What is the role of culture in the innovation dynamic of small firms within the context of their territorial environments? How do shared values, beliefs and practices underpin the knowledge production process that leads to innovation? In what way do symbolic aspects of social life shape European SMEs’ innovation processes? This volume gives an extensive insight into the complex links between culture and innovation in one of the key agents of economic life: SMEs and micro firms. The chapters employ different analytical and methodological strategies in regions of Europe to identify dimensions of culture, especially values, norms, skills and institutions, and to scrutinize which specific components of culture are relevant to firm innovation and to the more general dynamics of regional innovation. The original research presented shows how small firms learn, interact, compete and collaborate with other key agents of the innovation system. Taken as a whole, the volume points the way towards a more comprehensive framework for understanding the nature of innovation in SMEs and micro firms. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

Features of the volume: comprehensive strategic profiles representative of small-firm populations; information from business surveys and administrative data sources for a better understanding of how strategies and activities relate to firm performance; and an exploration of how small-firm strategies and activities vary across a diverse range of operating environments- from manufacturing to services to science-based environments.

Innovation in Forestry Territorial and Value Chain Relationships Edited by Gerhard Weiss, Davide Pettenella, Pekka Ollonqvist and Bill Slee Innovation is increasingly recognized as a key factor in environmental protection and sustainable development in forestry and forest-based industries. This volume provides a comprehensive theoretical foundation for the analysis of innovation processes and policies in a traditional, rural sector as well as presenting empirical analyses of innovation processes from major innovation areas. Innovative solutions are analysed in wood-related value chains, including timber-frame construction, furniture, bio-energy and forest transportation. Territorial services of the forest sector are examined, including various types of forest ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, non-wood products and recreation. Innovation in Forestry is essential reading for researchers and policy makers in forestry and environmental sciences.

This study explores the relations between SME intellectual asset management, innovation and competitiveness in different national and sectoral contexts.

This text focuses on intellectual property management in small and medium-sized enterprises from both a national and international perspective, and considers the question in the context of innovation and knowledge management.

This book contains the collection of papers presented at the conference of the International Federation for Information Processing Working Group 8.2 "Information and Organizations." The conference took place during June 21–24, 2009 at the Universidade do Minho in Guimarães, Portugal. The conference entitled "CreativeSME - The Role of IS in Leveraging the Intelligence and Creativity of SME’s" attracted high-quality submissions from across the world. Each paper was reviewed by at least two reviewers in a double-blind review process. In addition to the 19 papers presented at the conference, there were five panels and four workshops, which covered a range of issues relevant to SMEs, creativity and information systems. We would like to show our appreciation of the efforts of our two invited keynote speakers, Michael Dowling of the University of Regensburg, Germany and Carlos Zorrinho, Portuguese coordinator of the Lisbon Strategy and the Technological Plan. The following organizations supported the conference through financial or other contributions and we would like to thank them for their engagement:

Small Firms as Innovators: From Innovation to Sustainable Growth provides a rich empirical analysis of innovation in the context of small business. The book first introduces the general innovation patterns present in small firms. It then progresses to demonstrate how these firms create and strengthen their innovation capacity, how they transform this capacity into real-world innovations and how these innovations are exploited for creating superior competitiveness that can be transforemed into sustainable growth. To conclude, this book offers both theoretical and empirical insights for measuring and managing innovation performance in small firms.

This book explores how government policy can boost innovation by improving the environment for entrepreneurship and small firm development and increasing the innovative capacities of enterprises.

This book focuses on the process of commercialisation and innovation management in small firms. Although commercialisation and new product development (NPD) has been covered quite extensively, relatively little attention has been given to how small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) engage with these issues. The book explores this topic in depth, taking a close look at the reasons why decisions are made and mapping this behaviour against established theories and “best practice” models of NPD and commercialisation. The book uses case studies to analyse the relationship between entrepreneurial decision- making and commercialisation, and investigates how and why NPD and commercialisation decisions are made, which offers valuable insights from both a theoretical and applied perspective.

These proceedings represent the work of researchers participating in the 6th International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ICIE 2018) which is being co-hosted by Georgetown University and George Washington University and is being held at The University of the District of Columbia (UDC) on 5-6 March 2018.