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The research question is how can a company implement a circular innovation in a supply network context? Leveraging the main conceptual and interpretative models of the industrial marketing and purchasing thinking, this study aims to investigate the interplay between the process of circular innovation development and the changes in the structure and dynamics of the supply network in which innovation takes place.

This research applies a case study design focusing on participant interaction dynamics. The case relates to an industrial company producing an innovative coating solution for compostable packaging. The data used to develop the case study came from multiple sources but primarily from semistructured interviews that cover the implementation of the circular innovation and the configuration of the circular network.

The dynamics of interconnected relationships can configure a circular network that interconnects business and non business actors through vertical, horizontal and heterogeneous relationships. The network configuration is supported by the new mobilizer actor that facilitates the sharing of circular knowledge within the circular network, together with the sharing of a market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation within the supply network, through the educational learning path.

This paper aims to contribute to a new understanding of how circular innovation can be developed, adopted and diffused. In a network, when circular innovation takes place, the focal issue is not the new product or technology in itself but how such innovation is developed and implemented by and through the reconfiguration of the business and non-business relationships into circular network.

Even if in a traditional perspective the discovery and the exploitation of opportunities are associated to the entrepreneur’s capabilities, a relational perspective is required to better analyze the phenomenon of starting up a new venture. The growing attention to interaction with the external environment has been emerging as a precondition of the entrepreneurial processes as it creates the knowledge and the experience necessary to perceive the opportunity. The entrepreneurial opportunities are created through joint acts with others through social relationships. Shifting the attention from social to business relationships, the main aim of this paper is to investigate the discovery and the exploitation of collective entrepreneurial opportunities in starting up new business. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of relational proximity in the entrepreneurial journey considered as an emergent process of transforming potentiality into actuality.

The paper applied a qualitative methodology (Dubois and Araujo, 2004) and a case study approach (Barrat et al., 2011). The case concerns the dyadic spin-off relationship between the innovative start up, ShapeMode (the generated firm), and the Milan FabLab (the generating firm) located in Lombardy Region (Italy).

The emerging of collective entrepreneurial opportunities could be analyzed at two levels: the first one concerns the dyadic spin-off relationship, while the second one is founded on the business relationships that the start-up can activate with the business partners of the generating firm. The collective entrepreneurial opportunities are positive influenced by jointness of the actors and their co-evolution, founded on the shared values and goals.

Although the case study approach allowed the researcher to gain detailed information about the spin-off relationship, this effort does not measure the performance outcomes of the relationships and actions that were taken to improve the competitiveness of the start-up. Future studies would benefit from a large-scale questionnaire given to the members of the start-up and to the actors of its Entrepreneurial Network, so to analyze all of its performance implications for the start-up and the network as a whole. In addition, it could be of interest for future research to investigate the effects of collective entrepreneurial opportunities in order to examine this topic more deeply.

From a managerial point of view, even if the growing number of start-ups has been associated to a temporary phenomenon, the development of new ventures is now consolidated. A new managerial approach is required to promote the birth and the growth of the start-ups. The development of a new venture requires to shift the attention from the collection of financial resources to the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities generated by interconnected business relationships. In this way a relevant attention should be recognized to the new role of organizations that can be considered as facilitators of business relationships, such as the FabLab. This paper sheds light on the relevance of the strategic networking that sustains the generation of collective entrepreneurial opportunities. The networking involves actors that belong to different geographic area and different countries but that are focused on the same business dream related to the exploitation of potentialities of digital fabrication. The policymakers should recognize the role of the FabLab as facilitator of knowledge diffusion concerning digital fabrication.

The entrepreneurial opportunities such as the starting up of a new business and its evolution, are enacted, discovered and exploited through interconnected business relationships. In particular the main entrepreneurial opportunities are generated by the activation of business relationships with new business actors. Focusing on the dyadic spin-off relationship, the exploitation of collective entrepreneurial opportunities depends on the sharing of third actors. The business partners of the generating actor (FabLab) became business partners of the generated actor (start-up). The evolution of the generating firm (FabLab) influenced the birth and the evolution of the generated firms (start-up). The dyadic relationship allows the generated firm to discover entrepreneurial opportunities and to exploit them, accessing to the business partners of the generating firm. The effectiveness of the spin-off relationship sustains the replication of the model of new firm generation, that could benefit from the relationships of the two actors of the dyad. Moreover the strong relationships are founded on relational proximity that is characterized by the sharing of values, vision and business dreams.

This paper aims to investigate how orchestration mechanisms characterizing meta-organizations can support sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) leveraged by digital transition.

This study adopted a qualitative approach. The authors collected qualitative data from 41 in-depth interviews with key informants, participatory longitudinal observations and secondary data analysis related to a digital innovation hub (DIH) and its network.

The findings reveal how meta-organizations, such as DIHs, advance SOI – considering the potentialities of digital technologies – through four orchestration mechanisms: collaboration platform setup, SOI resource arrangement, SOI process enablement and SOI scale-up. Each mechanism is founded on recurrent SOI practices identified as aligning, assembling and progressing, and each is characterized by specific activities that depend on meta-organizations’ evolutionary purposes related to the stages of the creation process. The activation of mechanisms concerns a process outlining three sequential evolutionary trajectories: for assessing and regulating interaction, for promoting and coordinating collective action and for creating a collective identity.

This study contributes to meta-organization and orchestration research oriented toward SOI and leveraged by the digital transition, and considers the distinctive orchestration mechanisms and practices required to support SOI leveraged by the digital transition. Differently from previous research on orchestration and meta-organizations, this study considers the time perspective, and thus, the sequentiality of mechanisms (evolutionary trajectories) to achieve the purposes characterizing the stages of meta-organizations’ creation process.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the key drivers of coopetition by adopting a managerial and economic framework. A case of coopetition failure is investigated by means of a historical example focused on the Egyptian adventure of the Italian banks in the first decades of the XX century.

The authors adopt a qualitative case study and a flexible pattern matching approach to develop theoretical ideas. Because the flexible pattern matching approach was adopted, the authors build the analysis on a tentative analytical framework specified a priori to provide guidance and focus. This approach allows a theory-driven research paradigm. The historical case study is mainly grounded on original sources drawn from some major banking and institutional archives.

While several scholars emphasised the relevance of external drivers, the literature has paid less attention to how relational and internal drivers combine. The historical case suggests that key mechanisms supporting the success of coopetition concern planning of common goals, conflicts management, alignment and formalisation of governance. In this vein, internal and relational dimensions seem to be more relevant than environment-context dimension. In addition, the historical example shows that an intra- and inter-firm alignment is required to pursue the implementation of a coopetitive strategy. This suggests the relevance of a holistic approach to investigate coopetition. Further evidence confirms the role of governance mechanisms for the success of coopetition.

The main contribution of this study is the re-consideration of the drivers of coopetition. In particular, the role of coopetition drivers has been investigated using a historical event: the Italian multinational banking in Egypt in the interwar years.

This paper aims to investigate the role of relational governance in innovation platform development, specifically investigating the context of living labs.

Two longitudinal case studies are presented, derived from auto-ethnographic narratives, qualitative interviews and secondary documents, which cover the critical stages in the development of each living lab.

Empirical insights demonstrate the relevance of coordination activities based on joint planning and activities to support innovation platform development across different stages. The governance role of research actors as platform activators is also identified.

The paper offers a useful perspective for identifying collective goals between living lab actors and aligning joint activities across different stages of living lab development.

The case provides insights into the challenges and opportunities for collaboration between academia, industry and users to support sustainable construction innovation.

A relational governance mode is identified, going beyond top down or bottom up approaches, which contributes a new understanding of how collective goals align within a relational space.

Differently from previous works that focused on the entrepreneur and on his ability to manage social relationships, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of business relationships in the different stages of the life cycle of a start-up.

Since the paper aims to explore startups’ evolutionary phenomenon, it adopts a qualitative abductive methodology, presenting an in-depth study of two innovative Italian start-ups. The research is based on two steps. In the first one, the authors collected secondary data from start-ups’ reports and documents, financial indicators (when available) and processed them to understand their background. In the second one, the authors conducted ten semi-structured interviews, including face-to-face interviews, phone interviews and video conferences.

The paper presents a relationship-based life cycle model composed of four different stages, depending on the number and role of relationships developed. Indeed, since the beginning, start-ups adopt a relational approach and their evolution involves the shift from the focus on the entrepreneur to the centrality of a network approach based on interconnected relationships. The entering into a new stage of life cycle depends on relationships, mainly based on connected actors and resources shared and combined. Even if a key role is assumed by technology, the main resource is identified in the knowledge concerning the customer/user’s needs that require marketing competencies, human resources, relational capabilities. Thus, the shift from one stage to the next in the start-up’s life cycle is possible thanks to a parallel shift from a focus on the activities to a focus on those strategic and heterogeneous actors that ensure activities.

In a traditional perspective, the start-up’s life cycle depends on activities, financial resources and revenues, as stated by previous life cycle models. In a different perspective, as depicted in our analysis, the evolution of a start-up depends on the portfolio of their business relationships. The role of business relationships is hence to facilitate the interconnections within specialized key actors, which allow start-ups to access strategic resources. These resources are essential in order to develop the activities that characterize the specific stage of the life cycle.

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of actors’ heterogeneity and the context of interaction on collective innovation.

By using the six sources of heterogeneity identified by Corsaro et al. (2012) – goals, competences and skills, knowledge bases, power/position, perceptions and cultures – the authors describe the cases of two consecutive projects – ESASIM and NeWTeC – developed within Kilometro Rosso Science Park. The collaborative innovative outcome (simulation software) developed in the first phase was subsequently applied by each actor in its specific context. At the macro level, the authors define the processes that describe the role of actors’ heterogeneity in both the contexts of innovation development and application; at the micro level, the authors shed some light on the role of the single actor acting simultaneously as a provider and as a user with respect to different contexts.

In this paper, the processes through which actors’ heterogeneity and the context of interaction influence the development of innovation (collective/macro-network level) and contribute a better understanding of collective innovation from a perspective that involves each individual actor (single-actor/micro level) are determined. These two phases are labeled in terms of “decontextualizing” and “recontextualizing”, through which it will be recognized how the process of innovation depends on the social context and by the business activities that take place between the organizations. In the paper, term actor is used to refer to organizations taking part in the innovation networks as represented by their key referents.

Further research on this topic could explore not only the single sources of actors’ heterogeneity but also patterns of them and their effects in the different contexts. In addition, looking at the micro level, it would be interesting to understand if, in certain specific phases of innovation development and implementation, one of the roles – provider or user – prevails over the other and which effects it generates.

This case study has important managerial implications. First, by better understanding the role of actors in innovation networks, companies could improve their networking strategies and, consequently, increase the likelihood of their solutions satisfying the needs of the different stakeholders. Second, the management of actors’ heterogeneity seems strictly related to communication practices. As a result, it would be interesting to develop communication training programs addressing companies located in science parks, built around the profiles of the actors’ features, characterizing a certain project and envisioning potential contexts for the development and application of the project outcome. Due to the variety of actors involved and the changing nature of the contexts in which they operate, standardizing communication practices could, in fact, be less effective. Finally, we also see implications for the management company of the science and technology park, which should think in a more comprehensive way about the different sources of actors’ heterogeneity and their potential consequences once they build interorganizational collaborations and thus interdisciplinary teams.

Using the Intellimech case, the role of actors’ heterogeneity and the context interaction in innovation networks, with respect to two different levels of analysis, is explored. On the collective-macro level, the set of actors in the network was considered; on the micro level, each single business actor as part of the wider network is concentrated upon.

This paper positions in this debate and, in particular, attempts to understand if and how actors’ heterogeneity and the context of interaction influence innovation networks. In effect, while the literature includes sporadic references to the role of the two elements, they have not yet been jointly considered. To reach this goal, two levels of analysis were adopted: a macro network level considering the set of business actors collectively and a micro level looking at the single actor as part of the wider network. Empirically, this paper will describe the case of two projects developed within Intellimech, an innovation network located at Kilometro Rosso Science Park, an aggregation node of relationships and connections around innovation purposes.

This paper aims to discuss the role of goal diversity for resource development organized in an inter-organizational project.

The paper builds on a case study of an inter-organizational research project in the field of plant biotechnology in Sweden. The project had four members with differing goals: two research departments, one firm and one co-operative.

This particular project shows a diversity of goals and seeks to explain how actors with very different goals and resources involve in inter-organizational collaboration. The case illustrates how the goals are nested in different ways and how the goals are and become related with the resources developed during the project. The explanation found is that the involved actors manage to match their goals and resources.

The paper identifies goal-and-resource-matching processes as an explanation behind resource development in collaboration between actors with diverse goals.

Designing projects with actors who have diverse sets of resources have enormous potential, but such projects need to ensure that the goals are resources become matched, processes which can emerge during the course of the project.

Few studies have focused on the interplay between diverse goals and resources in inter-organizational projects.