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The paper provides some empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the “open innovation” model in the life science cluster of Emilia Romagna (a region of Italy), comparing the network of R&D collaborative activities in public research organizations (PROs) and the network linked to R&D collaborative activities in private firms. By presenting the main results of a field research in the life science sector in Emilia Romagna, we are contributing to the recent debate focused on the crises of the old “closed innovation” model and the rise of the “open innovation” model. Our survey consists of both primary data deriving from face-to-face interviews with researchers and entrepreneurs, and secondary data extracted from the Internet, the PubMed database, and from the European Patent Office. Our work is based on the analysis of a representative sample of 30 research groups in PROs, 2173 scientific articles published by the interviewed scientists, and a representative sample of 78 private firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the changes that are emerging in the Italian urban and territorial policies mainly through the discussion of the relationship between the principles of polycentricity and networking affirmed by the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) and, in general, by the European official documents on spatial planning, and the role of polycentrism and networking in Italian praxis. The article is organized as follow. The first section presents the general framework of the concept of polycentrism and its relevance for the European Union (EU) policies. The second, third and fourth sections briefly describe Italian territorial organization and spatial policies, and illustrate some operational examples of the application of the network model. The fifth section presents the empirical and political relevance of the concepts of network and polycentrism. Finally, in the conclusion, the use of the network proposed by the European official documents on spatial planning and the difference between different meanings of this concept are discussed (from field of interurban relations to local mechanisms of collective action). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]