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Sustainable Local Development and Smart Specialisation Strategies: Recent Developments in Agri-food Research and Innovation Partnerships in Puglia, Italy

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Abstract

This paper investigates how agri-food research and innovation (R&I) activity may interact with sustainable local development processes. The focus is on smart specialisation strategies and partnerships between agri-food business and research organisations, established under the open innovation paradigm. An exploratory study is carried out on recent (2010–19) agri-food R&I activity in Puglia (Italy), covering both projects and patents carried out by 47 research centres (affiliated to any of 11 research institutions) and 40 agri-food enterprises. Beside project data analysis based on categorisation, the methodology applied social network analysis to partnerships. Findings point to Sustainable Manufacturing and Human and Environmental Health being the prevalent target areas of innovation activity, thus resulting in some form of sustainable agricultural intensification, with a bias towards Industrial Biotechnology, Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. Open innovation approaches seem to be still phasing in, and the innovation potential of agri-food enterprises appears to be largely untapped. Future research may address the friction between industry-driven smart specialisation strategies and place-based innovation patterns that harness the intangible potential of social and relational capital.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://ec.europa.eu/eip/agriculture/en.

  2. 2.

    Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Social Roots programme: www.socialroots.eu.

  3. 3.

    Adopted on 1 August 2014 by means of Resolution n. 1732 of the Regional Council of Puglia, concerning “Strategia regionale per la Specializzazione intelligente ‐ approvazione dei documenti strategici ‘SmartPuglia 2020’ e ‘Agenda Digitale Puglia2020.’”

  4. 4.

    Commissioned by the regional government and carried out by the then National Institute for Agricultural Economics (INEA), now merged into the CREA-Council for research in agriculture and the analysis of agrarian economics.

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Acknowledgements

The authors declare that the contents of the paper are based on data and information collected within the “Innovative Networks for the Agrifood Sector-Innonets” Project (http://interreginnonets.eu), co-funded by European Union, European Regional Development Funds (E.R.D.F.) and by National Funds of Greece and Italy, in the framework of the Interreg V-A Greece –Italy Programme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polytechnic University of Bari, 70126, Bari, Italy

    Manuela Persia, Pasquale Balena, Alessandro Bonifazi, Maria Immacolata Marzulli, Antonio Orlando & Carmelo M. Torre

Authors
  1. Manuela Persia
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  2. Pasquale Balena
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  3. Alessandro Bonifazi
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  4. Maria Immacolata Marzulli
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  5. Antonio Orlando
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  6. Carmelo M. Torre
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alessandro Bonifazi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

    Osvaldo Gervasi

  2. University of Basilicata, Potenza, Potenza, Italy

    Beniamino Murgante

  3. Chair- Center of ICT/ICE, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria

    Sanjay Misra

  4. University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Chiara Garau

  5. University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Ivan Blečić

  6. Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    David Taniar

  7. Department of Information Science, Kyushu Sangyo University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Bernady O. Apduhan

  8. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Ana Maria A. C. Rocha

  9. Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Eufemia Tarantino

  10. Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Maria Torre

  11. Department of Neurology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

    Yeliz Karaca

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Persia, M., Balena, P., Bonifazi, A., Marzulli, M.I., Orlando, A., Torre, C.M. (2020). Sustainable Local Development and Smart Specialisation Strategies: Recent Developments in Agri-food Research and Innovation Partnerships in Puglia, Italy. In: Gervasi, O., et al. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2020. ICCSA 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12253. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58814-4_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58814-4_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58813-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-58814-4

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