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The paper investigates the emerging practice of social crowdfunding. It focuses on both the role played by crowdfunding platforms and the activities that these platforms perform in enhancing and facilitating the diffusion of social and cultural projects through donations. Crowdfunding platforms empower the financing of projects by soliciting small investments from a large base of potential backers over the Internet and creating a dynamic funding network. However, crowdfunding platforms should also create greater legitimacy for social enterprises by promoting early societal interaction and participation. To explore the context of social crowdfunding, the paper examines the case of the Italian social crowdfunding platform – Meridonare – by using both primary and secondary data sources. Findings reveal that, beyond acting as a standard crowdfunding platform, Meridonare eases interactions and relationships among different stakeholders. The emerging set of relationships gives rise to a Social Crowdfunding Business Ecosystem (SCBE), with the crowdfunding platform acting as a hub to enact knowledge sharing and service provision to a plethora of different actors. • SCF Platform supports proponents in the different phases of a crowdfunding campaign. • SCF Platform nurtures relationships contributing to the ecosystem health. • SCF Platform defines the social problem, generates social capital and educates partners. • SCBES effectiveness focuses on the capabilities of actors to mutually complement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract What different configurations of Business Model (BM) exist in an IoT platform that aims at developing smart cities? To address this research question, we build on BM literature and argue that BM configurations have general characteristics beyond the unique traits of individual firms. We empirically investigate 21 projects for smart cities that participate to a European funded Accelerator using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Our findings reveal the most frequent patters of association among value propositions and BM's building blocks. In so doing, we contribute to explain and analyze the diversity among cases as well as BM's causal complexity. Highlights • Smart cities' service providers may benefit of generalized upstream IoT technology platforms. • Not all Business Model configurations permit firms to benefit from smart cities' opportunities. • A coherence among Business Models' key resources, key activities and key partners is necessary. • Key resources are core in Business Models configurations of customized products and services. • Firms adopt many ways to standardize their products and services, but no consistent pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although patent assets have become increasingly valuable in recent years, companies are still facing rising patent litigation costs. Drawing on a large sample of European patents, we studied how companies fine-tuned the endogenous characteristics of their patents to pursue an optimal patent design. According to the study's findings, companies can adjust certain patent features to increase the value of their patents, but this increases the risk of patent infringement litigation. As a result, companies are frequently forced to choose between maximizing patent value and minimizing the risk of litigation. • Patent assets are of strategic importance to firms. • Litigation costs due to patent infringement are high. • Optimal patent design is studied as a means to maximize patent value and minimize risks of litigations. • We perform econometric analyses on the endogenous characteristics of European patents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]