In light of the recent dynamics of the recession sparked by the global economic crisis, a roadmap for the growth and recovery of national economies is urgently needed. As such, this book focuses on the potential offered not only by the manufacturing sector but also by the agricultural and tertiary sectors. In fact, during the crisis these sectors demonstrated remarkable resilience in the Italian economy and there have even been positive trends in specific segments. This book points out how an exit strategy could be applied that involves all economic sectors and which can be replicated in various national economies.

Currently, most organizations are dependent on IS/ICT in order to support their business strategies. IS/ICT can promote the implementation of strategies and enhancers of optimization of the various aspects of the business. In market enterprises and social organizations, digital economy and ICTs are important tools that can empower social entrepreneurship initiatives to develop, fund, and implement new and innovative solutions to social, cultural, and environmental problems. The Handbook of Research on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and ICTs is an essential reference source that discusses the digitalization techniques of the modern workforce as well as important tools empowering social entrepreneurship initiatives. Featuring research on topics such as agile business analysis, multicultural workforce, and human resource management, this book is ideally designed for business managers, entrepreneurs, IT consultants, researchers, industry professionals, human resource consultants, academicians, and students.

The book is a cross-section of the over all Italian development. Italy can be considered a microcosm that contains all the imbalances and territorial differences that can be observed in the European macro-areas. Its north can now be considred integrated with the more developed European continental shelf. The Centre represents a local development in transition to a more visible technological change. The late south risks accumulating more socio-economic backwardness. For these reasons, we believe this volume is useful, with just a few pages presenting one of the most interesting cases of local industrial development, outside the mainstream of the industrial economy which saw in Fordism and Taylorism the best way for industrializaion. Here, on the contrary, it is argued that big fish cannot always consume the smallest one that flickers faster and its flexibility, that has social roots, can be an advantage in global markets. Technology appears to be the key to the future. Please note: This title is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives or Bhutan)

«Made in Italy» is a worldwide label for fashion and luxury brands. It suggests top quality as well as a sense of distinction and it is closely linked to famous brand names as well as entrepreneurs like Giorgio Armani, Miuccia Prada, Gianni Versace. Nevertheless, behind the sparkling names, made in Italy hides a set of entrepreneurial forms that are at the heart of peculiar Italian savoir-faire for fashion and luxury goods and that were, indeed, at the heart of the economic development of the country. Design, production and distribution of fashion and luxury goods in Italy have solid foundations in a diffuse network of independent enterprises that ensured economic and cultural development and innovation. The free, yet coordinated, initiative of small entrepreneurs, firmly rooted in the traditional structure of the Italian society, constitute the economic and social fabric behind the success of some of the well known large groups of the high end of the fashion and luxury system. This fabric of diffuse entrepreneurship is also actually ensuring the necessary variety of initiatives and countermeasures to face the crisis of this sector and to invent new solutions against the de-manufacturing and the fierce concurrence of the developing countries.

This book employs an interdisciplinary approach to analyze innovation in entrepreneurship networks from a European perspective, focusing on the best methods for combining old and new knowledge.

This book offers a novel perspective on starting-up new business ventures through examining the process by which they become part of the existing business environment. The book highlights the importance of inter-organizational business relationships. Asserting that new ventures need to interact and connect with customers and suppliers, alongside policy actors and universities, Starting up in Business Networks demonstrates how beginning a new venture demands initiating and developing business relationships. Noting a lack of prior research into the process by which start-ups embed into an existing business network, this book presents examples from countries such as Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands and China to analyse the emergence and evolution of start-up business networks.