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This paper aims to present the application and critical reflection on the effects of a intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): the Soundbeam Imitation Intervention (SII). The intervention is based on the imitation of meaningless body gestures supported by a musical feedback. The rationale underlying SII is that mirror neurons deficit may represent the cause for the incomplete development of social and motor functioning in children with ASD. Following this assumption, it is possible to hypothesise that a systematic activation of this a system through the simultaneous observation-execution of meaningless body gestures may affect functional changes of mirror-related functions.

A sample of 14 children, who were between 5 and 9 years of age, with a diagnosis of ASD were involved in a six weeks’ SII programme. The programme is designed as a three-step progression, where each step includes exercises that focus on an activity: synchronous/one arm imitation, synchronous/two arms imitation and delayed imitation. Exercises are based on repeated movements-melodies associations of increasing difficulty. Motor imitation and social attention were assessed using a synchronous video-modelling task pre and post intervention.

Data highlight significant improvements in imitation accuracy and duration of social sustained attention were achieved.

Data reported in this paper provide preliminary and promising evidence that imitation and social attention skills acquired through SII can be generalised to a video-modelling imitation setting. The SII ordinal execution has included meaningless gestures, usually excluded from previous interventions, and this adds further validity to the training.

Despite the relevance of innovation in entrepreneurship literature, empirical research on the innovation-performance relationship in start-ups is underdeveloped and shows controversial results. To bridge this gap, the aim of this paper is to investigate the role of innovativeness on new venture performance in the early stage of the life cycle.

Regression modelling and propensity score matching are used to reveal systematic differences in growth between innovative start-ups (ISUPs) and non-innovative start-ups. We use an ad hoc dataset obtained through merging the financial database AIDA with data from administrative sources (Italian Chambers of Commerce and the Italian Ministry for Economic Development).

The results show that differences in growth can be explained by the different levels of innovativeness in new ventures. Moreover, unlike in prior studies, the innovation inputs matter more than innovation outputs. Indeed, the results support the idea that innovation policies can contribute to maximising the potential of start-ups.

The findings provide suggestions for policy makers and entrepreneurs to help firms configure ex ante appropriate actions to support the growth of new ventures in the start-up stage.

This study is the first to use the new objective measure of start-up innovation, available from the Italian LD 221 register. Second, different types of innovation are investigated as antecedents of firm growth. Third, we employ propensity score matching, which favours revealing systematic differences in growth between ISUPs and non-innovative start-ups. Fourth, the results of our study are the first to offer evidence on the effectiveness of the new Italian sustaining ISUPs policy.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive vision of the formation of intra-metropolitan clusters triggered by the deindustrialization of an urban area, namely, the district of Porto Marghera in the metropolitan area of Venice and propose possible regeneration scenarios based on intra-metropolitan clustering.

This paper adopts a multi-disciplinary approach and relies on both descriptive and qualitative evidence to show the economic transition occurred in the area of Porto Marghera in recent years.

Evidence shows the rise of two potential clusters in the KIBS and the creative industries in a well-delimited fringe area placed at the boundary between the urban centre and the core of the deindustrialized zone. Such clustering processes have been, however, characterized by two different and in some way alternative paths. The former stems from the combination of two autonomous entrepreneurial ideas that complemented one to each other. The latter relies on university-industry collaboration and on the presence of places of informal exchanges that proved to support personal networking, knowledge exchange and business opportunities.

This paper suggests that local development policies could leverage on the presence of social entrepreneurs to substitute the creation of amenities and the provision of public goods in fragile territories.

This paper shows that, in presence of specific spatial conditions, deindustrialization can stimulate the formation of new intra-metropolitan through both top-down and bottom-up agglomeration process.