such, it contributes to making businesses more competitive, especially in the Italian agricultural sector, where small and medium-sized enterprises are highly fragmented. Numerous studies have asserted that the competitiveness of actors operating within a specific territory is closely linked to local identity and image enhancement. Agricultural organizations are undergoing a profound transformation, with technological assets emerging as catalysts for new synergies. Advanced technologies such as robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and automation (AI) are emerging as differentiating elements capable of further advancing the agricultural sector, transitioning it from Agrifood 4.0 to Agrifood 5.0. The empirical analysis of the research shows a positive correlation between a collaborative attitude and a propensity for innovation. Indeed, the data demonstrated that digital strategies and open innovation positively influence competitiveness in agricultural SMEs.

The methodology employed in this study is mixed, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The quantitative aspect involves analysis of the dataset from the Italian Statistical Institute (ISTAT) through logistic regression, while the qualitative component entails analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of 174 agricultural cooperatives in southern Italian regions (Campania). This approach allows for a comprehensive understanding of the research topic, capturing both numerical trends and nuanced insights from interviews.

After analyzing the data from the 7th General Census of Agriculture conducted by ISTAT, a clear understanding of the sector has emerged, revealing several potential research avenues. It is evident that innovation in the agricultural sector is often driven by the largest and best-capitalized production entities, primarily located in Italy. Conversely, smaller agricultural entities can benefit from networking as new technological assets act as catalysts for new synergies, innovation and competitiveness.

Enhancing the relational contribution within the network and humanizing a fragmented sector are crucial elements for promoting open innovation. Network structuring facilitates the transmission of managerial knowledge, contributing to an overall increase in the intellectual and relational capital of the agricultural sector. These factors, combined with open innovation, enhance the competitiveness of individual firms and elevate the brand of the entire sector, creating a conducive environment for transitioning toward Agrifood 5.0. This transition is characterized by increased interconnection, continuous innovation and overall prosperity. Specific studies on this topic are lacking in Italy, particularly in the southern regions. Therefore, this contribution focuses on investigating the Campania region.

The novelty of this study lies in its investigation of the relationship between agricultural enterprises and innovation in the context of enterprises networking strategies (i.e. associationism and/or cooperation), promoting competitiveness. The limitations of this study are related to the dimension of the sample selected and its relationship with other productive sectors.

Recently, the tourism and hospitality industry has been increasingly hit by serious crises. In particular, the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and phenomena such as a shortage of skilled workers and overtourism are presenting numerous destinations and their key stakeholders with new, increasingly complex challenges. In addition, the continued development of meta-processes such as demographic change and digitalisation in many respects implies an ‘end of tourism as we know it’ (Destinationthink.com, 2017). In order to successfully face these complex challenges, it is necessary – as with most wicked problems – to think and act ‘outside the box’. An increasing individualisation and pluralisation of lifestyles is taking place in most societies and represents another challenge that should not be underestimated. This implies that diversity and diversity management are becoming ever more important strategic success factors, both for human resource management and for the development of new markets and target groups. Unfortunately, however, far too few players in the tourism and hospitality sector value diversity management as part of their corporate strategy. This chapter therefore aims to raise awareness of diversity and diversity management as a concept that has become increasingly important in recent years but still only occupies a niche in tourism-specific contexts. The intensified strategic valorisation of diversity can actually sustainably increase the competitiveness of destinations and their key actors. Against this backdrop, this contribution explores conceptual understandings of diversity and diversity management from a theoretical perspective and uses specific case studies to illustrate how the corresponding management approach can be successfully valorised in tourist destinations.

Despite the increasing studies concerning external knowledge for innovative firms or for innovations, little research demonstrates as what are those capabilities that enable firms to explore and assess high-valuable knowledge. The aim of this study is to examine those capabilities that aid innovative firms to search and identify the potential knowledge for open innovation. This study is an empirical and theoretical examination of knowledge search and identification capabilities of the UK-based biotechnology firms. The literature has been drawn from the research streams into knowledge management, open innovation and dynamic capabilities.

Forty-five semi-structured interviews with senior-level innovation and R&D managers were completed, and thematic analysis using NVivo 12 was performed.

Evidence from 45 interviews with senior-level innovation and R&D managers in the UK-based biotechnology firms and thematic analysis was used to develop a process framework capturing the key capabilities. By identifying the role and contribution of each of the capabilities in knowledge identification in the practices of open innovation, this study contributes to open innovation and knowledge management literature.

Managerial implications suggest knowledge-oriented leads greatly influence the development of identification capabilities. Hence, firms with knowledge-oriented leads are better crafted approaches to achieve competitive advantages in the practices of open innovation.

This study offers a new theoretical perspective and empirical evidence to view knowledge identification capabilities as the dynamic capabilities. This study offers a process framework of identification capabilities.

Despite the importance of top management team (TMT) gender diversity in a firm's strategic decisions and the high degree of innovation activities that several firms have experienced in recent years, little or no research has examined how TMT gender diversity affects a firm's open innovation decision. The authors examine how TMT gender diversity impacts firms' open innovation activities. The authors further examine how this impact is affected by women executives' personal attributes and institutional conditions.

The sample comprised of 62,745 firm-year observations (9,831 firms) from 25 countries from 1990 to 2010. The authors employed the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique to estimate the results.

Employing novel panel data on co-owned patents across 25 economies, the authors find that proportion of women in TMTs has a positive impact on open innovation activities. Moreover, the authors find that women managers' power and institutional gender parity strengthen the association between gender diversity and open innovation.

The findings of this study indicate that firms committed to optimizing their open innovation policies and practices should include women in TMTs and create such conditions that are supportive for women executives to effectively express their innate inclinations. Importantly, our study supports the business case for gender diversity in top leadership positions by providing a compelling evidence for the positive impact of TMT gender diversity on open innovation.

This study contributes to the gender diversity literature by showing how women leaders' values and character become embedded in their companies' strategy and present empirical evidence that having women in TMTs increase the likelihood of conducting open innovation. Further, the authors show how women executives' power and institutional level gender parity provide boundary conditions that moderate the relationship between TMT gender diversity and open innovation.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are currently showing an increasingly open innovation (OI) approach. Public policies supporting the adoption of OI by SMEs are becoming a priority for policymakers. Therefore, the aim of this article is to contribute to the literature by mapping scholars' policy recommendations for implementing OI among SMEs.

The authors conducted a systematic review of the literature (SRL) on the topic to achieve this purpose. A total of 99 academic articles were selected from the Web of Science and Scopus databases to suggest the main scholars' policy recommendations to implement OI among SMEs.

Results indicated that scholars' policy recommendations for OI adoption in SMEs can be organized into: research and development (R&D), networking, collaboration, knowledge and intellectual property rights (IPR), ecosystem, managerial capabilities, funding and incentives and sustainability policies.

Only relevant articles about this topic have been included due to the reliance on the interpretations of the authors. The analysis of the literature revealed that the authors did not always distinguish policies dedicated to SMEs and those dedicated to large companies. Moreover, policies are not matched according to each OI dimensions (e.g. inbound, outbound and coupled OI).

The article uses a systematic literature review method that combines qualitative and quantitative analyses. This method contributes to theoretical development of OI policies dedicated, in particular to SMEs. This paper also provides policymakers and researchers with insights on the scope of OI policies that could support economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature regarding the open innovation management approaches that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can use to access digital technologies and incorporate them into their organizational processes. The research question is: What organizational and process-level managerial actions do SMEs take to successfully access and implement digital technologies within their organizational processes?

Using Guertler et al.'s (2020) Action Innovation Management Research (AIM-R) framework, this study examines the digital transformation experiences of 10 European SMEs to gain insights into the managerial actions that foster successful digital transformation.

The findings of the paper reveal two major contributions. First, a digital transformation roadmap for SMEs is proposed, with a focus on accessing external resources and reconfiguring internal ones to ease their digital transformation journey. Second, three distinct paradoxes that influence the digital transformation process in SMEs are highlighted, providing useful insights into the challenges and tensions SMEs face during this journey.

This paper provides a unique perspective on the digital transformation of SMEs by examining the managerial actions required for successful technology adoption and revealing the paradoxes that may emerge during this transformative process. The findings form the basis for future research, deepening our understanding of digital transformation in SMEs and providing actionable advice to managers and practitioners navigating this journey.

This study investigates the influence of Knowledge Management (KM) on the Economic Performance (EP) of wineries in Spain and examines the intermediary role of Open Innovation (OI) in this relationship, also considering the effects of the age of the winery, its size and its affiliation to a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) as control variables to refine the causality analysis.

A theoretical framework derived from existing literature underpins this study, which employs Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze data gathered from 196 wineries across Spain during the period from September 2022 to January 2023.

The analysis demonstrates a positive correlation between the implementation of KM practices and the EP of the wineries studied. Additionally, it identifies OI as a partial mediator in the relationship between KM and EP.

This research contributes to the academic discourse by outlining the benefits of KM, particularly in the Spanish wine sector, given that, to the authors' knowledge, there are no previous studies that have examined the catalytic effect of KM on OI and EP in this context, which supports the generation of new academic knowledge.

Organisational strategy becomes reality by connecting organisation’s resources and capabilities in daily operations, and physical workspace is one of the environments in which this takes place. This study aims to explore to what extent factors required for successful strategy implementation are considered when designing, using and managing workspaces of knowledge-intensive organisations.

For the study, managers in 25 large and medium-sized knowledge-intensive organisations were interviewed. The semi-structured interviews focused on organisation’s strategy, strategy implementation practices and workspace design and management. To form a comprehensive framework of strategy implementation success factors for the study, the factors of 11 frameworks were analysed, grouped and renamed.

Current workspace design, usage and management mainly support human-related strategy implementation factors. However, both organisation- and human-related factors are needed for the strategy implementation to be successful. Therefore, the organisations studied may have unused potential in their workspaces to ensure strategy-aligned operations and behaviour.

Due to the potential imbalance between organisation- and human-related strategy implementation factors, a more holistic, organisational-level approach to workspace design, usage and management is recommended to ensure the success of strategy implementation.

Workspaces have extensively been studied from individual strategy implementation factors’ as well as employees’ perspectives. Prior to this work, there are only few studies exploring workspace in the holistic, strategy implementation context.

Given their capacity to generate knowledge, universities can be the primary external source of knowledge and innovation for companies. Despite studies on the potential drivers of open innovation, the actors involved in these projects beyond academics and the most effective practices that universities follow for successful university–industry collaborations remain unclear. This study aims to identify the enablers and best practices universities follow to contribute to successful university–industry open innovation results, providing a conceptual framework for the management of such initiatives.

Articles from peer-reviewed academic journals identified in the Scopus and Web of Science databases were researched in this scoping review. The review used descriptive and thematic analyses and focused on 93 articles published between 2013 and 2023 that analysed universities’ enablers and practices for knowledge transfer to the industry.

Organisational factors, stakeholder attitudes, infrastructure, and external factors facilitate knowledge transfer from universities to companies. The most effective practices for promoting innovation are related to project management, policies and incentives and are relational and educational. Performance results can be evaluated through quantitative and qualitative indicators, measured at the different phases of the innovation process, considering the impacts achieved.

Previous reviews have focused on barriers, researchers’ motivations or specific enablers. The enablers and practices identified were analysed with a systemic vision, considering the university as a unit of analysis. This study suggests a comprehensive conceptual framework for the successful management of university–industry open innovation.

There is a knowledge gap regarding the determinants of open innovation processes and outcomes in a joint value creation context, as well as what role artificial intelligence (AI) and data management play in facilitating open innovation processes. One strategy to better understand joint value creation through open innovation, supported by AI and data management, is to conduct studies on the digital business ecosystem (DBE). The purpose of this paper is to improve our current knowledge of this urgent issue in contemporary management through the lens of an ecosystem-based theory by conducting an empirical study on two DBEs (called ecosystem micro-communities (EMCs)), developed by Haier, as well as multiple literature reviews on the key concepts “Haier EMC” and “digital business ecosystem”.

By building on multiple literature reviews and empirical data from a multi-year and ongoing research program driven by Haier, this study examines Haier’s EMC model for AI-driven DBEs. Secondary data were collected through iterative literature reviews on DBEs, the EMC concept and the two selected EMC cases. The empirical data were collected through a qualitative study of two Haier EMCs in China.

Haier's ecosystem micro-community concept represents a radical shift towards a more flexible, responsive and innovative cross-industry organizational structure, offering valuable lessons for business leaders and scholars. Haier’s ecosystem micro-community model, part of their RenDanHeYi philosophy and here viewed as a DBE, is a pioneering management concept that not only redefines the management of the firm and the traditional corporate structure, but also the traditional view on innovation management, business strategy, human resource management and marketing (customer centricity). The concept has therefore an important and big impact on traditional management. For scholars, the gap in understanding innovation processes in open business ecosystems is addressed by the concept. However, the concept also opens new areas for academic research, particularly in innovation management, business strategy, human resource management and marketing. The concepts further encourage more interdisciplinary research.

The DBE is a relatively new research area that will need more research. While the EMC model is promising as an effective version of a DBE, its effectiveness across different industries and organizational cultures needs to be explored further. Future research should investigate its applicability and impact in diverse business environments. To understand the EMC’s long-term impact, longitudinal studies are needed. These should focus on the sustained competitive advantages, potential market disruptions and the evolution of customer value propositions over time. Finally, considering increasing concerns about data privacy and security, future research should also explore how DBEs solve the issue of data protection and IP while promoting open innovation and value sharing.

For managers and practitioners, the EMC concept could inspire leaders to learn how to foster innovation by creating smaller, autonomous teams that can respond quickly to market changes in the form of a DBE. The concepts exemplify how value creation and capture could be enhanced for any company and even could be a new strategy in the company’s digital transformation and repositioning into a more competitive, high-end player on the market. The concept also emphasizes employee empowerment and ownership, which can lead to higher job satisfaction and retention rates. The concept can further improve companies’ adaptability and resilience by decentralizing decision-making. Finally, the micro-communities allow businesses to be more customer-centric, developing products and services that better meet specific customer needs.

The social implications could be positive, as complex social problems commonly need an ecosystem approach to develop and deliver impactful solutions. In addition, Haier’s ecosystem micro-community model seems inherently scalable and culturally adaptable.

Haier’s EMC model is well-known in the research literature and is a novel approach to DBEs, which has been proven successful and replicable in different countries and industries. Providing insights from multiple literature reviews and two unique Haier EMC cases will contribute to a better understanding of highly effective data- and AI-driven business ecosystems, as well as of determinants of open innovation processes and outcomes in a joint value creation context, as well as what role AI and data management play in facilitating open innovation processes.