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This study aims to investigate farmer preferences regarding sales contracts for durum wheat in Italy.

The authors consider that contracts are formed by an organisational entity that is in charge of transferring decision and property rights based on reductions in transaction costs. The empirical analysis presents a discrete choice experiment with three distinct models that was performed by a survey of 160 wheat farmers in southern Italy.

The results show that contractual terms affect the probability of both a contract being signed and allocating decision rights due to their effects on price, technology and quality.

This study provides some insights on which contractual attributes could support the wider use of contracts along the durum wheat supply chain in Italy.

The paper reveals that contracts are relevant not only to the coordination of agri-food chains because of price stabilisation but also due to their impacts on technology and quality strategies.

One of the objectives of the Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (EC) No. 1924/2006 (NHCR) is protection and promotion of innovation in the food industry. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the NHCR on both innovation and the sourcing of external knowledge in the European Union (EU) food sector.

An online survey was conducted which resulted in a sample of 105 EU companies for the study. Structural equation modelling was used to examine the nature of relationships that existed among the challenges related to the implementation of the NHCR, external sources of knowledge and innovation.

Challenges related to the NHCR are currently found to have a negative direct impact on product innovation. However, they have a positive indirect effect on product innovation, especially in the case of small and medium-sized enterprises. They also seem to positively affect external knowledge sourcing. Additionally, sources of external knowledge are found to have a positive effect on product and process innovations.

This study provides insights to different stakeholders in the food industry who might wish to work jointly and address the various issues related to the requirements of the NHCR and facilitate compliance with the regulation.

Understanding the impact of the NHCR on innovation seems pivotal because innovation plays an important role in the EU food sector. To this purpose, the paper delivers insights into some main compliance challenges and their effect on innovation.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it aims to investigate how internal and external drivers affect innovation in the Italian food industry. Second, the authors are interested to understand to what extent these drivers are industry specific, and therefore, they are contrasted against those relevant for the pharmaceutical industry in Italy according to the increasing growth of cross-industry innovation between these two sectors. The paper aims, thus, to shed light on the differences between food and pharmaceutical industries in terms of innovation drivers to understand potential precursors of emerging industry convergence.

Both probit and bivariate probit models are estimated, using data from the Italian Community Innovation Survey, in order to provide empirical evidence on drivers affecting innovation in the food and pharmaceutical industries.

The innovation activity of Italian food and pharmaceutical companies strongly relies on the presence of in-house R & D activities. Whereas firms in the pharmaceutical industry combine both internal and external R & D activities and knowledge sources to produce innovation, the case of the food industry is strongly dependent on the acquisition of external technology. In particular, the increased need for absorptive capacity of both sectors emphasises the key role of university research for collaboration, knowledge transfer and product innovation.

The paper gives insights not only on drivers for innovation, but especially on the industry-specific differences which should be taken into account to have a contingent view. Limitations concern the impossibility to perform panel data analysis, due to the design of the database. Furthermore, both food and pharmaceutical sub-samples are not completely representative, since large companies tend to be overrepresented.

This paper provides managerial insights concerning the internal and external drivers affecting innovation. Moreover, it raises awareness as regards the possible differences between the food and pharmaceutical industries, which is crucial for establishing successful pathways for cross-industry innovation.

This study represents one of the few attempts to compare the innovation drivers of two manufacturing sectors (food and pharmaceutical), increasingly involved in cross-industry collaborations, and to highlight the industry-specific differences in those drivers which can act as forerunners of this phenomenon.

Over the past few years, several scholars have focused on innovation strategies with specific regard to family food firms. In line with this research stream, the purpose of this paper is to understand how family food firms with long-standing traditions can implement innovative productions while remaining anchored to the past.

By adopting a qualitative research methodology, mainly based on a multiple case study, this paper seeks to cover some unexplored areas regarding the opportunity of combining tradition and innovation to achieve success in the highly competitive international arena in which family food firms operate. The authors analyze the cases of “La Torrente,” “Cioccolatitaliani” and “La Fabbrica della Pasta di Gragnano.”

Successful family food firms leverage their deep-rooted knowledge of both family and local traditions to innovate. At same time, they establish continuous info exchange flows with all of the firm’s stakeholders by adopting an open innovation approach.

From a theoretical perspective, there is a need for an in-depth study of how an effective blend of tradition and innovation is formalized, above all, in family firms. As for the practical implications, all the three case studies represent a best practice, especially for family firms with a long-standing history and strong local connections.

The paper shows how important it is to keep traditional factors in food industry and offers hints and suggestions to decision makers of family firms on how to valorize, in terms of competitiveness, their traditional resources – almost bound to their territory with innovation tools and processes.

The paper is interesting because it offers an analysis of a specific group of firms – family firms – that characterize many industries in Italy and in Europe. Although often small, these firms can show dynamism and creativity. The paper offers hints on how to approach innovation in the sector while keeping the value of tradition.

The originality of the proposed conceptual model stems from the need to overcome the previous theoretical models, which deal separately with sources of past knowledge and sources of new and/or external knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model and examine the relevance of a set of five dynamic drivers to building and sustaining the innovation capability of agri-food firms.

The empirical data were acquired through a recent study of 436 Greek agri-food firms. Regression analysis was employed to examine the correlation between innovation drivers and each of the four innovation capability dimensions, namely, product innovation, process innovation, organizational innovation and marketing innovation.

The findings verify that quality orientation and process management are the two most important innovation drivers. However, the impact of learning orientation, collaborations and environmental dynamism on a firm’s agri-food innovation capability is yet to be investigated.

This study has not investigated how firms’ characteristics form the drivers and barriers to innovation at the company. Moreover, a second limitation is related to the kind of innovation that drivers boost. This research does not separate between radical and incremental innovation.

In order to maintain their sustainable development and enhance their whole innovation capability, agri-food firms should closely relate their innovation capability dimensions to the formulation of a strategy and harmonization of innovation and innovation drivers’ activities.

The main contribution of this paper is that it develops an appropriate research framework (a proposed structural model) for examining the links among the five innovation drivers with each of the four innovation capability dimensions.