Purpose – Since its introduction, the notion of Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) has raised the interest of scholars from different disciplines. Currently, a substantial body of research on KIBS is available, and we need to take stock of what has been done until now. This paper illustrates the findings of a systematic literature review aiming at: a) assessing the interest in the topic; b) analysing what disciplines have used the concept, and what research approaches and methods have been employed; c) identifying what topic areas have been investigated; d) ascertaining what are the main findings achieved so far, the open issues, and the possible future research directions. Design/methodology/approach – This study make use of a systematic review of the literature. Three criteria were followed to select the databases where to look for the papers: they had to cover up a comprehensive range of business and economic-related peer-reviewed journals; their coverage had to extend through the timeframe of the investigated topic; their search function had to provide reliable results. Accordingly, three widely known databases were chosen: Scopus, Business Source Premier and EconLit. The relevant papers were found by searching the terms KIBS and “knowledge intensive business service” either the title of the paper, in the abstract, and in the keywords. In total 190 papers were examined, published from 1999 to 2013. Originality/value – The paper offers an updated picture of the state of the art of the research about KIBS. Particularly, it classifies the examined articles according to the main discipline they belong to, their research approach and research method, the countries involved and the investigated sub-sectors. They are also categorised in some topic areas, and the main results achieved by the research in each area are discussed. Practical implications – The findings of the review are particularly significant for scholars who can find indications about some open questions as well as suggestions on crucial issues that could be the object of future research.

Purpose – In environmental planning, urban spaces and ecological systems are increasingly modelled on sets of human/non-human agents, acting either together or individually toward the accomplishment of routinary, new and/or occasional tasks. In urban systems, the complexity of thermodynamic processes and the agents’ behaviours generate remarkable impacts on the environment. The phenomenon of Urban Heat Islands (UHI) is pronounced in urbanized areas, where interactions between humans and local environments are not linear. A Multiple Agents System (MAS) approach attentive to agents’ behaviours represents an interesting research field. A wide range of ecological or environmental issues may take advantage from models built on the cognitive involvement of stakeholders. This paper aims to explore the system architectures building up to support knowledge-based decision-making processes in managing urban microclimate policies Design/methodology/approach – In order to deal with the multifarious and multiple source knowledge embedded in complex urban systems, we propose a MAS approach to handle climate features and behaviours of human, natural and artificial agents, within a knowledge-based sustainable perspective of urban microclimate comfort. The paper methodology starts from a knowledge base collected through focus-group experimental sessions. Then we applied the Fuzzy Cognitive Mapper (FCM) tool to stakeholders’ belief system representation. A FCM methodology allows the use of stakeholders local knowledge or ecological modelling and management in a bottom-up decision-making process. This approach leads to evaluate the complexity of hierarchies and non-formal relations for the constitution of social and environmental management models Originality/value – The paper is the result of investigation on a knowledge interaction arena, focused on the perceptions and behaviours of agents concerning climatic and thermal comfort. The context of interest is the study of impacts among events or trends generated from the elements variation in the urban ecosystem through sensitivity analysis. The attempt carried out is to envision and evaluate possible changes of policies and decisions, so as to envisage possible impacting areas and modify or fine-tune planned policies to attain more effective results Practical implications – The paper works on analyses carried out in a public multifamily building in Bari, toward the attempt to formalizing the energy consumption perception and the users’ behaviours concerning UHI phenomena. The study is part of the Apulian research project Ecourb funded by EU (2010-2013) and aimed at building up hybrid scenarios for the management of urban microclimates in the region of Bari, Italy

Purpose – This paper studies the role of knowledge integration mechanisms adopted in a wine research project. The paper develops the theoretical literature on the concept of knowledge integration, with particular reference to the adoption of different organizational mechanisms at the inter-organizational level. The main research question is to try to understand what combinations of coordination mechanisms are best suited for promoting knowledge integration within a strategic collaboration between a company and different Academic Departments. Design/methodology/approach – Our study relies on a case study. The project experience selected for case study provides a consistent, differentiated and information rich setting for studying the phenomenon under scrutiny. We adopted three data collection techniques: internal document analysis, observation/site visits and semi structured interviews. Documentary analysis was used to obtain a rich understanding of the organizational structure and to identify peculiar issues related to coordination and control implications on knowledge creation. Observation and site visits at university research laboratories and at corporate headquarters were undertaken to infer on cultural issues, as well as on responsibility and control related issues. Interviewed staff included top managers and academic researchers. Originality/value – The implications of this study are primarily related to a better understanding of choices adopted at the inter-organizational level in terms of knowledge integration processes. The study was able to expand the understanding of project inter-organizational cooperation in two respects. First, it should be noted that only a few studies have adopted the project framework to investigate the inter-organizational coordination mechanisms among University and firms. Secondly, the study has an explorative role of analysis, which can be useful for generating research hypotheses in future works, connecting the features of inter-organizational projects with the development of knowledge integration processes. Practical implications – Our results could be useful for other firms operating in the same sector, but also to the policy maker who want to stimulate this industry. Wine producers are currently affected by a global slowdown of wine consumption and by increased competition, and this has spurred them to intensify their efforts to improve product quality and to enter higher value niches in international markets. So, the wine industry has been involved in a deep process of innovation within which the processes of knowledge integration have taken on a much more significant role. We try to understand how the linkages between universities and firms may have a higher potential to create knowledge.

Purpose – This paper seeks to elaborate on how facts and feelings can be engaged in management accounting (MA) practice. The paper discusses a blueprint of new MA to be used in value and profitability management. The need for such a blueprint is defined in the following way: What does the interaction between facts and feelings mean for managing customer value and profitability, and how such interaction can be established? Such a blueprint ought to be at least widely and emotionally desirable, ergonomic and effective, durable and repairable, which have not been sufficiently addressed as design characteristics in the MA literature. Design/methodology/approach – Besides a literature review on the processes of co-thinking and co-feeling in management accounting literature, we propose a more detailed approach for identifying the needs for accounting development and responding to them with a relation to the aforementioned challenges. In practice, we identify timely management challenges in different case environments, ranging from industrial operations to health care services. After that, we elaborate on the desired role of MA practice in responding to the identified challenges, as a basis for the proposed blueprint of new MA. Originality/value – The paper is among the rare attempts to extend the theory and practice of management accounting with an approach that combines both analytical and emotional aspects of value and profitability management. The paper provides both a description of the needs for accounting development in different environments and an aggregate level agenda for turning such blueprint into action, i.e., the blueprint of new MA. Moreover, the paper responds to the need for better supporting managerial work by means of accounting information, with an explicit connection to the processes of value and profitability management in the companies. Practical implications – The research gap underlying this paper is closely connected to the needs for developing management accounting practice according to the timely management challenges and recent technological advancements. After reading this paper, practitioners will be able to identify the needs for accounting development in their organizations, and translate the blueprint of new management accounting into a set of practical questions related to their own business context.

Knowledge based economy forces companies to reconsider strategic impact of different components of internal capital on their performance. Traditional extensive value drivers, based mainly on structural capital, are gradually extended with more intensive utilization of relational and human-resources oriented alternatives also in hospitality industry. Although hotels are considered as labour intensive companies with higher proportion of low-skilled jobs, many of them have already recognized value-adding potential of organizational knowledge and intellectual capital. They implement these innovative features especially through the development of partnerships with loyal customers and systematic introduction of innovative managerial practices. Applying the elements of environmental management and sustainable development principles are characteristic trends in accommodation services. We can find them particularly in large hotel chains but accommodation facilities with small capacity are also interested in this green way. These accommodation facilities are aware that the importance of environmental protection is necessary; moreover they use this concept as a useful marketing tool for distinguishing from other accommodation facilities. The current approach to hotel management is mostly revenue-oriented, i.e. strives to generate profit from temporally and locationally specific combinations of internal, technical and social capabilities, including, e.g. market segmentation, pricing, capacity allocation, aligned incentives, organizational structure or vocational training. Accordingly, present managers maximize metrics like occupancy (OCC), average daily rate (ADR), revenue per available room (RevPAR), revenue per available customer (RevPAC), gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR) and many others. Consequently, our research was to identify perspective and feasible combinations of the existing revenue-driven methods with still more pervasive features of knowledge-based management and green management in hotel industry. We believe that the key path to success is in even closer, i.e. daily personal orientation on customers, specifically on their satisfaction in both functional and emotional dimensions. So far, hotel managers use mainly simple analytic and planning tools, which cannot cover the practical complexity of surrounding market and internal processes. In comparison with purely revenue-based principles, advanced managerial practices, considering also qualitative and human-related matters require additional viewpoints. We enhanced the hospitality domain with introduction of dynamic hypotheses – feasible explanations of temporal behaviour of complex structures. With the resultant interactive system dynamics (SD) model, we designed and tested several scenarios, comparing the purely revenue-oriented hotel management with its customers-oriented and organizational knowledge-supported enhancement.

Purpose – The main purpose of this research is to analyse the impact of the intellectual capital on the competitiveness in the SMEs manufacturing in Mexico. Design/methodology/approach – The approach of this investigation is developing a theoretical construct to determine the correlation between intellectual capital and competitiveness, and find the most relevant factors that impacts it. To determine the variables involved in this research, were analysed for the intellectual capital: the information obtained, intellectual capital developed and learning and feedback; and the competitiveness with other three factors: Financial Performance, Costs Reduction and Technology Use. The questionnaire was designed considering the competitiveness as dependant variable, and as independent variable the intellectual capital. Using the Likert scale in order to determine the degree of agreement or disagreement, and the survey was applied to 420 SMEs. The results were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), Cronbach’s alpha and subsequently structural equation models (SEM). Originality/value – This study shows the effects of the dimensions of intellectual capital that are directly impacting the competitiveness of SMEs, these factors influence a lesser or greater degree, so that each factor of the dependent and independent variables should be analysed separately to propose improvements in implementing CI to seek higher level of competitiveness. Practical implications – The results obtained measure the level of correlation between the variables in study, hence to design the strategies and key factors needed to integrate the intellectual capital and develop competitive synergies in the SMEs manufacturing.

The purpose of this study was to explore the factors through which the project implementation phase could be enhanced by cultural knowledge. The importance of studying this subject is that the exploitation of cultural knowledge (Hofstede & Hofstede 2005, Schwartz 1999, Ng et al. 2006, Hall 1976, Lewis 2006) and competence (Koskinen 2001) is still limited in the constantly increasing project-based business (Turner 1999, Artto et al. 2011, PMBOK 2004) in the international field. Two objectives exist in this study: understanding project complexity through the main challenges in project implementation and evaluating the impacts of the cultural factors behind them. We propose the multiple case study approach (Eisenhard & Graebner 2007, Yin 2014). The prominence of cultural knowledge in project implementation is difficult to determine, so the research design has exploratory features. Case project A was implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa and Case project B in the Near East. Interviewed managers worked either from distance and only visited the target country periodically or represented the perspective of an operational level manager working in the host country. The main cultural challenges that occurred in the projects are defined by these interviewees. This methodology gives evidence of the main challenges in the two case projects and clarifies the multiplicity of cultural issues in the project context. The importance of the subject was highlighted and the interviewed managers demonstrated that cultural knowledge can offer benefits. Numerous studies exist concerning the challenges in the project business (Deresky 2014, Turner 1999). The outcomes of the research stressed the uniqueness of projects and the situational need for cultural knowledge. The results highlighted the pervasive nature of culture in the international playing field. Companies are obliged to adjust their operations according to environments with multifaceted requirements. National cultures not only prevail within the borders of geographical areas, but are also reflected in company procedures. Therefore, their overall impact needs to be considered in international projects.

Purpose – In cultural industries, the innovation process is increasingly realized by a key inventor which is sustained by a dedicated team (e.g. Cillo and Verona 2008; Glaveanu and Lubart 2014). In fact, the key inventor, who remains central in cultural industries, needs to interact with a team in the cultural products development (Taylor and Greve 2006; Tran 2010). Nevertheless, the characteristics of this particular team remain unclear (Stierand et al. 2014; Tan 2015). Thereby, the present paper aims to understand the composition of a team which has to support key inventors. Design/methodology/approach – The setting of our research is the haute cuisine, which belongs to cultural industries (Ferguson 1998; Messeni Petruzzelli and Savino 2014). In particular, we conducted an in-depth case study of “Dal Pescatore”. This is the Italian restaurant keeping the highest award previewed by Michelin Guide from the longer period of time. The main figures of the restaurant are the chefs: Nadia and Giovanni Santini. The former was the world’s best female chef in 2013, the latter received the “chef de l’avenir” prize in 2012. Furthermore, many chefs learned the basics of the haute cuisine in this kitchen before the opening of their own restaurants. Originality/value – Scholars have hugely emphasized the centrality of key inventors’ creativity for company’s success (e.g. Stierand et al. 2014). However, a growing stream of literature has underlined how teams and their composition affect creativity (Taylor and Greve 2006; Perretti and Negro 2007). Nevertheless, existing research has treated teams and key inventors as alternative solutions (Taylor and Greve 2006). Conversely, recent studies have revealed cases in which key inventors are supported by a team (Cillo and Verona, 2008; Tran 2010). Accordingly, we focused on the composition of this particular team underlining the necessity to combine the experience of aged people with the suggestions of young foreign apprentices. Practical implications – We advance the managerial investigation in cultural industries, which are now attracting an increasing interest by both scholars and policy makers as an important source of economic growth (Chaston and Sadler-Smith 2012). In particular, this research provides useful implications to face the key challenge of innovation development in cultural industries (Taylor and Greve 2006; Cillo and Verona 2008). Hence, this study provides relevant suggestions to the increasing number of cultural firms which adopt an innovation process based on a key inventor sustained by a dedicated team.

This paper outlines the leadership practices that support an organisation’s strategic intent to innovate through the creation of an innovation-conducive culture. By surveying the opinions of member organisations of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), four companies (each within a particular revenue category) were selected by AIIA members as having the most innovation-friendly cultures. The paper explicates the cultural basis of effective innovation within these four companies by drawing on survey data; analyses of the presentations given at the awards ceremony by senior members of each of the winning companies; and follow-up interviews with the leaders of these companies. The results point to the vital role that leadership plays in the creation of an appropriate cultural platform for successful innovation; and indicate how the execution of the strategic intent to innovate depends on the appropriateness of the cultural assumptions held by a stakeholder community. In particular, the study shows that within companies that are recognised as having innovation-supporting cultures, innovation is assumed to be a human/social process that is enhanced by open and honest communication, strong interpersonal relationships, mission-pertinent learning, and permission to experiment and fail.

Although not a new concept, intrapreneurship is still of little spread in businesses and in the academy. Therefore, the object of this article is to clarify the contributions that intrapreneurial professionals can bring to organizations and businesses. For this, a theoretical study of descriptive nature was conducted, based on literature review. The conclusion was that the main contribution that the intrapreneurial professional can bring is innovation, as well as strategic renewal, revitalization of business performance at the organizational level, increase in corporate value, optimization of benefits to stakeholders etc. However, in order for the intrapreneurship to emerge naturally it, is essential that such a concept be made part of the culture of the organization, thus forming the triad: culture, entrepreneurship and innovation. Finally, we infer that the intrapreneurship applied to organizational practice can become an important competitive advantage for organizations.

Purpose – Our paper aims at investigating how country culture affects firms’ innovative performance. While many contributions are given on the effect of national culture on countries’ innovation, the effects of culture on firms’ innovation performances has not been explored so far. Our study aims at filling this gap, by investigating how culture affects both firms’ innovation capability and innovation rapidity. Design/methodology/approach – The research employs a quantitative methodology based on non parametric correlations analysis between Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and firm’s innovative performances. We focus on technological innovation, and limit the analysis to the five Hofstede’s dimensions, which are usually employed in similar studies, that is: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and long-term orientation. We measure the correlation between each dimension, and three main indicators of firms’ innovation performances: the number of international patents (absolute, and relative), the distribution of patent, and the patents’ growth ratio, so to consider both firms’ innovation capability, and rapidity. Originality/value – Our paper gives an original contribution to the entrepreneurial culture approach. Most of the studies focus on the impact of national culture on innovative performance at a country level, and consider how cultural dimensions impact on national innovation, usually measured as the amount of national patents or as the R&D expenses per capita. Our paper focuses instead on firms, and investigates how cultural dimensions impact on firms’ innovation performances, and more specifically on firms’ capability to innovate, and on the rapidity of the innovation process. Practical implications – By evaluating how cultural dimensions impact on innovation, managers may decide in which countries to relocate their R & D activities or with which companies to cooperate to innovate. Policy makers can understand which cultural dimensions affect innovation in order to define their policy, and leverage the values, which have a positive impact on local firms’ attitude towards innovation, and on their inclination to protect their innovations.

Purpose – In step with the increasing importance of patents in today’s economy, academic contributions have focused more and more on tools and practices that firms can adopt in order to fully extract patent value. This literature stream, called “strategic patent management”, has never been subject to a systematic review. Thus, in order to do so, we adopted two bibliometric techniques that allow us to identify its structure, highlighting in particular research subfields that received more attention from scholars and the ones that could benefit from a deeper investigation. Design/methodology/approach – After selecting main papers focused on “strategic patent management”, we tested whether these articles form a coherent body of literature analysing the patterns of citations among them. Then, based on the similarity of bibliographic coupling profile, papers were grouped into homogeneous factors, that we labelled “patent value”, “competitive and technological landscape” and “strategic decision”. Finally, each factor has been described and discussed. Originality/value – Re-organizing and systematizing the different contributions on the topic of “strategic patent management”, we contribute to reduce the risk of further developing a quite fragmented literature. In addition, bibliometric techniques, thanks to their quantifiability and objectivity, allow to avoid potential subjective biases Practical implications – Revising patent management practices, methods and strategies can provide useful insights to practitioners that can apply them in order to improve firm competitive advantage.

Purpose – Within the dynamic capability approach of the resource/knowledge-based view in strategic management we develop a research model, which delineates how innovations can be fostered through managing human resources (human capital) and organisational learning (structural capital). Design/methodology/approach – – We use structural equation modelling in AMOS for testing our hypothesized research model with a data base of the German economy (n = 1942). Originality/value – The empirical results of SEM indicate that strategic human resource management positively influences the relationship of human resources (Human Capital) and organisational learning capability (Structural Capital). The latter positively effects innovative outcomes directly and fully mediates the effect of human resources on innovative outcomes. Practical implications – Our inquiry calls for a strategic alignment of human and knowledge management practices in order to employ and develop organizational knowledge for continuous learning and innovations on the basis of human resources.

Purpose – As the global market conditions become progressively more volatile and unpredictable, public and private organisations are increasingly pressured to rely on innovation and adaptability as crucial sources of sustained performance. Our study investigates the still underexplored link between organisational knowledge assets and contextual ambidextrous learning. Specifically, we study how different configurations of knowledge assets – also called intellectual capital architectures – influence an organisation’s ability to simultaneously pursue knowledge exploration and exploitation. Methodology – We tested our model on a large hospital of about 250 beds and 35 wards located in the northern part of Italy. We surveyed health professionals by means of a structured questionnaire and also employed objective data in order to measure our outcome variables. Selected respondents included head physicians and assistants. Collected data were analysed using structural equations modelling (SEM) methodology in its PLS form and fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). Originality/Value – We propose and empirically explore the relation between intellectual capital architectures and organizational ambidexterity. In so doing we contribute to the debate concerning how organizations can simultaneously pursue both knowledge exploitation and exploration giving birth to ambidextrous learning processes. Also, by conciliating two bodies of literature that come from organizational learning and intellectual capital theory, our study extends the current understanding of the relationships between knowledge management activities and continuous improvement in healthcare. Practical implications – Our study might have implications for managers of healthcare organizations in that it sheds first light on the responsibility hospital managers have to promote current practice improvement through a set of interventions aimed at increasing healthcare organisations’ intellectual capital.

Purpose – In the changing business environment, organizational capability to create innovation can be considered as a prerequisite to sustain its growth. Therefore, it becomes important for both academics and practitioners to examine all drivers (tangible and intangible) of innovation process. In researching the linkages between intellectual capital (IC) and innovation, it is widely accepted that IC is associated with organization’s innovative performance. Nevertheless, traditional assessment of innovation performance does not usually tackle IC and knowledge issues. For that reason, this paper presents an empirical analysis of the effect of different IC categories on various types of innovation performance. The main objectives are to understand the role of IC in different aspects of companies’ innovation performance better and enable companies to capture as much of innovation potential as possible in order to capitalize IC for innovation. Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on survey data, collected in Serbia during 2014. The survey included 78 Serbian companies with at least 100 employees. The companies were diverse with regard to ownership structure, industry and geographic location. Seven IC categories were analysed (human, structural, internal relational, external relational, renewal, entrepreneurial, trust) in terms of their effect on five different types of innovation performance (innovation in products/services, processes, management practices, marketing practices, business models). Correlation and linear regression analyses were used to identify correlations between aforementioned measures and significant influence of IC stocks on different types of innovation performance. Originality/value – It is well-accepted in the relevant literature that IC encompasses three interrelated categories: human capital, structural capital, and relational capital. However, to explain the linkages between IC and innovation better, the following new IC dimensions were added: renewal capital, entrepreneurial capital and trust capital, which could be especially influential for innovation. This study is original also in examining the linkages between IC categories and different innovation performances to identify the most significant IC elements for various aspects of innovation. Practical implications – The outcomes reveal potential and barriers within IC, crucial to different aspects of innovation performance. In this way, this study enables deeper understanding of intangible drivers of various types of innovation and highlights possibilities to foster intangible innovation potential. Finally, our findings help the managers to capture more innovation potential, facilitate and capitalize IC in process of innovation and improve different types of innovation in Serbian companies.

Purpose – The main objective of this system is to suggest the right and suitable resources, people, groups and activities within OPENNESS platform to the end users to personalize and recommend the right information[Resnick97], items and services to the end users, based on their implicit and explicit preferences. OPENNESS is the main outcome of the italian research project VINCENTE (A Virtual collective INtelligenCe ENvironment to develop sustainable Technology Entrepreneurship ecosystems) and is an Enteprise Social Software for knowledge workers whose aim is to connect users that share their knowledge creating and finding solutions and new services for young innovative entrepreneurs and already existing SMEs. As described in [Elia2014] the four pillars of the OPENNESS platform are people, activities, resources and actions. The actions represent the means to link the other three pillars among them and to connect the communities, the knowledge base, the achieved objectives and the completed/uncompleted activities. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper we present a new implicit personalization and recommendation approach, based on a hybrid system, built on top of an arithmetical model, a semantic network, a distributional semantics context and time aware recommender [Musto2012, Basile2015] and a goal-oriented model in order to infer relationships with other user groups and behavioural patterns. Originality/value – This methodology puts in evidence how the knowledge about interests, preferences and goals of a user is the basis of the concepts of recommendation and personalization. In a collective intelligence environment we can extend the user profile information for profiling system with additional data that comes with the collaborative environment, like the group the user belongs, what or who the users follow and like, what a user is talking about more. The audit log of the platform is the sensing feature of the recommender, is the sensor that listens to the resource social life and analysing it, the system in able to provide the most suitable resources, activities and groups to join. Practical implications – The hybrid system proposed in this paper, goes beyond the individual systems that deal only with recommendation or practical reasoning by exploiting the potential that their integration ensures. The system is able to work even on small data volumes or without any explicit input from the user (thanks to the configurable weights available for user actions) and on inferences made by exploiting the cascade of inferences triggered by the implicit profiling system. We need to consider that PRACTIONIST (a framework for developing agent systems according to the Belief-Desire-Intention model as described in Morreale2006), the semantic network and the recommendation algorithms CASPERI and STARS taken individually or even by their sub-components, can still be used in a modular way for working on their specific field of application.

Purpose – The Internet of Things or, as John Chambers called it, the Internet of Everything represents the networked connection of people, process, data and things together in order to make connections more relevant and valuable than ever before. In order to understand further this intelligent infrastructure, our contribution aims to investigate the Internet of Things by a revised conceptualization of the topic. The investigation has been carried out on a scientific contribution produced in the last twenty years for economic and corporate purpose, in order to comprehend and manage the new opportunities offered to economic activity from Internet of Things . Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a qualitative approach with the inclusion of a single method approach. In this way, following an analysis of existing literature on the Internet of Things we have applied four keywords (Internet of Thing, Communication Internet, Energy Internet and Logistics Internet) in two databases (Google Scholar and Ebsco) to provide a range of scientific contributions to fill out the literature review. Research is developed according to the study of national and international literature. Originality/value – The Internet of Things will connect everything to everyone in a connected network made up of a Communications Internet, Logistics Internet and Energy Internet in a single integrated system. It has been estimated that in 2020 over 200 billion sensor devices will be connected, creating a market size that in 2025 will be between $2,7 trillion and $3 trillion per year. These devices promise efficiency, social and individual benefits through quantification and monitoring of previously immeasurable qualities. Therefore, the analysis of the literature on Internet of Things, in the time frame between 1995-2015, represents the method to fully appreciate the characteristics, opportunities, possible applications, risks and possible issues linked to the topic. Practical implications – The electronic sensors are now ubiquitous everywhere. The connected sensor-based devices create new types and quantities of high quality information, opening up new opportunities to create services that will provide the society, the environment, the economy and individuals with tangible benefits. Our conceptualization aim to contribute to the identification of the main features, application scenarios and correspondent potential applications of Internet of Things, offering new ideas for further analysis.

Purpose – We analyze streams of microblogs in terms of both contents and distribution network to create a model of people behavior to be used as an indication for future similar events. We present our methodology and some preliminary results of its application to new movie launches through the analysis of about 2 million downloaded in the US in 72 hours around the events in a 4 months period. Design/methodology/approach – We use a combination of semantic and topological analyses that demonstrated good results identifying conversational patterns to be used not only to assess how people feel about the event but also to develop a better understanding about what people say and how people talk about the event. To obtain the what people say, the methodology and the tools automatically analyze the conversations, with the support of visualization components. The how people talk is addressed detecting patterns in the conversations and evaluating the correlation of those patterns with performance indicators. Structure and contents are analyzed through a set of semantic and topological metrics to assess the content generated in different conversations. Metrics are then collected in a single dataset, which is later used to train and test a data mining model. Originality/value – Several commercial platforms are available to retrieve and assess to some extent this collective judgment through sentiment analysis. Sentiment, however, just measures how the “crowd” feels about a product, but does not offer insight on the structure and the determinants of the customers’ preferences nor provides indications about future behavior. Our challenge is instead to dig deeper into Twitter streams to capture and assess structured contents that are embedded in them through an analytical and quantitative approach. Practical implications – The elicitation of organized content from Twitter streams could support market analysts to achieve a better understanding of consumers’ perceptions and to better manage the reach-richness trade off between qualitative and quantitative market analyses. An additional practical use of our study can be to find a way to ascertain the presence of given semantic patterns in Twitter streams that can be predictive of early market success for a new product.

Purpose – A key task in many Collective Intelligence systems is to represent people and resources in some computational form that is general enough to accommodate different needs and diverse sources of information. Also, it should take into account the inevitable imprecision deriving from the necessity of representing complex phenomena in feasible ways. The purpose of our work is to define an abstract model for representing both users and resources with the main features of generality, adaptivity and capability of handling imprecise information. This model is called Fuzzy Information Filter (FIF). Design/methodology/approach – A FIF is based on the homogeneous description of users and resources in terms of fuzzy metadata, i.e. attributes whose values are defined in terms of fuzzy sets. Metadata define elementary filters, which can be combined in order to define composite filters that could better represent complex profiles. Furthermore, both elementary and composite filters can be adapted to incoming data by means of learning rules based on Possibility Theory, eventually relaxed to comply with specific application needs. Originality/value – The adoption of metadata to represent resources in an homogeneous way makes possible the use of the proposed model within semantic web applications. The use of fuzzy sets to define metadata enables imprecise assignment of values to attributes coming from subjective judgments, perception-based knowledge, etc. When a resource is given, the application of a FIF assesses how much the resource is compatible with the information stored in the filter. The resulting degree can be used to rank resources, e.g. with respect to the interests of a user. This approach could be exploited to attenuate the problem of information overload in large repositories of resources. Furthermore, the technology of fuzzy sets makes FIF models intelligible to analysts and inclined to integration with expert knowledge. Finally, the possibility of automatically adapting filters using incoming data enables the realization of personalized and adaptive systems. Practical implications – FIF models can be applied to represent user profiles in personalized applications where the use of fuzzy sets is a competitive advantage, as in personalized e-learning systems, recommendation systems, etc. More advanced applications could profit of the peculiar representation of profiles in terms of complex filters to produce, for example, clusters of people with a similar profile. On the overall, FIF introduces flexibility and adaptivity in web-based applications that use social networks and resources to expose intelligent behaviors.

Purpose – Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are computer-based 3D virtual worlds where users can meet and interact with each other in order to perform effectively collaborative work [1]. CVEs are increasingly used in many areas: eLearning [2], eEntertainment [3], eMarketing [4], cultural heritage [5], eMeeting [6], and entrepreneurship [7]. Currently, the development of the 3D environment often lead designers to define action/interaction rules on the basis of the environment facilities offered by it. Then it is needed a design approach, supported by a suited architecture, that let the designers focus the attention over the goals that the collaborative session is aiming. Design/methodology/approach – We propose an ICT X3D compliant architecture that allows the design and automatic generation of collaborative session for multiple virtual environments. We have been driven by the need to capture all the relevant abstractions embodied in CVEs for several domains, particularly the entrepreneurial domain. .Domain experts can design 3D collaborative experience without any CVE and technological skill because of the choice to use the Theater Metaphor [8] to abstract the CVE concepts. We introduced the concept of modeling primitives, used by different authoring profiles, which are involved in distinct phases of the design process: training designer, trainer/domain expert, CVE engineer. Originality/value – Comparing our contribution with the state of the art, we can affirm that new is the proposal of a system to generate collaborative sessions compliant with different virtual environments. The many advantages that we can demonstrate are: expressiveness to capture all of the collaborative features needed to support the creative processes of the entrepreneurs of the feature; semi-formality to facilitate the establishment of a common ground between designers of entrepreneurship platforms and CVEs engineers, and guidance to enable non-experts to cope with all the relevant aspects of a 3D virtual world. Practical implications – The growth of CVEs for entrepreneurship (but also for other domains) calls for new concrete tools that enable domain experts and engineers to model and keep under control the design complexity unleashed by technologically heterogeneous 3D virtual worlds. Two characteristics of our conceptual approach help designers during the modeling phases: abstraction (the metaphor) and separation of concerns (model views). By this ways, trainers and start up incubators in general are free to model the formative experience for the entrepreneurs of the future, designing its objectives and concentrating on the method, without the pain on facing with the technological details.