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AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020–2021 has created an unprecedented incentive to digitize firms. This paper aims to explore how European companies may have responded to COVID‐19 through digitalization. An online survey of experts from 22 European countries showed that software technologies supporting online meetings, remote working and e‐commerce began to be widely adopted during the pandemic. Online meetings and the reduction of business travel are perceived as common, long‐term effects of digitalization in European companies after the COVID‐19 pandemic. The barriers to digitalization and the measures considered to be the most effective in supporting digitalization have also been identified.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compare supply network strategies of district firms (from now on ID) and non‐district (non‐ID) firms with the aim of outlining emerging strategies as well as identifying similarities and differences between business models.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on a quantitative approach: the TeDIS survey focuses on 45 leading Italian districts and SMEs located outside districts (Made in Italy sectors). Results refer to 630 Italian firms.FindingsThere are more similarities than differences between the approach of ID and non‐ID companies to supply networks. ID firms rely more on local systems in terms of supply networks, while non‐ID firms have also invested at national level (subcontracting networks). The global geographical extension of supply networks stresses the ID companies' search for efficiency in addition to value‐added competences. Non‐ID firms have a more hierarchical approach to internationalization than ID firms, but differences decrease as the size of the companies increases.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is still preliminary. Future research should explore the relationships between the strategic approach to supply networks of district firms and non‐ID firms in terms of characteristics of the relationship management and aims of relationships, also with a focus on the size of these firms.Originality/valueWithin the existing literature, the original contribution of the paper lies in its comparison of supply network strategies in ID and non‐ID firms based on a significant quantitative analysis.

Starting from the observation of a conceptual gap regarding the association between consumption and the contexts in which it occurs, the paper has two objectives. The first is to fill this gap by developing a framework that includes: the identification of consumption contexts based on their building blocks (actors, goods, relationships), the basic classification of their variety, and a knowledge-based reading of consumption contexts capable of explaining their functioning. The second aim is to show that the framework allows the understanding of the digital transformation of consumption contexts. We show that services are produced in two contexts: in the first type, consumers interact directly with goods; in the second, the intermediation of frontline personnel comes into play. Actors and goods present in the consumption contexts are knowledge-holders, and the relationships between them are learning relationships. The shift from traditional consumption contexts to contexts based on artificial intelligence and the internet of things introduces a major change in that learning relationships are no longer the domain of only (human) actors who learn by interacting with each other and using goods. Both types of contexts are in fact powered by smart goods capable of interacting with each other and with humans within a given context and endowed with structural cognitive connections outside that context.

Industry 4.0, a concept comprising a range of promising innovations enabled by the recent advancements in digital technologies, has become a priority of industrial policy in many European countries and regions. In this paper we present actions undertaken by regional organisations (including the so called Digital Innovation Hubs), fostering adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in manufacturing companies. Using examples from Germany, Italy and Poland, we show actions that both allow to create general conditions for such implementations, but also help individual companies to create individual strategy for adopting Industry 4.0 innovations.

"The international fragmentation of economic activities--from research and design to production and marketing--described through the lens of the global value chain (GVC) approach impacts the structure and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) agglomerated in economic clusters. The consolidation of GVCs ruled by global lead firms and the recession of 2008-09 exacerbated the pressures on cluster actors that based their competitive advantage on local systems, spurring an increasing heterogeneity, both across and within clusters, that is still overlooked in the literature. Drawing on detailed studies of different industries and countries, Local Clusters in Global Value Chains shows the co-evolutionary trajectories of clusters and GVCs, and the role of firms and their strategies in organizing manufacturing and innovation activities in the context of ongoing technological shifts. The book explores the tension between place-based variables and global drivers of change, and the possibility for territories containing such clusters to prosper in the new global scenario. By adopting insights from the GVC framework and management studies, the book discusses how the internationalization strategies of firms create opportunities as well as constraints for adaptive upgrading in clusters. This book is of interest to both researchers and policy-makers who are interested in the dynamic sources of competitive advantage in the global economy."--Provided by publisher.

An updated view of knowledge management strategies of knowledge-intensive business services, focusing on how these service firms manage innovation in the framework of the knowledge economy. The authors offer an original analysis of key processes of business services specializing in different activities such as design, professional firms, and information technology. This volume contains rich case studies, surveys and quantitative economic analysis carried out in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Russia and Spain. It gathers contributions from respected scholars specializing in knowledge-intensive business services and offers a fresh overview of the dynamics concerning knowledge management in services, with respect to firms embedded in regional innovation systems, metropolitan areas and clusters.