Vol. 1 No. 1 (2023): CRSL Innovation Journal

An introduction to a new journal

Innovation and technological transfer may delineate and represent – better than other economic processes - the recent digital revolution in the industrial sector, evolving from the comprehensive networking and automation of all the productive areas. At the same time, ensuring a safe working environment is still an underestimated problem, in many productive sectors, despite economic globalization and the inherent change in local job markets, progressively going automation and flexible skills. With these perspective in mind, we announce the launch of the first issue of the CRSL Innovation Journal.

Going toward excellence in innovative scientific and technological contents, CRSL Innovation Journal finds its novelty in a sort of holistic nature of the contributions hosted within, covering a vast ensemble of studies, from the engineering sciences, to the right-economic systems to support academic and corporate R&D, analyzing original processes of change from the local scale to the European level and the international networks. The challenge of this editorial project is to support scientists, policy makers, practitioners and active citizens with theoretical frameworks and practical tools designed to encourage a good management of workplaces, assuring economic competitiveness and environmental sustainability. Having clearly in mind the issues of sustainability, resilience, productivity and efficiency, the Journal investigates the complex phenomenon of ‘innovation’ - technological, scientific, social and human - seen from the perspective of those who are at the forefront of this hegemonic concept.

In order to promote a current picture of the world of innovation, the first issue of CRSL Innovation Journal promotes a multipolar and interdisciplinary dialogue, able to 'connect the dots' of today’s innovation, in a time and a society that require attentive observation from far more than one point of view, gathering the thought of scientists and experts from different fields.

In the opening contribution to this first issue, Andrea Setti debates on innovation and technology, been recognized as boosters of growth in modern knowledge-based economies. This is the reason why several countries around the globe have focused their supporting activities on fostering innovation through intensive polices with the scope of facilitating the exchange of knowledge. The goal of many societies over the years is, in practice, to fill the gap with the United States and Japan which for several years have dominated the podium of the World’s most innovative economies. This study has demonstrated certain factors that limit the growth of science-based ecosystems through lacunas rooted from the other two pillars of the ‘triple helix’ network: namely universities and companies. We evidenced that small dimensions of companies, high fragmentation, lack of resources and lesser chances to grow, the absence of field leaders, academic restrictions and hurdles for technology transfer, as well as low risk seeking orientation of investors, are the primary reasons for the limited development and growth of the science-based industry.

By outlining the importance of academic networks, Isabella Querci, in the second contribution of CRSLaghi Innovation Journal, discusses on the fact that more and more people choose to became freelance workers, but in schools, as well as in universities there is a lack of information and practical competences for those who actually pursue this career. Querci presents the proposal for a European-funded project named “Digital Freelancing-Autonomous workforce innovation (DiFree), which features the collaboration of CRSLaghi and University of Tuscia, and is aimed at offering a huge number of practical skill development opportunities, such as training and mentoring, in order to help people to become more professional when they decide to start a freelance career.

In the third collective work of this issue, Rinaldi and coworkers deal with the notion of know-how, defined by EC Regulation No. 772/2004 of 27 April 2004 as a "patrimony of unpatented practical knowledge derived from experience and testing, a patrimony that is: i) secret, i.e. not generally known or accessible; ii) substantial, i.e. significant and useful for the production of contractual products; and iii) identified, i.e. described in a sufficiently comprehensive manner, such as to verify whether it meets the criteria of secrecy and substantiality". The aim of this article is to propose a formula with which to determine the presence of the parameters required to correctly define know-how, analysing the Case Study of Centro Ricerche e Studi dei Laghi. At the methodological level, the study proposes a series of parameters and variables identified both in the literature and from experimental development actions on a number of test companies. The results thus demonstrate the possibility of objectively measuring corporate know-how, thus defining an analysis model that can be transversally applied to the various production areas.

The forth contribution of this issue came from Colombo and coworkers, extensively debating on The Patent Box intended as an optional preferential taxation scheme for incomes derived from the use of certain specific categories of intangible assets. The current patent box regulations define four categories of eligible intangible assets: copyrighted software, patents granted or being granted, legally protectable designs and models, and know-how. This study provides an overview of know-how, as defined by Regulation (EU) No. 316/2014 of March 21, 2014, Directive (EU) 943/2016, Legislative Decree 63/2018, and the amended Article 98 ICC, and techniques for assessing the non-obviousness parameter thereof.