ABSTRACT
The effects it can produce in terms of creative destruction and the ability to profoundly redefine the rules of competition for firms and customers are undoubtedly significant for even radically renewing ways of creating “value innovation”. The meaning of ‘innovation’ assumed in this study concerns research and development activities, especially production, focusing on new product development. Product innovation is linked to process innovation when the manufacturing and designing processes trigger breakthrough product innovation in which the use of innovative materials may also be a contributing factor. The environmental factors are the following: the uncertainty within which the transaction takes place among the economic actors involved; the frequency of the transactions or interactions among the actors; the investments in specific assets made by the actors involved in the transaction; the information asymmetries among the actors involved in the transaction, and the number of actors involved in the transaction.
