Recent technological advancements have induced significant changes in the whole society, and thus in workplaces and lifestyles. A drastic reduction in physical activity has been documented by recent scientific investigations, with consequences on human postural attitudes. It is a fact that, in any given moment of the life, human body has a “posture” can be static (resting) or dynamic (walking). Moreover, when people assume poor postures during the day, their body become more susceptible to injuries (Aartun, 2014). Recent epidemiological data stated that back pain starts early in life and that prevalence rates increased rapidly during adolescence, reaching adult levels around the age of 18 (Jeffries, 2013). Furthermore, several authors considered long retained erroneous positions as a possible cause of postural diseases which do contribute, in their opinion, to the development of pathological forms (Shalavina, 2013). With this evidence, prevention should have a central role in order to avoid damage and pain in day-to-day life (Cardon, 2004; Calvo-Munoz, 2012), but it is poorly practiced in the majority of countries, even in the Western world. This paper analyses through a holistic approach the effects of knowledge translation (Simeone et al, 2017) adopting new technologies in healthcare system and in particular exploring how the interaction among health complex system’s stakeholders in open innovation processes can influence the co-creation value in health lifestyle process. A pilot project has been carried on with the involvement of 432 people in Apulia Region, including the management of residence for elderly people, physicals, elderly patients and their families and medical professionals. The study analysed previous database on the use of technologies in health care organizations and it brings to light the fact that chronic populations is growing, so the necessity to ward diagnosis of chronic diseases became an important aspect to reduce the costs in the Healthcare assistance.

Knowledge translation activated by knowledge-intensive organizations is supported by several factors among which intangibles assets. This paper aims at analysing knowledge translation and organisational performance in the football industry, discovering both the role of professional football players’ skills transfer and determinants helping to achieve positive performance at organizational level. The research question is answered through a quantitative method using both the multiple regression analysis and the network analysis. This research investigates the performance of the professional football players before and after the transfer process from a club (source organization) to another club (recipient organization) in order to analyse the intra-organizations dynamics. We try to understand which factors are helping knowledge and specialist knowledge to be transferred and to contribute to the successful run of organisations in the football industry. We show the need for the coexistence of variables’ combinations to achieve the transferability of professional football players’ capabilities and performance. The results of this paper are for academic community, practitioners and policy makers as theoretical and practical advances.

In the shift toward Servitization, the adoption of a Product Service System is a key element in ensuring competitiveness of firms. Nevertheless, an increasing attention must be put on Product Service Systems design, especially on the design of product and service components, together with the effective design of their interaction as a system. The aim of this study is deepening the interrelationships between the adoption of Open Innovation practices and product-service design. The research involves a stratified sample of 9 companies adopting different categories and degrees of Product Service Systems. The research protocol was built in order to investigate the adoption of Open Innovation practices distinguished in inbound, outbound and coupled practices, with the aim of understanding if there are particular (set of) practices adopted within contexts characterized by different degrees of product-service design relevance. Analysis of results allowed to formulate three different theoretical propositions, linking the relevance and characteristics of Open Innovation practices to certain context of Product Service System adoption.

The purpose of our study is to examine the impact of reverse knowledge transfer from foreign subsidiaries to parent companies on the latter’s R&D performance, based on a questionnaire survey of Japanese companies. Based on intensive review of existing studies on global R&D and reverse knowledge transfer, we try to advance the current literature by examining issues that have been unaddressed: what are the type of knowledge and mechanism of knowledge transfer from subsidiaries to parents? In particular, we focus on the transfer of “tacit knowledge” as well as “unintended” transfer and investigate their impacts on the parents’ R&D activities and related performance. To pursue the purpose, we conducted a questionnaire survey of more than 3,000 Japanese MNCs with overseas subsidiaries. The result showed the following points. First, concerning the type of knowledge, the transfer of tacit technological knowledge as well as market-related knowledge has a significant positive impact on the parents’ R&D performance. Second, regarding the pattern of reverse knowledge transfer, unintended knowledge transfer has a positive effect on the parents’ R&D performance to a certain point before turning negative. In other words, there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between unintended reverse knowledge transfer and R&D performance of the parent companies.

The extant literature has often concluded that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are confronted with the lack of various resources (ranging from the tangible to the intangibles ones), a fact which determines them to act proactively and acquire the needed assets via different forms of collaboration with their counterparts. In this vein, the creation or affiliation to strategic networks have emerged as a fruitful path towards knowledge sharing as a reaction to fierce competition and with a view to enhance their competitiveness and renewal capacities, more specifically, their innovative performance. Starting from these premises, the current endeavour aims to advance some theoretical propositions depicting managers’ multifaceted communication and interaction relationships with their prospective or extant partners in an endeavour to share relevant knowledge. By addressing varied forms and channels for knowledge sharing, the paper intends to assemble a coherent and comprehensive puzzle, theoretically positing the influence of a multifold relational design on SMEs innovative performance. Thus, it paves the way for a better understanding of the state of the field and avails new empirical research directions.

Trade fairs, conferences and congresses serve to exchange expertise and knowledge. Often the existing potential cannot be used despite high concentration of knowledge carriers or is subject to barriers in the communication. This paper presents a proven design of an open workshop, which offers the possibility to involve the participants of such events for an interdisciplinary exchange, up to the targeted scientific, social or economic problem solving. The design of the workshop will involve participants being led by a “step-by-step guide (“Workshop Tourguide”). By setting the framework and the specific request for individual ideas, the first step is to create an “Idea Market” that will be made visible to everyone. In a development loop, the ideas are verified and developed within the knowledge ecosystem in order to continue their work in groups. Through the process of making all ideas visible and accessible at all times, ideas are effectively enhanced in their quality. In the final step, the ideas in teams are worked out with the help of the “Proposal Design Canvas” and recorded for further development. As it has been shown, by applying this design, empirical barriers to knowledge exchange and communication can be resolved in order to work cooperatively on solution proposals. The workshop design can be applied to dynamic and fluctuating events such as trade fairs, conferences and congresses in order to interrogate bundled knowledge, bring it together in a targeted manner and further develop it through grinding processes. The “Workshop Tourguide” serves as an adaptable template that can be used for all creative solution finding.

In the face of the dramatic shrinking of public and private funding, the cultural and creative sector is increasingly relying on crowdfunding around the world. This is especially true for the crowdfunding models of project-based donations and rewards (RC/DC), rather than longer-term equity and lending models. Yet international cultural and creative crowdfunding (CCCF) remains a fragmented and below-potential market, where a high number of diverse platforms operate at national or international level in a highly specialized manner, sometimes also with matching public funding. The reasons for the untapped potential of CCCF include a lack of transparency and capacity (of operators’ financial practices) and of trust, coupled with quite differently binding (or favouring) national fiscal regulatory frameworks. This paper focuses on regulation by critically comparing and discussing the main features of the two major frameworks for CCCF activity, namely the USA and the EU. We begin by analysing the RC/DC development in both regions. This analysis emphasizes the legal and regulatory situations in both areas, and their possible impacts on CCFF operators. This review of the regulatory circumstances illustrates the current situation for national (and regional) policy surrounding RC/DC in contrast to other pre-sale or charitable fundraising revenues. In the final section, we outline the major areas over which regulatory action might be expected, including taxation and matching (subsidies), consumer and investor protection, and information provision. In most of these areas, public policy specific to CCCF is relatively under-developed. For each of these areas, we discuss critical design features for policy and, correspondingly, identify how efficiency and equity might be affected by policy. We conclude by recommending key policy priorities and suggesting directions for future research in this emerging arena.

Crowdfunding has recently emerged as a buzzword in the cultural and creative sector, mainly indicated as an alternative to the decrease of public funding (Bonet and Donato, 2011; Bertacchini et al. 2011). However, this issue is still not investigated in specific fields such as the cultural heritage sector that is yet reluctant to implementing crowdfunding campaign. This paper aims at filling this research gap by focusing on exploring the perception of crowdfunding in cultural heritage institutions by means of an empirical investigation of a relevant sample of organizations in France. The results of the research shed light on the uses and values of crowdfunding in this specific context, paving the way for future comparative research in a broader geographical areas.

The “knowledge ecosystem” is a fascinating metaphor, which allows us to effectively depict the exchange of information and ideas between the knots of a more or less defined network of entities having similar aims and operating in the same environmental context. The ecosystem metaphor has been variously argued to be fitting with the interplay that happens between different academic domains, which reciprocally share conceptual frameworks, empirical tools, and theoretical insights to push forward our knowledge about timely scientific issues. However, there is the risk that – far from bringing toward the establishment of a knowledge ecosystem – the exchange of information and ideas between different scientific disciplines triggers a process of knowledge contamination, which may produce unexpected drawbacks. In fact, knowledge contamination implies a sort of alteration of scientific domains which are more likely to draw research tools and approaches from other disciplines. Adopting an exploratory slant, this paper tries to investigate the interplay between management and two scientific domains which show an increasing influence on management studies, namely philosophy and neuroscience. A descriptive bibliometric approach was designed to shed light on the exchange of knowledge between management and these two disciplines. On the whole, the analysis concerned 199 scientific articles, 152 about the management-philosophy interplay and 47 about the neuroscience-management interplay. In this preliminary step of the research, the attention was focussed on the references made and the citations get by these items. Sticking to the exploratory nature of this research, we did not have research hypothesis guiding our excursion in the fields of knowledge ecosystem and knowledge contamination. Rather, we developed two assumptions, which steered our study. Specifically, it was thought that if the number of referenced articles belonging to the philosophy and neuroscience fields was equal or lower than the number of citing articles belonging to these two areas, then a knowledge ecosystem could be supposed to exist; alternatively, if the number of referenced articles belonging to the fields of philosophy and neuroscience was higher than the number of citing articles ascribable to these two areas, a knowledge contamination was expected to occur. The research findings supported the latter assumption, suggesting that management studies may be at risk of contamination from other disciplines. Further conceptual and empirical developments are required to fully disentangle the “knowledge contamination” issue in management studies and to identify the missing steps to the establishment of a knowledge ecosystem between management and related scientific disciplines.

The lack of appropriate knowledge management practices for networks has consistently been found to be the most critical failure factor of inter-organisational collaboration. Identifying the typical barriers in network-level knowledge sharing is essential for developing expedient knowledge management practices for networks. This paper contributes to the issue by examining what kind of knowledge management practices to overcome network level knowledge sharing barriers are presented in literature. The study applies literature review that is carried out with a scholarly literature-exploration tool powered by artificial intelligence. The results of the literature review reveal that the number of articles that especially address knowledge management practices to overcome network level knowledge barriers is surprisingly limited. Many of the articles brought up knowledge sharing as the key activity in networks’ success, but left the question of how to reduce the knowledge barriers, and thus promote knowledge sharing in practice, unanswered. The paper concludes that there is a lack of articles that report research, developing or designing functional knowledge management practices that enable effective knowledge sharing on a network level. This underlines the existence of a research gap and the need for especially empirical research on the issue.

The general objective of this research is to identify and argue which are the main strategies that a university can apply in order to develop an appropriate entrepreneurial ecosystem mainly throughout managing the knowledge processes, knowledge resources and knowledge actors. Firstly, the content of the qualitative analysis serves the purpose of designing the framework about the role a university can play for contributing to local economic and social growth. Thus we are mapping and arguing the essential components and processes for serving the role of a university in developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem. In this sense we are approaching concepts like: strategic knowledge processes, the components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the role the university can play in developing the mechanism of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Quantitative research is based on a survey using questionnaires filled in by students enrolled in business administration area programs and special programs offered to all those interested in becoming entrepreneurs. There were registered a number of 202 valid questionnaires and then we processed them by using the specialized software package SPSS v.25. The quantitative analysis offers the possibility of identifying the main factors which influence the students entrepreneurial behaviour. By processing the data throughout Principal Component Analysis (PCA) we identified a set of 6 factors which are the most powerful in predicting the students success as future entrepreneurs. In the discussion section we will argue the significance of each factor. Combining these results with the university’s resources (infrastructure, endowments, technology, human capital, intellectual capital, and knowledge) we concluded to a couple of strategies that universities might implement in order to develop an entrepreneurial ecosystem, starting with the perfecting of their main actors, which are the students.

Knowledge is considered one of the most important competitive resources of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). In order to be effective, knowledge management depends in a large degree on the employees, both on those holding managerial positions, and on regular staff. Aiming to identify patterns of knowledge management (KM) approach in Romanian SMEs and their connection with company’s human resource, the study applies an online survey with 108 SMEs from Romania. The study finds out that the majority of SMEs implemented KM practices derived from the problem-solving approaches of daily challenges and the knowledge handling procedures for employees. Also, the results indicate that 86,1% of the participants perceive knowledge and its management as valuable or highly valuable for their organization, highlighting a significant interest of SMEs in implementing more structured KM procedures and flows. Still, KM is a vague concept for and handled intuitively by most Romanian SMEs. These aspects hold back KM implementation, together with the lack of KM specialists and the need for additional human resources involved in KM. Overall, the study offers insights into the actual KM approaches adopted by Romanian SMEs, emphasizing the need of a better promotion among managers and practitioners of the conceptual and practical aspects related to knowledge management.

Industrial clusters are characterized by an intense actors interacting with the effect of sharing existing knowledge and creating new one. In this environment knowledge unevenly flows across organizational boundaries and a significant part is exchanged via informal channels. Despite some scholars argued that only general and low-value information can be shared through this kind of channels (Breschi & Lissoni, 2001), empirical research show that specific and critical knowledge diffuses through informal networks as well (Dahl & Pedersen, 2004). Indeed, informal ties between firms represent the fertile ground for the so-called ‘information trade’, according to which firms must first give useful information in order to obtain it (Rogers, 1982). Von Hipple (1987) considers informal information trade between firms as an important form of cooperative R&D, likely to occur in industries where proprietary knowledge is critical for firms’ success. Although such knowledge spillovers are recognized to be not a critical factor for firms’ willingness to cluster (Krugman, 1991), they are an important form of knowledge transfer and their existence within clusters is undoubtedly linked to the one of informal networks. Scholars argue that formal ties among firms are important in explaining innovation exactly because they enable access to informal spillovers within a regional ecology (Owen-Smith & Powell, 2004, p. 9). This argument is motivated by the fact that a large portion of the knowledge exchanged across organizational borders is tacit in nature, which is informally transmitted by face-to-face interaction (Giuliani, 2010). It descends that informal inter-organizational networks represent interesting subjects of study for their pivotal role as conduits for information and knowledge diffusion. Although several studies recognize the importance of informal networks for the dissemination of knowledge, they mostly fail in assessing the extent to which inter-organizational informal ties represent conduits of work-related knowledge. The data belongs to an original dataset that we have built over time since the establishment of the ITC Pole of Abruzzo Region. First results highlight that a considerable part of informal ties represents conduits of work-related knowledge. The paper try to contribute to the literature by emphasizing the importance of informal inter-organizational networks; when studying industrial cluster as knowledge ecosystems, informal ties among cluster actors do exist and a considerable part of those are exclusively devoted to share work-related knowledge.

Nowadays, Logistics has become one of the most strategic areas for organizational performance, becoming progressively more and more challenging with the birth of new regulations, innovative technologies, and new customer demands, particularly related to the spreading of Industry 4.0 and the rise of new sustainability issues. The numerous changes that have been occurring in the sector are making it a priority for educational institutions to provide students and workers with high-quality competences and skills that businesses require in order to keep pace with the market. This paper presents some findings and perspectives from a European research project called “FRAMELOG, European Framework for ‘Knowledge Triangle’ in the Logistics Sector”, which is focused on the knowledge dynamics of the so-called Knowledge Triangle (hereafter, KT). The KT is considered a suitable framework for defining a macro knowledge ecosystem which links educational organizations, research institutions, and for-profit entities with the common scope of creating high-quality competences. In this macro perspective, we first performed a multiple case study analysis at European level to identify some effective methods and tools used to implement dynamic knowledge-creating connections among cross-sectorial key organizations in the logistics area. Subsequently, following a literary review and focus group activities, we identified a panel of indicators that can be used to assess and guide the building of collaboration between organizations, according to the Deming Cicle. In addition, some “Methods”, “Tools and Actions” and “Guidelines” were created to help organizations working in the KT ecosystem to effectively set up those steps needed to increase collaboration within it. From the early findings of the FRAMELOG Project, it appears that conjoint knowledge-creating dynamics, such as the sharing of good practices, the use of different guidelines and the application of stakeholder engagement techniques, can contribute to stimulating proactive relationships between organizations, in the common objective of creating high-level skills on logistic topics and for the overall logistics sector. Reducing the distance between organizations working in the fields of education, research, and business can enable the implementation of virtuous spirals of knowledge creation in all three areas, leading to the formation of an effective knowledge ecosystem for the logistics area; by extension, this can also foster an increase in the productivity of the whole industry and greater well-being at regional, national, and European levels.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the complexity of designing knowledge ecosystems for business education based on the theory of knowledge fields and knowledge dynamics. That means to change the paradigm of university education based on the traditional rigid curriculum into a new paradigm based on adequate knowledge ecosystems. The new paradigm reflects the needs of developing a personal learning environment in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. Business education should adapt its design to the complexity of the real business environment dynamics and to the need of strategic thinking. The present paper integrates results from a qualitative and a quantitative research performed in the period January-March 2019. Qualitative research is based on the critical analysis of literature dedicated to business education and on the theory of knowledge fields and knowledge dynamics. The theory assumes that knowledge can be understood as a spectrum composed of rational, emotional and spiritual knowledge fields which interact continuously. Each form of knowledge can be transformed in any other form of knowledge, as energy forms in thermodynamics. Thus, business education can integrate all of these forms of knowledge and develop a deeper understanding of the complexity of the real world. Quantitative research is based on a survey done with students enrolled in business administration program. We got 269 valid questionnaires and then we processed them by using the specialized software package SPSS. The knowledge ecosystem is conceived as a learning environment where students can benefit both of the university knowledge transfer and mind developing processes, and of internship programs in some companies which provide direct business experience for them. The design of the knowledge ecosystem considers also some other types of business activities like business clubs, entrepreneurship incubators, workshops and leadership summer schools. Strategic thinking integrates all these forms of knowledge and creates a support for long term decision-making.

Customer value is a key element for any organization, especially to give direction to different facets of an industrial organizations. By developing Knowledge Management and knowledge-sharing practices, the value creation potential could be improved in organizations. However, in practice there are several barriers that hinder effective knowledge sharing. In this paper focus is set on the knowledge-sharing barriers typology synthesized by Riege (2001), which are then applied in an exploratory case study of an industrial organization in Finland. Based on Riege’s typology, the major knowledge-sharing barriers are identified in the case organization, and their role in hindering work performance and value creation is further analysed. Finally, development actions are proposed based on the empirical findings. Our findings in this study argue that effective knowledge-sharing practices among employees is a key enabler for successful value creation in an industrial organization.

In the modern society organization’s ability to manage its information and knowledge resources is critical. The purpose of this study is to design and test a profiling model for information and knowledge management, which can be used both for frequent monitoring for trend analysis and in-depth analysis of factors supporting contemporary knowledge and information management practices of the organization. The proposed model combines the aspects of knowledge-based management and information management and it is developed by following design theory principles. The model is designed for public sector, especially for those organizations, which purchase and are responsible for the provision of public services. These organizations are in a critical role in developing and aligning information and knowledge management practices of regional ecosystems. They also serve as employer for great number of knowledge workers regionally. It can be argued that this kind of maturity model can also support the performance of knowledge workers operating in the public sector as it offers a route towards the development of more functional information and knowledge management practices within and across the public organisations.

We have in this paper looked into what forms the knowledge worker in the future both on a corporate level and a societal level. We have interviewed researchers working with these issues in the Swedish telecommunication company Telia and the Norwegian telecommunication company Telenor. These are both companies making their living of understanding the future both on a corporate level and a societal level. We have concluded that robotics and AI will be more advanced, but neither the way we are working nor the way we are organizing work will change much in the years to come. The processing of information will be an even more critical work task either in itself or integrated into every work task. Every knowledge worker will have to try to see and think through what will be happening today and tomorrow. The past, present, and future will merge into a working reality. There will be dynamic scenarios together with the corporate, team and individual networks. Those grasping and understanding the situations working in professional and organizational networks will be the winners. They will be the bottom-up needed for corporate success still working in a top-down hierarchy delivering products and services through a global logistics. We have found that the one key for any organization in the future will be an analytical eye-toward-the-future where anything happening is analyzed and reported to the top management and coordinated into future deliveries. The key employees will be those implementing AI-based products and services on demand to advances customers. They will have a bottom-up understanding that is not needed in the eye-towards-the-future system and the top management system. The problematic issue for future work is the need for bottom-up understanding, sideways understanding and senior management based strategy and organizational coordination where project teams are coordinated working in collaboration. The main finding is the slow change in Telia and Telenor towards a real knowledge worker using more of his working time to significant business issues. We will get a framework where a professional knowledge worker is using his qualifications or what he is educated for and where his professional experiences and attitudes are used in a positive way for delivering excellent results. The framework for the future will be ordinary people achieving extraordinary results in teams owing to their education, experiences, and attitudes. According to Telia and Telenor, we will take the environmental issues much more seriously, and large corporation together with the dominating economic powers will make the necessary starting steps to save the world. The saving of the earth represents a concentration of both corporate and national power. Neither Telenor nor Telia plan to reduce the number of employees, but will deliver higher profits and much higher sales per employee. Neither Telia nor Telenor look upon the AI technology as a threat only as many possibilities. This study concludes that there will be many small positive corporate and societal steps for each year towards 2030 improving the way we are living and working together with environmental improvements. The reconstruction of the middle class is also emerging — neither a perfect nor imperfect world.

The improvement of knowledge worker performance with reference to the workload is a great challenge to most economies and their firms. In many knowledge-intensive organizations, the key cost component is the worker’s worktime. Recent research has demonstrated that a worker’s dual temporal experience gives rise to an unconditional Cognitive Time Distortion (CTD), understood as the relation between perceived time and physical time, for a given event. By reducing and controlling for CTD significant knowledge worker performance improvement can be achieved. We have, however, little knowledge about how to decrease the knowledge worker’s level of CTD while doing knowledge work. In this study, we test different feedback techniques in a laboratory experiment aiming at influencing and controlling the CTD of individuals. The context of the experiment is worker performance feedback, with regard to worker’s self-assessment of worktime for a given work conducted. One group (n=32) receives performance feedback contenting monetary reward information only, whereas a second group (n=31) receives performance feedback containing only information on the level of worker’s CTD. The results show that the provision of feedback of CTD produces different self-assessments of worktime, as compared to the group that only received monetary-related feedback. The group with feedback information about the level of CTD manifests a significantly lower variance of CTD in their time assessment than did the group that received monetary reward information only. These results suggest profound implications for the performance feedback practices for knowledge workers performance.

The issue of urban waste has become a priority from a social and environmental point of view and in literature there are various papers studying technological and economic solutions to overcome these problems. For this reason, important strategic choices are needed, with the goal to increase the recovering of waste separate collection (to reduce waste landfilled) and to increase energy recovery from waste value chain. The aim of the paper has been to assess the environmental impacts of a pilot plant from RDF (refused derived fuels) to syngas, through the LCA methodology to create innovative network of sustainable business closing the loop in terms of circular economy. Syngas is a gas obtained from a pyro gasification process, which converts carbonaceous material into simpler molecules of CO, CO2, hydrogen and methane (syngas) to be reused to feed small engines or to produce other chemical intermediates. The case study presented, offers the possibility to evaluate an alternative option to reduce waste landfilled, creating in the same time new business and a new model of “share” in knowledge ecosystem perspective. Considering the circular economy aspect, the use of RDF to produce syngas, can represent a goal to be pursued. The environmental analysis shows that a small plant to produce syngas, if well managed, can represents an important choice for the environmental performance. On the basis of data and considering that a percentage of 20-30% has lost in the Biological and Mechanical Treatment, in Puglia there is potential RDF-end of waste in the range of 374 – 428 millions of kilograms per year. Hence, according to the provincial areas of Apulia, almost six plants would be implemented, creating replicable models with the final aim to “quickly” re-use waste and re-invent industry.