Il cambiamento tecnologico e le capacit? imprenditoriali: il caso del vetro acidato

Technology change and entrepreneurial capabilities: evidence from etched glass industry - The aim of the paper is to investigate how a given entrepreneurial firm can substitute the traditional innovation resources (R&D investment, patenting competences and specialized human capital) and what kind of different resources can be deployed in order to achieve a technology change. To point out the role of these particular resources we introduce the concept of dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities, and distinguish it from substantive entrepreneurial capabilities, two concepts which shall underpin our findings. We chose as research setting the Italian glass industry since it has always had a prominent role in defining new technological dominant design for the whole worldwide glass industry. This paper presents a longitudinal study carried out in the Italian etched glass industry. We observed a small Italian firm, Vetromed, for a 7-year period after its decision to implement technology change. Our findings suggest that Vetromed innovated its technology by developing and integrating three dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities, defined as higher order abilities, namely: distributed entrepreneurial insights; entrepreneurial heuristics; entrepreneurial flexibility. Keywords: dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities, substantive capabilities, technology change Parole chiave: capacit? dinamiche imprenditoriali, capacit? imprenditoriali parziali, cambiamento tecnologico Jel Classification: O30 - O32 - O55