Which Italian SMEs fall in love with digitalisation? An exploration into the determinants

Purpose Digitalisation represents an important opportunity for SMEs or, in other words, a fundamental factor to help them implement competitive strategies aimed at innovation, cost reduction and internationalization. This study aims to investigate the determinants of the level of digitalisation of Italian SMEs. Design/methodology/approach This study firstly involves a survey based on short telephone interviews to measure the level of digitalisation of 101 Italian SMEs and, secondly, uses a regression model to identify the drivers of this level of digitalisation. Findings Empirical findings reveal that the Italian SMEs have an average level of digitalisation. Besides, they show that firm size, firm profitability and financial leverage represent drivers that positively influence the digitalisation of the Italian SMEs. Originality/value This study provides an important contribution to the academic literature by providing a first operationalization of the concept of business digitalisation and by broadening the knowledge of the drivers of the level of digitalisation in the SMEs context.

Pseudocapacitors

World energy consumption has grown at a rate of knots. Economic growth, increasing prosperity and urbanization, the rise in per capita consumption, and the spread of energy access are the factors likely to considerably increase the total energy demand. In order to meet both the environmental and economic challenges, society realizes the necessity for harvesting the renewable resources, their storage, and recovery. To achieve accelerating clean energy innovation, cost reduction, and deployment of many clean energy technologies, it is important to formulating policies and their implementation, programmes for the development of new and renewable energy apart from coordinating and intensifying R&D in the sector. At present, aggravating energy and environmental issues, such as fossil fuel depletion, pollution problems, and global warming are ringing alarm bells to humans. Thus, there is an urgent need for enhanced energy security along with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In this direction, renewable energy is one of the environmentally friendly sources of energy and effectiveness of growing economy of the whole world in general. The development of environmentally friendly materials is one of the key issues today.

Green Logistics Service Supply Chain Games Considering Risk Preference in Fuzzy Environments

The increasing pressures from environmental crises are responsible for the green and sustainable choices made in supply chain management. Green logistics service supply chain (LSSC) operations play a significant role in reducing the environmental burden of the supply chain, and the risk preferences of logistics enterprises lead to more uncertainties in the green management of LSSC. Much research has been limited to case studies of green LSSC, and the different combinations of risk preferences among LSSC participants have generally been ignored. This paper investigates the impact of the risk preference on the equilibrium behavior of an LSSC composed of one logistics service integrator (LSI) and one logistics service provider (LSP) under fuzzy decision environments. Considering the fact that the greening innovation cost and the parameters of the demand function are all characterized as fuzzy variables, the games between the LSI and LSP with different risk preferences were comprehensively proposed under three scenarios. Then, the optimal decisions of the LSP and LSI were drawn, and numerical examples are presented. The results show that an optimistic risk attitude can appropriately improve the greening level, price, and green innovation cost of logistics services, while both risk appetite and risk aversion can lead to an increase in the outsourcing price. Moreover, when the decision maker is risk neutral, the partner’s risk attitude has a significant effect on the value of the decision variables and the cost. Finally, the optimal profits of different risk preference behaviors between the LSI and LSP vary among the game models under fuzzy environments. Subsequently, we obtained three management insights. Total involvement and cooperation among participants were vital factors for an improvement in green management in the LSSC. Additionally, risk preference plays a key role in how LSSC participants make decisions under fuzzy environments. Additionally, a dominant position in the LSSC plays a crucial role in generating profit.

Air and space vehicle production: indicators of innovative activity

We analyze the problems of increasing the innovative activity of air and space vehicle manufacturing enterprises in Russia by the year 2021 and consider indicators reflecting the innovative activity of organizations, such as the implementation of innovations, the proportion of organizations engaged in technological innovation, cost of technological innovation by the source of funds, the dynamics of the innovative production output. Besides, correlation analysis of the relationship between the main indicators of innovation activity and the intensity of expenditures on technological innovations has been performed to identify dependencies describing air and space vehicle production’s distinctive features.

An Evolutionary Game Model of Collaborative Innovation Between Enterprises and Colleges Under Government Participation of China

The three-party evolutionary game model of government, enterprises, and institutions of higher learning is established, and the dynamic evolution process of collaborative innovation behavior is discussed under the two strategies of “incentive” and “non-incentive” chosen by the government. The results show that under the premise of stronger innovation consciousness of the government and institutions and smaller the innovation cost of enterprises, the system is easier to reach the ideal state. The incentive degree of government should be controlled within a reasonable range to prevent enterprises from falling into a bad state because of the temptation of economic interests.

Stability analysis of green innovation in construction enterprises based on evolutionary game

In order to conform to the trend of ecological economic development, the development of clean, energy saving, environmental protection of green new products has become the primary task of construction enterprises. Based on this, by establishing the game model between suppliers and manufacturers in the construction supply chain, this paper considers the influence of different parameters such as innovation cost, innovation compensation and innovation revenue increment on the choice of green innovation strategy of both enterprises. By solving the replication dynamic equation, the evolutionary stability results show that suppliers and manufacturers choose different decision-making methods according to the revenue, input-output results and the amount of green innovation subsidies given to each other.

Predicting Business Innovation Intention Based on Perceived Barriers: A Machine Learning Approach

In the Industry 4.0 scenario, innovation emerges as a clear driver for the economic development of societies. This effect is particularly true for the least developed countries. Nevertheless, there is a lack of studies that analyze this phenomenon in these nations. In this context, this study aims to examine the impact of perceived barriers to innovation to predict companies′ innovative intentions in an emerging economy. This study is a preliminary effort to use data mining and symmetry-based learning concepts, especially classification, to assist the identification of strategies to incentivize intention to innovate in companies. Using the decision tree classification technique, we analyzed a sample of Chilean companies (N = 5876). The sample was divided into large enterprises (LEs) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In the group of large companies, the barriers that most impact the intention to innovate are innovation cost, lack of demand innovations, and lack of qualified personnel. Alternatively, in the group of small-medium companies, the barriers that most impact the intention to innovate are lack of own funds, lack of demand innovations, and lack of information about technology. These results show how the perceptions of barriers are significant to predict the intentions of innovation in Chilean companies. Furthermore, the perceptions of these barriers are contingent on the organizational sizes. These findings contribute to understanding the effect of contingencies on innovative intention in an emerging economy.

Impact of Upgrade Programmes on the Competitiveness: Case of the Algerian Companies

Faced to a socio-economic environment that is marked by globalization of trade and competitiveness, Algeria is committed, like its neighbours, to do upgrade programmes which aim to support the dynamic of restructuring process, the industrial integration and growth. The strategic goal is to upgrade to the requirements of the free trade to take advantage of the positive effects of liberalization and strengthen the production capacity, sales and export. This general target will lead the Algerian companies to achieve two ambitions: to become competitive in price / quality, innovation, and to be able to survive and control the evolution of the technology and the markets. Achieving these ambitions requests from the Algerian companies a major effort, i.e., to adapt and change their organisational methods and practices, especially in technology, innovation, cost control and quality supervision, training, products and markets, sales policies, management, openness to technical and commercial partners. The present paper describes the impact of upgrade programmes on the competitiveness of Algerian companies. For this reason, a model has been developed that analyses the competitiveness of a company across several dimensions (commercial, financial, technical, human, as well as social & managerial). To process the data collected in the survey, an exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory analysis and structural equation methods have been used. The results of the research have confirmed the main hypothesis that upgrading has a positive impact on the overall competitiveness of companies that have initiated and finalised an upgrade programme.

Barriers to financial product innovation in Islamic banks in Pakistan

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify barriers to financial product innovation in the Islamic banks (IBs) of Pakistan. This paper also aims to establish the relationship among the barriers and present them in a hierarchical model after classification. Design/methodology/approach This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature. A total of ten experts from the IBs and from academia have been interviewed to collect data. Literature has also been reviewed to identify the barriers. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) analysis has been used to establish relationship among the barriers, to rank and to come up with a hierarchical model of barriers. Findings This research paper makes out, ranks and classifies the nine most important barriers to product innovation in the IBs in Pakistan, including high innovation cost; lack of customer awareness; difference of school of thoughts between members of Shari’ah board; non-compatibility between product design department and members of Shari’ah board; lack of research and development; non-acceptability of concept of Islamic banking; lack of training regarding a new product; imitation of a new product by competitors; and the limited use of new product development tools. Originality/value This study offers originality in its nature of being qualitative and the use of ISM technique. It is also the first research project regarding identification of barriers in the IBs in Pakistan.