This paper studies, simultaneously, the relationships between R&D investments, innovation, training investments, quality and firm performance at the firm level. It offers some empirical evidence on how innovation, training, quality affect firm profitability. The new feature we introduce is the link between training and quality. We build a five equations model including censored, dichotomous and...

1. OPEN INNOVATION Open innovation was defined by Henry Ches-broug, a professor at Harvard Business School, in 2003. He believes that in an open innovation model, companies should use internal and external strength to develop new products and to commercialize them (Chesbrough, 2005). Figure 1 shows the open innovation model. In the closed innovation model, the steps from new products developmen...

This paper examines the implications for research into the diffusion of innovations (DOI) arising from a growing body of literature in two related fields. The first area concerns the debate on the role of regional and national systems of innovation (NSI) in the innovation process. The second area deals with the argument that enterprises must move from a “closed innovation” to an “open innovatio...

In spite of the increasing concern on the role of technological change and innovation as a key factor of sustainability, environmental economics has paid little attention to the understanding of environmental innovation. Until recently, scholars working in environmental economics consider environmental innovation as induced by regulation. Within this perspective, one of the main research questi...