Purpose – This study aims to analyze planned behavior theory (PBT) of in the female segment of students to identify variables that influence the decision to acquire an intelligent telephone. Methodology – The study was applied to 384 students of the University of Guadalajara, performing statistical analysis using SPSS, and to determine the feasibility of the Cronbach’ s Alpha. The questionnaire was validated with Exploratory Factor Analysis with the factorization method and maximum likelihood method Rotation is using the Varimax. Bartlett’s Sphericity Test and Kaiser Meyer Olkin’s (KMO) Measure were performed. Structural equation model with EQS was chosen to test the reliability of planned behavior models and model values. The questionnaire is based on two previous studies; the first one was developed by Linan and Chen (2009) and adjusted with the second tool to contrast, by Cornelius, Gallani, Godin, Rodrigues, and Nadruz (2009). Originality/value – PBT, Ajzen (1985) defines intention in terms of trying to engage in a particular behavior in relation to the current behavior. Is that when trying to modify a behavior is experiencing another intention. (PBT), (Schifter and Ajzen, 1985) contains several variables that influence behavioral intention, and these are: attitude, subjective norm and perceived control. Practical implications – In Mexico there are no studies that have applied PBT, so that the results can be very valuable for the development of business strategies. Being able to identify factors that influence the final decision making, provides a tool for reducing both costs and effort and makes accurate decisions. A good application of the PBT favors business competitiveness.

Business Intelligence (BI) has the potential to disrupt the processes through which healthcare services are offered by healthcare agents. Despite this key role, most healthcare organisations fail in extending BI suites from the pilot niches in which these digital solutions are usually developed and tested to larger domains. In fact, healthcare practitioners lack comprehensive models suggesting the priorities to be followed in the progressive development of a BI solution. This paper aims to start filling these gaps by developing a model through which: (i) to measure and increase the maturity of BI solutions within healthcare organisations; (ii) enable extensive processes of benchmarking and continuous improvement. Purpose – To enable extensive processes of benchmarking and continuous improvement in healthcare organisations. Design/methodology/approach – In order to accomplish the paper’s goals we built upon a Clinical Inquiry Research, a well-defined collaborative form of research. Originality/value – we captured the relationships among the components of the BI solution (especially those among different development areas)—depicting the different interactions in terms of interdependencies and synergies to be leveraged for successfully extending BI solutions to larger domains. Practical implications – The development of the BI maturity model and the relative assessing questionnaire, which are specific for the healthcare industry.

Joint action and knowledge sharing are fundamental aspects of business model innovation (BMI) for businesses to meet the complex BMI agenda of today; for example, think about 12 independent businesses jointly innovating on the establishment of a new concept of a balanced energy plant project where the businesses have to work in symbioses from the very first moment and further 8 independent business collaborative innovation on the establishment of a new BMI incubator platform. Yet, cognitive science and best practice tools have had little to say on this topic because for many years perception, action, and cognition have been studied without taking their role in social interaction related to BMI seriously. However the establishment of a “room” for social BMI interaction is essential at the very first moment of the meeting between the involved participants – who often are different and unknown to each other. It lays the fundament for knowledge sharing and learning to the BMI project – and the ground for whether the BMI project will succeed and even be implemented. The paper aims to understand the cognitive mechanisms “at the very first moment of the BMI process” supporting participants’ ability and motivation to act together with each other in the BMI projects. The paper address knowledge sharing and learning in high risk and sensitive areas of BMI – where business open their core business, core BM and core competences – and expects trust. The paper provides 2 case studies in 2 different BM projects and BM ecosystems. The research methodology was case research carried out from 2007 to 2015. This paper puts in evidence different understandings related to cognitive mechanisms “at the very first moment of the BMI meeting” between business in BMI projects. The paper seeks to give more understanding of how to support BMI participants’ ability to act together with each other in BMI projects addressing the question How to increase and “speed up” the first moment motivation to achieve knowledge sharing in critical and risky BMI projects? There has not been much research on the cognitive processes and how to establish “room for BMI knowledge sharing” at the very first moment of complex and risky BMI project. This study extends recent stream of BMI research indicating that facilitation and the ability to establish a trusted and secure knowledge and learning sharing BMI platform at the very first moment may be a useful tool for managing BM risk and improving speed in BMI projects. Moving fast along the learning curve in the first moment seems to require some very special arrangement especially when BMI takes place in strategic critical areas. Although initial adoption of early involvement was intended to reduce costs – both in short and long term perspective, results indicated that early involvement serves to reduce perceptions of BMI risk at the businesses involved. The paper illustrates what is at stake and needed for business to exchange knowledge in BMI projects that are complex, are risky and that involves BM´s that are core and strategic to their business.

Purpose – What new empirical implications can emerge in organizational learning by adopting a multi-level co-evolutionary theoretical perspective? Management studies usually assume that business processes change primarily as a consequence of top management teams’ decisions. By integrating both micro- and macro- level evolution and incorporating multiple level of analysis, this paper aims at shedding lights on new empirical methods in business processes’ exploitation and knowledge transfer. In order to open business processes’ black box a shift from the conventional routine-as-entity view to the “practice” view of routines is required. The latter theoretical approach focuses on routines’ enactment and dynamics on a day-to-day basis providing an explanation on how processes are produced and reproduced over time. The practice view also implies that knowledge is not a static entity given the continuous interrelationship between and within the different levels of the organization. In particular the “habit-individual” represents our micro-level of analysis while the “routine-group” and “routine-organization” constitute our higher levels of investigation. Design/methodology/approach – To answer the research question the paper has been designed as a narrative case study. Assuming both the practice-based view and the multi-level co-evolution lenses, we applied an agent-based model to a real company operating in the service industry adopting a longitudinal analysis approach consisting exclusively of primary data. Originality/value – The methodological approach followed allows us to validate with a real case study the hypotheses and conjectures embedded in the computational model defined. Indeed while a number of scholars have developed conceptual models of business processes’ evolution, few of these attempted to validate their results using actual data from organizations. The difficulty relies to the choice of the variable used to depict organizational change and knowledge transfer. Routines’ variation while consistent with the entity view of firm evolution, provides only a partial interpretation of the underlying phenomenon. The longitudinal approach followed in this work, on the other hand, gives the opportunity to unpack the complexity behind emergence, development and extinction of business processes over time. Practical implications – Main results suggest that the degree of managerial control exerted, the feedback scheme applied and group interactions’ mechanisms are the main determinants behind business processes’ exploitation and knowledge reproduction.

Innovation is a key element of organisational knowledge creation and can be explained as a process in which the organisation creates new knowledge to specific business problems (Nonaka, 1994). Further publications discuss the linkages among big data, analytics, experiential learning connected with executive and managerial decision-making processes in academia and practice (Liebowitz, 2014). In light of this, the increasing importance of process complexity within organisations can be seen as an on-going challenge. This implicates new ways of company specific knowledge creation. Although knowledge creation is widely discussed within KM literature, relatively little attention has been paid to business process complexity linked with process knowledge, process innovation and ways to deal with it. Business process complexity impacts process costs, process quality and process effectiveness within organisations. Business process complexity interacts with employees’ individual and detailed business process knowledge. This leads to different areas of interdependencies: firstly, the flow of business process creation between organisational procedures and employees` knowledge, secondly, how to deal with business process complexity, and thirdly, how to link employees’ business process knowledge and business process complexity for its effective application. This study applies a mainly qualitative research approach. It uses interviews for analysing complexity, and measures complexity based on process data within the billing processes at Fraport AG. Aim is to demonstrate interdependencies among complexity, processes, knowledge creation and innovation. The findings reveal significant interdependencies among tacit and explicit knowledge creation, such as business process content, complexity increase and decrease effects, complexity drivers and business process descriptions. It shows, that the increasing growth of business products requests an all-embracing treatment of KM and business processes to achieve innovative goals and to handle with process complexity.

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze first the notion of creative business models in cultural organizations and then to set the scene to understand the state-of-the art and the adoption of innovative creative business models by investigating a sample of European independent cultural centers. Specifically, this paper aims to provide insights of an ongoing research project in order to support the benchmarking and the adoption of business models for driving the improvement of the value creation mechanisms of European independent cultural centers. Design/methodology/approach – Using a sample of the 46 independent cultural centers operating in 27 European Countries, the paper provides first information and insights – derived from a qualitative survey administration – about the business, governance and organizational profiles of the sample of the independent cultural centers, as well as their perception and orientation to elaborating, identifying, adopting and managing innovative creative business models and to qualitatively identify a feasible set of resources, assets and behaviors potentially driving market-orientation, performance improvement, competitiveness and sustainability. Originality/value – This paper represents one of the first attempts to investigate at practical level the perception and orientation to elaborating, identifying, adopting and managing innovative business models in cultural centers. Practical implications – Since the approaches, the techniques and the tools for elaborating, implementing and managing specific and tailor-made business models in creative and cultural industries are still crude and often inadequate, great attention is called to analyze and decline specifically the various dimensions of the business model of the cultural organizations according to the theoretical modelling elaborated by academia and practice.

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to discuss the case of Milan “Fuorisalone” (literally “outside the fair”) – now renamed Milano Design Week – as the result of a long-term transformation that led to its current configuration, characterised by a complex business model (Smith, Binns and Tushman, 2010), where many actors and stakeholders interact in a network of cooperation and competition. The paper highlights how this transformation was led by the design culture (Deserti and Rizzo, 2014; Concilio, Deserti and Rizzo, 2014) as a pervasive character of the city. The analysis of the case compares the Milano Design Week business model with the fair business model, focusing on the elements of differentiation and on the scaling up mechanisms. In addition, the comparative analysis provides lessons learnt on: – The ways of combining bottom up initiatives with the overall innovation strategies of the official fair and of the city; – The ways of building and managing the value chains in the field of CCI; – The effectiveness of the scaling up model of the Milano Design Week. Design/methodology/approach – Milano Design Week is presented as a business case study, with the aim of investigating how the multiple actors result in a constellation that coproduce value (Chesbrough and Rosembloom, 2002), representing and diffusing design culture outside its professional community in the larger context of the entire city. The authors conducted a field research, meeting and interviewing some of the actors, as well as a desk research, retrieving documentation on the historical aspects and on the more recent developments of the Milano Design Week. Originality/value – The construction of the Milano Design Week is discussed as a design-driven innovation (Verganti, 2010) and as a long-term strategic action conducted through the use of design thinking (Brown, 2009; Lockwood, 2009; Martin, 2009), that has led to an original business model based on the application of design knowledge and tools. Practical implications – The paper provides a better and detailed understanding of the working dynamics of specific and contextualised solutions for the Milano Design Week, explaining how they have been transferred and/or replicated in different contexts and what impacts they have had on the city.

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to propose a model for the evaluation of the multidimensional performance of an inter-museum network. It is, in fact, already acknowledged that evaluating the management of a museum-type institution is not easy, as, in order to measure its social and cultural efficacy, qualitative-type indicators are required. For this reason, the use of a fuzzy logic expert system can prove extremely useful since, in the process of evaluating a given phenomenon, it takes account of input variables not only of a quantitative but also of a qualitative kind. Design/ methodology/ approach – Of the many approaches suggested in the literature, this study will focus on the following: internal, user, economic and relational (Sinatra et al., 2002), external (Sollima, 2004). The method of analysis used is based on a model formalised through a fuzzy expert system (FES). The FES are able to merge the capabilities of an expert system to simulate the decision-making process with the vagueness typical of human reasoning, which is present in fuzzy logic. Originality/ value – There is a vast amount of established literature that analyses topics such as management of museum networks and measurement of the economic, cultural and social performance of a particular museum. What is lacking, however, is an analysis of multidimensional performance in the management of a museum network. This study seeks to fill that gap by presenting a proposal for an evaluation model that will allow internal and external stakeholders to assess the multidimensional contribution provided by a complex institution such as a museum network. Practical implications – The definition of the variables that determine the performance of a museum network is the most complex part of this study. In order to identify these variables, a survey of the literature on museum performance was carried out and a questionnaire was administered to a panel of experts working in the field of management of cultural assets and, more specifically, in the museum sector. The measurement model proposed was applied to a standard case study: a museum system comprising a number of museums in the same geographical area.

Purpose – This paper aims at investigating the possible evolution of the business model of contemporary art galleries in the current international scenario. In the context of global crisis that has seriously affected cultural organizations, especially in Europe, the contemporary art market shows countertrend results. The art market, measured by auction results, has realized and is still realizing good and increasing performance, in terms of general sales and revenues. In particular, contemporary art represents a big business for auction operators, becoming one of the most profitable sectors in the art market. Despite this positive trend, contemporary art galleries are facing a difficult situation. With the exception of a handful of big galleries, many galleries generate only small profits and often they are compelled to close down their business. This apparently contradictory situation is strictly connected to the current business model of contemporary art galleries and underlines the need to rethink them in accordance with innovative ways of creation of social and economic value and fulfilment of a durable financial sustainability. Design/methodology/approach – The methodological approach combines the analysis of the literature with an empirical case study analysis. The goal is to explore the possibility of application of a successful business model in the field of contemporary art galleries. Consistently with this methodological approach, our paper is divided into three parts. In the first part we analyze the contemporary art market and the concept of business model in general, focusing on the current prevailing framework and the analysis of the literature on these subjects. In the second part we analyze a case of one of the most important Italian galleries: Galleria Continua. The in-depth examination of this case study leads to some evidence on the application of business strategy and management tools in the art galleries. More specifically the analysis of the business model of this art gallery is useful to identify a set of best practices . In the third and final part, in the light of what we have developed in the previous parts, we suggest some elements that could form the basis for innovation in the business model for contemporary art galleries. Originality/value – This paper aims at describing the present business model of contemporary art galleries and at proposing a new, sustainable one. In this sense, we think that this paper presents characteristics of originality. Moreover, another aspect of originality lies in the study of the role of an important reality of the cultural and creative sector, the contemporary art galleries. Especially in the Italian national context, the studies on contemporary art galleries are often considered secondary to those on “traditional” cultural organizations (like museums, theatres or heritage sites). Practical implications – The outcomes of the application are linked to the proposal of practical remarks for the evolution and development of business models for contemporary art galleries, as a new tool of creation of economic and social value in the cultural and creative sectors.

Purpose – Nowadays, thanks to conditions such as agile manufacturing (e.g., using affordable machines like 3-D printers, laser cutters, small CNCs or Pick & Place), low production costs and quick execution cycles, it is easier to turn ideas into a finished product ready to be distributed. Joi Ito, the director of the MIT Media Lab, created the slogan ‘Deploy or die’ precisely to encourage the researchers of the lab to take these conditions into consideration and to push their projects up to the production stage (and thus beyond the creation of a demo). This paper examines how design is used at the Media Lab to support this ‘deploy or die’ approach and, consequently, to foster entrepreneurial processes fuelled by the research activities of the lab. The paper contends that design activities – such as user research and user testing, rapid and frequent prototyping, visualization techniques, co-design, attention to the brand experience – contribute in igniting and sustaining the ‘deploy or die’ approach. Design/methodology/approach – The study is the result of an investigation – also based on ethnographic methods – conducted by the author in the city of Cambridge, MA across 2011 and 2014. The application of an ethnographic approach with the direct involvement of researchers in the field has proven to be a common element of a good number of recent studies on organizations (Czarniawska 2012). Originality/value – The study contributes to the ongoing discussions on how design can support entrepreneurship, with particular reference to the area of academic entrepreneurship. Practical implications –The paper contends that design activities contribute in igniting and sustaining the ‘deploy or die’ approach and, consequently, could be adopted by research organizations to support operations in the area of academic entrepreneurship.

Purpose – This inquiry focuses on faculty who have several years of experience teaching in a virtual learning environment and examines their ‘lived’ experiences with online pedagogy in order to (1) understand how teaching in a virtual environment affects pedagogical style, academic identity and student-instructor interactions and (2) to explore how the virtual teaching experience evolves as faculty continue to teach online. Design/methodology/approach – Using Mezirow’s transformative learning theory as a framework, this inquiry takes a basic inductive qualitative approach to analyzing faculty perceptions of the online teaching experience and aims to understand how faculty use their previous teaching experiences, assumptions and expectations as frames of reference to construct a new or revised interpretations of their role as an online instructor (Mezirow, 1991; Merriam, 2002). Originality/value – This inquiry extends the existing online learning literature by focusing on faculty who have several years of online teaching experience and seeks to understand their ‘lived’ experiences as they have continued to teach in the virtual learning environment. Practical implications – University leaders will be better able to identify the challenges online faculty face, recognize the aspects that motivate them to persist, provide the support they need to teach well and create institutional policies that fully support a strong online faculty and successful online learning enterprise.

Purpose – Knowledge Assets management and integrated reporting have not been common to general management systems. Nevertheless, in many European countries, medical organizations must combine human capital, structural capital and relational capital in certified management systems like quality or risk management and they have to disclose the results in detailed non-financial reports to diverse public stakeholders. However, these existing systems are limited, often missing a real business impact. The new ISO 9001:2015 proposal now contains a combination of quality, risk and knowledge management. This research aims to confirm the necessity in healthcare, connecting knowledge asset management as part of an integrated management system with integrated non-financial controlling and reporting concepts. Design/methodology/approach – The research design begins with literature review, which assesses the state of the art of norm-based management systems, knowledge management and integrated reporting systems considering their impact on business results. Secondly, we will apply a survey on the use of norm-based management systems, knowledge management and integrated reporting systems in European healthcare organizations. The third stage will report the implementation of an IMRS for a large healthcare organization in Germany, able to fulfil legal and norm requirements (Olaru; Maier; Nicoară; Maier, 2014). Originality/value – The proposed methodology connects existing management models and norm-based management systems with concepts of knowledge asset management, controlling and reporting to an integrated management and reporting system. The theoretical part discusses the possible level of integration of different models for getting a consistent management system. The case study, as practical part, shows a concrete example of the implementation process of an IMRS with its steps, impacts and possible problems. This research delivers a contribution to a holistic knowledge asset management approach as part of the new ISO 9001:2015 and guides users through the implementation process. Practical implications – With the expected publication of the new ISO 9001:2015 proposal in August 2015, many knowledge management systems will be certified under this standard. By concentrating on this widespread norm-based management system, we want to ensure the general applicability of the IMRS concept for the business community. By showing the theoretical and practical concept of an IMRS, the research will offer a guideline for the implementation of a knowledge asset management as part of an IMRS, which become necessary in healthcare organizations to fulfill all legal and governmental requirements.

Purpose – Knowledge Management, in the context of education, is an interesting and debated issue for institutional actors (The Bologna Process, EU, 1999; EC, 2003; EC, 2013) scholars and researchers. (Esposito et al., 2013; Ramirez et al., 2007; D’Este and Patel, 2007). This paper aims to present a literature review related to Knowledge Management in an educational context. The purpose, in particular, is to investigate how researchers and practitioners have developed their research and what are the next Knowledge Management trends in the academic environment. Design/methodology/approach – The literature review focused on the analysis of three journals: Journal of Knowledge Management, Journal of Intellectual Capital, and Academy of Management Learning and Education. These journals have been selected in an international ranking on the portal SCImago Journal & Country Rank. The research was carried out based on three specific steps: a first selection process based on keywords on the websites of the three journals; in the second step we have analyzed the contents of the abstracts of individual articles, to identify those most related to KM in Universities; in the third phase we collected the articles relevant to our investigation, in order to examine in detail the content and to make a classification. Originality/value – The article aims to provide a literature review related to the topic of Knowledge Mangement in the educational context, identifying future trends both from a theoretical or empirical side. Practical implications – This research at the moment is a second step of a larger work that will involve the analysis of other journals. The research, currently, is still a work in progress, and it requires new investigations. The analysis will be extended including other journals and the most relevant references found in the papers. The selection and the deepening of the above items, specially classified, based on the model of Earl (2001), made it possible to see that the survey on Knowledge Management, as part of the education sector, is focusing on the basis of data currently collected, to the following directions: the use of information technology or management; for business purposes, and the adoption of organizational methods to create, share and use knowledge.

Purpose – How information systems are enabling innovative models and processes for managing information in health domains? A possible answer is through virtual health communities (or patient-centered eHealth): digital social networks where people share their clinical history, health information and treatments results. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for understanding those virtual health communities, identifying their models and main characteristics. Design/methodology/approach – Our main objective is to identify and systematize the overlapping research area between online social network and health sector. In order to accomplish this aim we conduct a first exploratory literature review. Originality/value – Information and Communication Technology (ICT) deeply changed the way in which organizations manage (collect, store, analyse, transmit and use) information and data. ICT also enabled and triggered business models in which external actors contribute in the production of information and knowledge valuable for the company (eg. open innovation, FLOSS, citizen-science programs). Health sector, due to the peculiarity of its nature and the sensitiveness of the information processed, has been one of the latest ones to take advantage of this new opportunity. The newness of the phenomenon, as well as the growing number of people using virtual health networks (VHN), call for a work of systematization of the emerging models and factors. Practical implications – In VHNs, a consistent number of patients (considered external to organizations in the traditional management/innovation models) voluntarily disclose their health information to other patients. Thus, even presenting some accuracy and truthfulness issues, nevertheless this model of information sharing constitutes an incredibly rich source of data for researchers (and potentially for pharmaceutical industries and health organizations). VHNs could integrate or expand the traditional pharmaceutical clinical trials; in such case, innovation will not be managed only internally by a company, but will be opened to patients’ direct contribution. Risks and opportunities of this approach still have to be carefully evaluated

Purpose – The paper analyzes the patterns of research of “innovation knowledge” (i.e. knowledge that can result in introducing innovations in the company that can be observed in KIBS (Knowledge-Intensive Business Services) companies. Particularly, it identifies and classifies the possible approaches adopted by companies on the basis of two dimensions: the intensity/proactivity of search efforts, and the source primarily used. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the approaches adopted by 15 Italian and Polish KIBS companies. It employs a multiple case-study method, which is justified due to the descriptive and exploratory nature of the research, and the complexity of the phenomenon under investigation. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews to entrepreneurs and executives of the investigated firms. KIBS companies were chosen as object of study because they are often highly innovative and, in turn, they contribute to their clients’ innovative capability as well. Originality/value – The paper provides a better understanding of ways and sources of knowledge for innovation in KIBS. It has already been acknowledged that KIBS rely on various sources of knowledge for innovation, but not much is known about the approaches they adopt. The cases confirm that hardly ever KIBS use only one source of knowledge for innovation. Customers are often uses as a key source of knowledge, but employees are also expected to provide innovative ideas. Therefore, KIBS companies can follow various models to acquire knowledge for innovation. In particular, some companies can have a passive approach (i.e. innovative ideas come as a kind of side-effect of their daily business), while others have an active approach (namely, they actively search for new ideas originating from various sources). In addition, some rely more on internal resources (i.e. their employees, internal departments, etc.), while others on external sources (clients, suppliers, service providers, universities, etc.). It is possible to combine these dimensions and to obtain four combinations, as is described in the paper. Practical implications – The outcomes of the study are important for both research and practice. As regards research, it contributes to the discussion regarding knowledge sources of innovation and the processes of their exploitation in KIBS firms. As regards the practice, the categorisation of the different possible approaches to innovative knowledge can help executives to identify and examine how their companies function. This can provide useful guidelines for selecting the most suitable situation-dependent approach.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the composition of intangibles portfolio of R&D intense companies and relate it to the open innovation (OI) models they implement. It is also investigated how the internal stock of intangibles is linked to context features and performances of firms. Design/methodology/approach – The data sources the methodology relies on are audited financial statements of companies. The analysis is performed on a sample of 234 world top R&D spending firms, ranked by The EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, for the period 2010-2012, for a total of 702 consolidated annual reports examined. In order to delineate portfolio composition, we first grouped all the intangibles disclosed in annual reports in different categories and then calculated composition ratios. Furthermore, five adoption models are defined – collaboration, outsourcing, licensing, trading, and incorporation – depending on the costs, revenues, new investments and divestments in intangibles and knowledge assets related to OI. Originality/value – Our methodology points out a set of accounting indicators for both outlining companies’ portfolio composition and evaluating their OI models. With this assumption, the paper contributes to the current debate on OI by investigating both its inbound and outbound aspects after a pecuniary perspective, starting from the “acquiring” and “selling” forms of openness introduced by Dahlander and Gann (2010). Moreover, all adoption models are defined over a continuous scale, so that we do not state whether a company collaborates or not, but rather assess its degree of collaboration. Further, the work improves the understanding of the relevance of intangible assets in OI activities, estimating how the portfolio composition is linked to the implementation of OI models. Practical implications – The devised framework constitutes a useful tool for managers after both an internal and an external perspective. From an internal point of view, the tool allows to monitor the impact of the investment in intangibles on companies’ innovation processes after an open-oriented approach. As a matter of fact, it proposes a set of metrics enabling to typify companies’ internal stock of intangibles and relate its composition to the OI models adopted. From an external standpoint, given the availability and objectivity of annual report figures, the framework can be exploited as a method of comparability in order to benchmark the OI strategy of a firm, resulting from the mix of OI models, against those of its competitors.

Purpose – This paper aims at describing the role of a developed Recommender System in a Virtual Collective Intelligence Environment. The analysis of different types of data, such as social network data or users’ behaviours, are very useful to delineate people customs and interests. Such information are necessary for the Recommender System, which is based on similarity and on a system that associates resources to users in a personalized way. Therefore, the analysis and processing of these data become tools to power the Recommender System, to suggest items closely related to users and to create social communities of people with similar interests. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on the study of literature and the analysis of possible scenarios applicable in the context of a Virtual Collective Intelligence Environment. Such virtual environment is based on the principle of Enterprise Social Software, which supports a series of actions and operations related to the management of information and knowledge. The approach based on Collective Intelligence and on social software aims specifically at the integration of explicit knowledge with the implicit one and the simultaneous extraction, derivation and determination of new knowledge, through techniques of mining, search, clustering, Recommender Systems, and so on. Originality/value – In VINCENTE Environment, the proposed Recommender System uses and analyses both social network data and people behaviours with the aim of suggesting items that are closely related to users and of creating social communities based on similar interests. The Recommender System adopts a similarity function, specifically designed to calculate both network and profile similarity between users by using social network data, taking into account all the connections between users. This approach brings many benefits, as the cold start problem prevention for new users. Moreover, by employing a fuzzy graph to establish a connection between different items, it is possible to recommend different resources, also favouring serendipitous discovery. Practical implications – This work can have different implications, such as: Applications of the Recommender System in scenarios in which services such as those ones related to the search of users in the community, to the logic of collaborative working or to the business are implemented. Applications of the Recommender System to virtual platforms with different purposes. Applications of the Recommender System to mobile app, aiming at advising users on relevant resources and information by predicting their interests and preferences on a specific item.

Purpose – In the last year, several researchers have proposed solutions for facilitating the access to Web services and APIs through visual user interfaces. There is, indeed, an increasing number of resources that provide content in different formats through programmatic interfaces, while it is still difficult for laypeople, i.e., users without expertise in programming (end users in the following), to access and exploit the content they made available. Our research aims at enabling end users to create their own software applications for exploring and composing data sources, in order to satisfy their situational information needs, also by also exploiting the Linked Open Data as new data source. Design/methodology/approach – Our work aims to combine End-User Development principles with the mashup models and technologies adopting a meta-design approach. We start from a generic mashup platform and we adapt it with respect to the requirements identified within a specific community of users. Besides several inspections of the different prototypes, formative evaluations and user tests in the university laboratory, we performed two field studies in different application domains in order to verify the usefulness of content made available by distributed data sources, as well as the overall validity of our composition approach. Originality/value – Our platform is based on a general-purpose mashup environment [Cappiello et al. 2011a], in which the composition of interactive spaces exploits a “lightweight” paradigm for the integration of heterogeneous resources, mainly adopting visual mechanisms. Thanks to the adoption of platform-independent modelling abstractions, the structure of the composed applications is specified in automatically-generated schemas that can be deployed on multiple devices. Such a separation of concerns, together with the possibility to extend the platform with ad-hoc visualization templates, and the ease of packaging ad-hoc content resources, facilitate the customization of our meta-design approach to specific application domains. Practical implications – Since the first time mashups were proposed in the Web technology scenario, researchers have been discussing about the potential of mashup platforms as tools to enable user-driven innovation [Daniel et al. 2011]. Our mashup platform can be considered an important tool of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Such ecosystem is characterized by the presence of multiple actors (academic institutions, business operators and public institutions) who work collaboratively to start the processes of development of entrepreneurial skills, as well as to promote the incubation of innovative ideas and research initiatives with market potential.

Contemporary systems record massive amounts of events by making processes visible. Process mining techniques (van del Aalst, 2011) can be used to analyze event logs, in order to extract, modify and extend process models, as well as to check conformance with respect to defined process models. Thus far, process mining techniques have been mainly used in an off-line fashion and rarely for operational decision support. Historical full traces (i.e. instances of the process which have already completed) are rarely processed on-line. Purpose – Recently, van der Aalst et al (2012) demonstrate that process mining techniques are not necessarily limited to the past, but can also be used for the present and the future. Embracing this research direction, we investigate the feasibility of a process mining approach to predict future events of running traces of business processes. Design/methodology/approach – We propose an approach that transforms the task of event forecasting for running traces into a predictive clustering task (Blockeel et al. 1998), where the target variables are the characteristics of future events expected in running traces, while the predictors are characteristics of recent events up to a certain time window. Historical traces can be processed off-line so that a predictive clustering tree (PCT) (Blockeel et al. 1998) can be mined for the predictive aim. A PCT is a tree structured model, which predicts responses of several attributes of an examples at once. In this study, it allows us to foresee the characteristics of future events of business processes based on characteristics of recent time-delayed event elements (Pravilovic et al, 2013). Originality/value – The PCT can be used to predict on-line event elements of any new running trace. Therefore, this approach puts in evidence that process models can be learned for predictive scope providing enterprises with an “intelligent” new monitoring/recommending service. Practical implications – This service can be used to check conformance and recommend appropriate actions of enterprises’ users. The proposed approach has been implemented on the OPENNESS platform, the main outcome of the research project VINCENTE (A Virtual collective INtelligenCe ENvironment to develop sustainable Technology Entrepreneurship ecosystems). The platform is a collaborative environment which enables collective intelligence and decision making processes performed by young innovative entrepreneurs and already existing SMEs. The discovered model is used on-line to predict future action(s) of a user of the platform.

Purpose – Nowadays, people increasingly seek information and ask for help on Question and Answer (Q&A) sites. The enormous success of Stack Exchange0F0, a constantly growing network of Q&A sites, attests this increasing trend. The success of Q&A mainly depends on the will of their members to provide good quality answers to others’ questions. We investigate the success factors of Q&A that is those factors that foster effective knowledge creation and sharing. In particular, we focus those factors that can be acted upon by contributors when writing a question. Design/methodology/approach – Based on literature in the domain, we build an empirical model of the factors that predict the chance of getting a useful answer when asking a question on a Q&A site. The actionable factors in our model are grouped into three categories of features: Presentation Quality, Time, and Affect. We use a multivariate logistic regression framework for estimating the probability of success of a question based on our set of predictors, that is the metrics that operationalize affect, time and presentation quality. Stack Exchange makes user-contributed content freely available under Creative Commons license, which we use in our empirical studies. Originality/value – Previous research shows how the success of a question depends on its presentation quality (Treude et al. 2011, Asaduzzaman et al. 2013), on the day and time in which it is posted (Bosu et al. 2013), and on the asker’s reputation (Althoff et al. 2014). The influence of affective factors is less evident. However, we argue that the path to effective question answering also involves consideration of emotions (Novielli et al., 2014). Our ongoing research aims at filling this gap in literature by further investigating the role of affect in Stack Exchange. Practical implications – The expected output of this ongoing research will be a user-driven netiquette for online Q&A sites. It will shed new light on how emotion expression facilitates or impairs effective knowledge sharing, leading to guidelines for fostering emotional awareness computer-mediated interactions. In details, we aim at defining new empirically driven guidelines in order to inform the design of emotional interface, provide new insights on how to successfully exploit social Q&A sites in professional knowledge sharing, develop tools for embedding emotional intelligence into online Q&A communities to support both novice users and community managers.