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Although there is a long-term decrease in the consumption of fruits and vegetables (hereafter F&V), fresh-cut products, because of their convenience, represent a valid alternative to counteract this negative trend. In fact, the fresh-cut sector is showing positive figures, and innovation in product quality and safety attributes, which are generally valued by consumers. Nonetheless, which product innovations will effectively take place in the coming years? Will they be accepted by consumers? Will they increase the probability of switching from fresh to fresh-cut F&V? Our study, with the help of on-field research, aims at analysing the trending attributes in the fresh-cut F&V industry, and evaluating their impact on segments of F&V consumers’ preferences in terms of attitude and willingness to pay. Therefore, we applied a latent class discrete choice model with an original dataset consisting of face-to-face interviews conducted across EU. Results of the study highlight the similarities in preferences of consumers across the EU countries and the relevance of shelf-life and food safety attributes in orienting choices.

The new shape of competition is pushing wine firms to invest into new technologies. Given the growing interests in this area, we provide evidence on the determinants of the adoption of the new technologies industry. On the basis of a survey on Italian companies, the main investments in innovations and their key drivers are investigated. We tested whether firm characteristics impact the adoption as well as absorptive capacity, networking and shared knowledge among firms and research institutions and demand factors. Drivers are explored throughout an econometric model. Results lead to policy implications that could be useful to develop supportive actions to innovation.

Support for technology clusters is an important element of innovation policy, with an increasing number of national and regional plans promoting Research and Development projects in collaborative networks. This promotes the need to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of these policies. Several methods and techniques have been proposed, but a standardised approach has not yet emerged. It is important to assess the role of non-economic effects and, in this paper, we propose a methodology, which uses a social network approach, to assess the social capital outcomes of a technology district policy. Building on social capital theory, we construct a set of indicators to account for structural, relational and cognitive components, as well as bonding, bridging and linking kinds. This approach is not costly, in terms of data and information collection and can be combined with other methods that measure policy performance via physical, as well as economic, outputs and impacts.

Firms’ collaboration with academic institutions expands their range of expertise and can support the development of business innovations in several industries. For technological as well as structural reasons, university–industry collaborations are especially important in the case of the food industry. This paper aims at assessing the drivers of knowledge transfer from academic departments to industry. We analyse the dynamics of private funding of university research activities and investigate the drivers of university knowledge transfer from food science university departments, identifying how they differ from drivers in other areas of science. The empirical investigation is based on the econometric analysis of financial data on the whole population of university departments in Italy. We provide some implications for policy, highlighting whether and how university food science departments differ from university departments engaged in other areas of science, and how their interactions with industry can be increased.

The development of bio-refineries has become a relevant topic in the EU's agenda. However, the promotion of a new industry in rural areas is typically hindered by the scarcity of human capital, lack of information, infrastructures, and competing interests. In this context, public support is unavoidable to assist promotion of this innovative sector. The various policy options reveal some strengths and drawbacks, posing the problem of finding the best trade-off to public decision makers. In this paper we aim at developing a methodology to support policy decision making within the biorefinery framework, with the purpose of determining a way to identify the most suitable policy option given the actual uncertainty in developing the bio-refinery industry in rural areas. The empirical experiment, based on a simulation of the enforcement of four identified policy instruments, highlights that, although subsidies and incentives to profitability of dedicated crops appear to have the greatest effects on the development of bio-refinery, the best performances are exhibited by technological innovation and information options.