Usually technological innovation studies are centered in the analysis of R&D expenditures. Broad theoretical and empirical research exists on firm and industry characteristics most conductive to R&D expenditures. This paper examines the influence that R&D activities has on the generation of innovations by the Spanish industrial companies. The analysis extends the relationship of complementarity among different innovation sources that are broadly referenced in the literature: in-house R&D, external know-how (outsourcing and licenses), as well as cooperative research programs. The results indicate that technological sources of innovation stimulate and reinforce one to each other significantly, but the most frequent strategy implemented by the Spanish companies consists on supplementing the external R&D activities with internal R&D and the R&D with tecnological cooperation. Besides companies that emphasize innovation using different sources increases the probability of generating new products and processes, and this probability grows with the number of sources used.

The innovation audits are tools oriented to gain evidence on the corporate behaviour towards different issues concerning innovation. Based on one innovation audit carried out over a sample of Valencian firms pertaining to the Lighting industry, this paper provides a new methodology to measuring innovation performance. The methodology suggests a twofold aggregation. First, the original variables are summarized into a series of indicators, to further aggregate them in a consistent way in order to obtain three macro-indicators: the innovation strategy, the innovation results or impact and the inclination to collaborate in technological fields with other agents.

This paper shows a review of the main theoretical proposals concerning knowledge creation and organizational learning. From it, the foundations to the raising of a broad descriptive theoretical approach to this phenomenon are taken out. Along the last years, this field has demonstrated to have an extraordinary relevance for business management.

Lacking of long-term finance is a usual restriction for business innovative ideas. This paper develops the Participative Credit characteristics, as a complementary financial tool to risk capital in the finance of innovative SMEs

The green paper "Towards an European Strategy of Security of Energy Supply", and the white paper "The 2010 European Transport Policy: the Moment of Truth" are the bases for the European Transport and Energy Policies. This paper shows the guidelines of Civitas II (clean urban transport) and Concerto (renewable energies) Initiatives.

The literature about strategy and firm's life cycle is sparse. But, in daily businness, firms must cope with those variables. This research analyzes the determination of the strategy by the firm's life cycle. Performance will be improved If the firm fits its strategy to the moment within the life cycle.