This paper is intended as a contribution to the ongoing conceptual development of the role of organizations in fostering innovation, and in promoting, at the same time, sustainability. In particular, Sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) involves making intentional changes to an organization’s philosophy and values, in terms of “openness”, which consider commercial viability, while simultaneously improving environmental and/or social performance. However, although it is evident how essential it is to ensure a SOI within organizations, little attention has been paid to bridging between open innovation (OI) and sustainability, with particular references to the key drivers enabling such valuable processes within organizations. Starting from these considerations, the main purpose of this paper is to contribute to the recent debate on the new intersection between innovation and sustainability within organizations. The paper, focusing on Enel case study and through a website content analysis, sheds light on the drivers related to the concept of “open innovability”. The study offers several useful implications for both researchers and professionals operating in the sustainable innovation field, highlighting how OI could support the organization in the creation and transmission of sustainability solutions and objectives.

Digital transformation is revolutionizing the healthcare industry, and the use of digital technologies is generating large amounts of data that can be used to support the healthcare decision-making process. The use of data leads to several improvements in healthcare, such as treatment selection or diagnosis process. The utilization of healthcare services is one of the prominent topics in healthcare, but it is still in its infancy in the digital transformation literature. This study aims to investigate the use of big data analytics to improve the utilization of healthcare services, specifically the Italian national cancer screening programs, through a two-step methodology. First, we investigate the relationship between patient characteristics and the utilization of the healthcare services under consideration. In the second step, the collected data are used to build a data-driven model to identify patients who are more likely not to use healthcare services based on their characteristics. This study contributes to the existing literature on digital transformation in healthcare by proposing a data-driven model to improve healthcare service utilization. While we contribute to the practitioner perspective by proposing a real-world data-driven methodology that overcomes the disadvantages of the most common methods to identify patients that will not utilise healthcare services (i.e., survey-based methods).

Knowledge of the Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors is the subject of increasing interest in national and international institutions. Within the banking sector, there is a growing awareness of the need to integrate the non-financial information arising to ESG factors knowledge, into strategies, processes, and financial instruments to generate long-term value. ESG are increasingly considered as a new factor influencing risk in bank’s lending activity, and this is the perspective of our paper. Adopting a bank-centered perspective, the main aim of the paper is to investigate, employing a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-based approach whether including ESG factors in the creditworthiness assessment of borrowers increases the firms’ efficiency, thus mitigating bank risk taking. The research has been carried out on a sample of European listed firms in the energy sector, which is under increasing pressure from society due to its huge environmental footprint and social importance. Our findings do not provide evidence of the overall significance of ESG factors in affecting firm efficiency. Nevertheless, we provide evidence that high/low ESG scores do not affect firm efficiency, but at moderate level, ESG scores improve the corporate efficiency. The findings contribute (and provide suggestions) for regulators, credit risk managers, and academics.

Start-ups are becoming increasingly important in driving economic growth, job creation, and wealth generation. Their success depends not only on innovative products and services but also on the ability of attracting, retaining, and developing talented employees. The enthusiasm, involvement, and effort of founders and early employees greatly impact the success of start-ups. Unfortunately, the high degree of uncertainty, the intense work and multiple roles of employees may lead to several issues like burnout risk and difficulty balancing work and private life. Although existing research has produced several contributions on , the quality of working life for start-up employees and entrepreneurs, the knowledge generated in the field appears fragmented and the findings are sometimes ambiguous. The reason for this fragmentation can be traced back to the lack of reference frameworks that clarify the most used concepts,thus providing a shared language. Therefore, human resource wellbeing is a research theme that deserve to be further investigated. This study aims to provide a first attempt to consolidate the state-of-art of scholarly research in human resources wellbeing in innovative startups.. To this aim, we carried out a systematic literature review by analyzing a set of 41 papers in order to find what are the relevant topics in the investigated research domain. This activity was performed using MySLR software. In particular, we characterized the three relevant topics in the investigated research domain, namely job satisfaction, wages and career development opportunities; work-life balance and psychological wellbeing; women’s condition and gender related issues. Overall, the value of research is to provide a framework for analyzing the phenomenon of human resources wellbeing in innovative startups that can be used as a reference model for envisaging new research directions both entrepreneurship, human resources and innovation management fields of study.

The objective of this article is to present the analysis of a case study regarding a small-medium enterprise Italian-owned company in the start-up phase, which produces consumer goods such as playful learning products for 0-24 months children. The Company is unlisted and is fully held by a family-controlled group. It meets the basic requirements of a ‘Made in Italy’ brand and its products are manufactured using production processes that reflect the concept of sustainability. The term ‘sustainability’ of a company refers to an organisation’s concrete commitment to promoting a business model that not only enables the company’s long-term profitability, but is also attentive to the environment, social welfare and long-term governance. The research is conducted through a qualitative method and intends to analyse implemented processes and results of the case study, obtained interviewing Company’s management. In particular, the research focuses on commercial, financial, and social strategies. The Company was founded in 2020 and, after establishing itself in the Italian market, it started a process of internationalisation, promoting itself as a ‘Made in Italy’ company.

Large Scale Research Infrastructures are rising in the competitive and globalized research environment, since they offer to external researchers-users, inputs and services for cutting-edge, large scale research. Such researches would not be possible with normal infrastructures and budgets of single Universities and Research institutions. However, despite the strategic relevance acknowledged to LSRI by the nascent literature and by national policymakers, there is a lack of comprehensive frameworks capturing both strategic dimensions and inherent options a LSRI may have. Given the infancy of this topic, and the empirical nature of the literature to date, a holistic framework on LSRI would increase the sense of existing studies and provide the ground for future advancement. This paper aims to bridge this gap, by identifying strategic dimensions and relative options, a Large Scale Research Infrastructure can assume. The research is carried out adopting a mixed research methodology merging a literature review with a survey conducted on a sample of 11 LSRIs; they provided the dataset for the parametrization of a Morphological Matrix. The research led to the identification of the strategic dimensions and the solutions (i.e. the spectrum of strategic options) defining the LSRI’s morphology. These findings represent, on another side, the starting point for a future and hopeful Morphological Analysis of LSRIs. This paper originally proposes the dataset needed to develop a morphological analysis of Large Scale Research Infrastructures.

Waste management in touristic areas and the hospitality industry is a significant concern, with the problem exacerbated during large events. This research paper aims to explore the main problems of waste management in these sectors and propose the implementation of smart waste bins as a solution. The study includes an in-depth analysis of current waste management practices and the potential benefits and challenges associated with smart waste bins. We examine their effectiveness, cost-efficiency, and potential for integration with existing waste management infrastructure, as well as their potential environmental and social benefits.The results show that smart waste bins, when strategically deployed and integrated into a comprehensive waste management plan, can significantly improve waste management efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and support sustainable tourism and hospitality operations.

Serendipity – the notion of making unexpected and valuable discoveries – and knowledge arbitrage have played a significant role in the debate about innovation and innovation effectiveness, opening a considerable discussion about the feasibility of R&D investments. The chance to detect serendipitous events and the mechanisms triggering it may attract the attention of those seeking greater efficiency in research and those aiming to sustain basic research. Depending on the above, our research focuses on the serendipitous events and knowledge arbitrage in the R&D of rare diseases and orphan drugs to detail the market opportunities and the economic value arising from the untargeted discoveries. The Tigem research center in Pozzuoli (Italy) is engaged as a case study to achieve this purpose. Since no previous researches are available about the serendipity in R&D of rare disease, this paper provides new knowledge in a still underexplored field, offering new insights at both theoretical and practical levels.

The study aims to assess the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) for improving the customer experience in the banking sector by designing and developing a digital human sustaining the customer care. Digital humans are conversational robots that have transformed traditional human-human interactions into new disruptive machine-human interactions that are more reliable and exceptional, but also fragile. The study analyses Algho, a virtual assistant platform developed by QuestIT company, to automate the banking customer care service, and in particular the loan request. The key aspect of this process was creating and consolidating an effective Knowledge Base, the indispensable basis for a successful performance of the digital human. The research evaluates the performance of the virtual assistant, equipped with a digital human interface, through the creation of an Algho tester that can verify the effectiveness of the knowledge base. The results show that AI-based technologies can have a positive impact on business processes. The originality of the study lies in the training of a digital human according to business needs with a perspective of creating an optimised customer experience.

The New VUCA entrepreneurial environment (Millar et al., 2018) asks new entrepreneurs to quickly respond to the ever-changing needs they are targeting with their business ideas. Entrepreneurs may answer by adopting a lean startup approach (Ries, 2011; Blank and Dorf, 2012; Blank, 2013) that, according to Wang et al. (2022) suggests entrepreneurs to test their assumptions through business experiments (Bocken and Snihur, 2020). In particular, adopting an experimental approach, action-oriented, nimble, and in some case even low-cost, can help get ideas off the ground quicker than usual. Moreover, these processes may be useful in identifying and engaging the first customers (McDonald and Eisenhardt, 2020) and in tackling those grand challenges for which there are no simple and obvious solutions (Yunus, et al. 2010). According to Furr and Dyer (2014), theoretical and virtual prototypes may help this approach, helping entrepreneurs to get a minimum viable prototype that later may, eventually, evolve into a full-fledged product. The Fablabs – short form for Fabrication Laboratories – are shared spaces open to the public that offer both tools and services for digital manufacturing (Manzo and Ramella, 2015). These spaces give access to sophisticated technologies, so that their users can explore, learn and, obviously, make new things (Rayna and Striukova, 2021). The possibility of “sharing technology tools in social spaces” is a distinctive trait of the so-called “maker movement”, which is based on the interaction, even internet-based ones (Howard et al., 2014), between subjects who use shared resources (technology, spaces, knowledge) to create artefacts (Browder et al., 2019). In particular, the technologies and the tools that the startuppers and the entrepreneurs may get access to in the Fablab may help them to exploit digital prototypes as a way to reduce the start-up costs, to test and optimise their products in a better and faster way. Furthermore the digital nature of these products may help the would-be entrepreneurs to create an entrepreneurial team that is not limited by the need to be geographically co-located (Capdevila, 2018). In this work in progress research, we will study a sample of Italian Fablabs, both private ones and university-based ones, to understand how they do participate in helping both the “makers”, and the local entrepreneurs, in developing the competencies needed to access to the digital technologies, and to exploit them to implement a Lean Startup Process.

Recent environmental changes and socio-economic issues, required companies to adopt sustainability practices in order to safeguard the ecosystem on which insist and, at the same time, guarantying their profitability. In this scenario, the agri-food industry is particularly concerned, as food production and delivery have high impact on environment and society. Companies are investing in a digitization journey, surfing the flow of the transition from the actual technocentric vision of technology to a synergistic one involving social and environmental sustainability. Starting from these assumptions, the aim of this paper is to provide an overview of how the scientific literature explored the relationship between sustainability, Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and the agri-food sector, as well as delving into the role of the I4.0 pillars in driving sustainability moving toward Industry 5.0 (I5.0). A rigorous methodology guided the study toward a double-layers scientometric, performed with Bibliometrix. The sample was identified, using PRISMA methodology, in Scopus and WoS, leading to a database of 1114 papers and a further 9 sub-datasets, one for each I4.0 pillar. These datasets were analyzed in depth in order to recognize i) the main characteristics of the investigated research field; ii) the main research routes addressed in the investigated research field; iii) the current capability of each I4.0 pillar to drive sustainability in the investigated research field. The results reveal that the topic is recently and internationally debated; there is a strong interest in searching for sustainable solutions that safeguard natural resources with the help of data-driven technologies; among the I4.0 pillars, the simulation is the most recognized pillar in driving agri-food toward sustainability; the main topics addressed are linked to environmental and social domains. The study provides research and practical implications consisting of understanding the field concepts multiplicity, laying groundwork for future researchers, encouraging in the study replication, understanding how pursue sustainability issue, supporting the adoption of technology-based sustainable practices toward I5.0, stimulating in the exploration of new sustainability topics leveraging on technology application.

Made in Italy, in its entrepreneurship, constitutes an invaluable cultural and economic heritage for our country and too is worldwide considered as a synonym of art, quality, uniqueness and craftsmanship. In fact, this sector contrasts “knowing how to do well” against mass production, often poor of quality in materials and finishes, as well as certainly lacking an artistic and innovative dimension. The analysis of the literature highlights that the craftsmanship dimension, in fact, imposes flexibility and adaptability to particular needs, according to a slower pace of production, as well as shorter production lines at the local level, also making use of local craft, skills and traditions, fitting them into regional and national culture and heritage (Murzyn-Kupisz & Hołuj, 2021). In order to avoid making our analysis generic and too vague, it is important to specify that our theoretical background will refer to a specific type of company, i.e. craftsmanship. Our research objective, in the context just described, will be to observe how these realities are moving towards the rapidly expanding race for sustainability, not only as a new sales opportunity, but also, as a necessary condition to guarantee their survival over time. The call to sustainability, especially at the European level with the transposition of the new European Directive 2022/2464/EU approved in November 2022, will lead to an obligation of sustainable reporting to a larger group of companies (Ottenstein et al., 2021). Made in Italy, typically made up of SMEs, will therefore certainly be directly affected by this new scenario, for which it will be appropriate to take the right measures and understand the new logic. In addition to the above, based on an empirical analysis carried out on a sample of companies referring to the blown glass sector, we have analyzed quantitative data in order to bring evidence to our study. The blown glass sector, in fact, corresponds to Italian excellence of craftsmanship, and also, to fine art (Bialek, 2022). In this sector, it is also true, that there is evidence of numerous polluting residues, making the issue of sustainability very relevant and crucial (Hamada et al., 2022). Our empirical research, thanks to the data provided by the association “AssoVetro,” the National Association of Glass Industrialists adherent to “Confindustria”, will therefore propose to analyze how in a group of sample companies sustainability is managed, valued and reported. In accordance with what has been stated, the purpose of our empirical analysis is to answer the question: “How the glass sector has grown in relation to the impact of sustainability?”.

Resilience is a widely accepted concept to which scholars and policymakers refer to address the complexity of urban systems. Many frameworks to measure urban resilience already exist. In this paper, the main urban resilience frameworks (i.e., City Resilience Index, Resilience Maturity Model, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction) are analysed to shed light on the common dimensions they present. Additionally, the relationship between (i) resilience and (ii) sustainability and well-being in the urban context is investigated. To do so, Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, scaled at city level, and the Equitable and Sustainable Territorial well-being framework are compared with the urban resilience frameworks. In the urban domain, the concepts of resilience, sustainability and well-being partially overlap. Many dimensions (e.g., health, economic prosperity, environmental protection) are considered in the resilience as well as in sustainability and well-being frameworks. Such dimensions are indeed measured with the same or very similar metrics. However, an in-depth analysis of dimensions and indicators showed some interesting differences. The paper provides knowledge advancement on the topic of resilience in the urban context and highlights those aspects that policymakers should consider so as to pursue resilience as well as sustainability and well-being goals in the initiatives they implement to face emerging urban challenges.

The increasing connectivity and digitization of organizations have made cybersecurity a top priority. Organizations have become highly dependent on integrated systems and data, exposing them to cyber threats that can lead to economic and reputational losses. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted vulnerabilities in cybersecurity systems across sectors. In particular, there has been a recent focus on the role humans play in this scenario by turning out to be both a possible source of vulnerability and a mitigating factor. To manage this, organizations must focus on establishing a culture of cyber security awareness by promoting policies, standards, and users’ behaviors from an organizational learning perspective. Employees’ education is one of the components needed to create such a culture, hence training programs on cybersecurity have a crucial role. However, the effectiveness and sustainability of training programs depend on including a variety of stakeholder groups to identify and mitigate cost and efficacy concerns, adopt accessible training techniques, employ trainers with relevant expertise, and address psychological obstacles like trainee guilt and shame. A balanced human-machine approach is needed to maximize the benefits of connectivity while minimizing cyber risks. Overall, cybersecurity training requires an ongoing, collaborative, and flexible process tailored to each organization’s context. Today, there is no consensus on the most effective and appropriate cybersecurity training methods. This research investigates available cybersecurity awareness types of training and provides guidelines for developing good organizational training programs in increasingly digital environments.

This work provides evidence of the impact that Recovery Plans (RPs) have had on the productivity growth of Italian hospitals from 2010 – 2019. Using the Malmquist TFP index, we decompose the hospital’s productivity into technological and efficiency changes. We find that the RPs have resulted in an increase in efficiency change, i.e. hospitals use their resources (physicians, nurses, other hospitals’ employees and the number of beds) more efficiently. In contrast, technological change has dramatically declined because hospitals are not using financial resources to buy innovative tools and learn new techniques that could improve healthcare processes. So, austerity measures have certainly reduced healthcare expenditure by optimising inputs capital, but they have contained investment in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). These results confirm that a lack of innovation and development has a severe longer-term impact on productivity.

This article investigates the link between technology, digitalization, and knowledge management using digitalization and knowledge management to achieve sustainable development. In addition to the increased interest in knowledge management for implementing sustainability, technology, digitization, and knowledge management have an important influence on promoting sustainable economic systems. Knowledge resources must be exploited and managed, and a knowledge management system must be created to solve sustainability issues. Digital technologies such as Big Data are particularly significant in the context of sustainability since they provide improved decision-making processes. Furthermore, using digital platforms facilitates inter-organizational communication and information exchange by facilitating the exchange of best practices and collaboration. Using bibliometric network data analysis methodologies, we propose exploring the links between technical development, digitalization, and innovation in knowledge management for sustainable growth. The “core” themes covered in the literature will be determined using bibliometric analysis based on network-based methodologies, specifically community-detection algorithms. This information will be optimized using ensemble methods, and any possible bias from the many algorithms will be eliminated. The relevant results of this work emphasize the role of new technology, innovation, and digitalization, all playing a vital role in the applicability of these findings to sustainability. Organizational reforms and internal strategic approaches are required to apply these technologies effectively and sustainably. This study adds to the expanding body of research on sustainability, knowledge management, and digitalization by shedding light on the interrelationships between these factors and emphasizing the significance of adequately managing knowledge resources to address sustainability concerns. Five essential organizational performance and sustainable growth principles have emerged: knowledge management, sustainability, innovation, intellectual capital, and corporate social responsibility. Additionally, the analysis emphasized the significance of leadership in knowledge management processes. Several clusters also highlighted the significance of promoting sustainable growth through collaboration, innovation, and knowledge transfer. Small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) may benefit from intellectual capital and open innovation initiatives to better their knowledge management procedures and support sustainable growth. Growth and competitive advantage can be attained if these concepts are managed effectively. A firm’s success depends on its leadership and ability to share and transfer information. Therefore, the sustainable growth of a business needs a knowledge management process that is backed by a strategic approach and incorporates knowledge exchange and transfer in its design.

The project manager must possess various skills in order to achieve the goals set in the project for which he is responsible. According to the existing literature, these managerial skills possessed by the project manager can be not only of the hard type (technical), but also of the soft type (behavioural or transversal). In order to better understand these dynamics, the aim of this research is to present the discussion about how project managers learn soft skills according to the scientific literature. The purpose, specifically, is to map and group the various articles published, from 2003 to 2022, to have an overall representation of the studies carried out. The methodological approach used was quantitative through a literature review that took place in three phases. The main results showed that the most prominent research areas are knowledge management, the typologies of skills and the learning method and style.

Global warming and resource depletion lead ports worldwide to define new strategies for reducing their environmental impacts. The paper offers an explorative analysis of three of Europe’s largest and most polluted ports – Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg – describing how those ports address the sustainable challenge. Particularly, the analysis is beneficial to decline a recurrent concept, i.e., green port. The concept has been developed to increase environmental awareness and refers to a set of actions describing how the port balances the ecological footprint by economic benefits. Key actions to be sustainable often are mainly attributable to green technology adoption. Instead, the paper focuses on how ports act to be green. Is a green port a port that adopts green solutions for improving operational performance, or does it develop green solutions and guide the green strategy with and for the entire local area? Results show that ports, in addition to adopting intelligent and digital solutions that improve ports’ activities, they act as innovation hubs, building an innovation ecosystem that leads their green transition.

In this paper we explore: What are definitions for legal innovation and regulatory innovation? in the context of the whole lifecycle of regulation. We use systematic literature review (SLR) method. The lifecycle of regulation consists of law drafting, law implementation, monitoring, and sanction of law in act. Definitions of legal/regulatory innovations (LRIs) are interpreted and applied in the field of public regulation as well as private regulation. Our paper has two objectives: Provide a holistic account of the literature on legal/regulatory innovations based on current knowledge about a set of key research themes; Identifying an agenda addressing new research directions in this field of study. We found out that only few writers in the selected articles clearly define, what do they mean with the terms legal or regulatory innovation. SLR analyses provided an overview of the topics of legal and regulatory innovations: Topic 1: LRIs in the context of Complex Adaptive Systems; Topic 2: LRIs for social welfare and Topic 3: LRIs in the different levels, networks of actors and phases of the regulatory life cycle. LRIs develop in complex adaptive systems which means that there is a continuous relationship between legal system and society. New kind of LRIs were discussed in the context of public and private regulation: Default design, Sandboxes and Nudge are possible tools of new governance approaches to regulation developed by governments. Process standards compared to traditional product standards are seen more innovative as they allow regulates develop most innovative way to comply the standards. Process-based standards and other standards developed by private actors have a lot to offer for the development of new LRIs. Regulatory knowledge is needed in the dynamic, complex society, in order to understand how LRIs can promote the change towards desired goals.

The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles outlines a comprehensive approach to promoting sustainability in the industry, including the use of recycled and renewable materials, circular business models, the uptake of sustainable innovations, and the reliability of sustainability knowledge. Literature suggests that promotion of sustainability knowledge spillover within the textile industry can have an impact on the overall textile business in terms of social, financial, and environmental sustainability and its overall competitive advantage. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current research on sustainability knowledge spillover in the textile industry. The research method is a systematic literature review of articles published in the leading KM journals.