Purpose –This paper aims to address the question of the innovation propensity of family firms relative to non-family firms, within an institutional setting characterized by a high proportion of listed family firms. Design/methodology/approach – Using a sample of family and non-family firms listed on the Milan Stock Exchange over a period of 6 years (2008-2013), we empirically test the two alternative hypotheses of “innovation enhancing” and “innovation stifling” by performing a multiple regression analysis. Following previous research, we use firm-level R&D expenditures to capture the firms’ creative and inventive activities. As independent variables, we consider the family involvement in ownership and management. We control our results for a set of control variables that likely affect the firm innovation propensity, namely: firm age; growth opportunities; capital intensity; size; profitability, cash flow, leverage and industry. Originality/value – This study analyzes the innovation strategies of family firms compared with non-family firms, within an institutional setting characterized by a high presence of listed family firms. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study analyzing the R&D spending behaviour of all Italian listed companies (financial and football firms excluded). Our empirical results are based on a sample of 982 firm-year observations covering the period of 2008–2013. Practical implications – The findings may lead the investment community to reevaluate the effectiveness of management policies adopted by family members running the company. In particular, our results are valuable to investors and other stakeholders, suggesting that in setting characterized by high percentage of listed family firms, the involvement of family members in top management could not be detrimental to the value-maximization of the firm, at least in the long run; thereby favoring not only the future well-being for family members but also for other firm stakeholders.

This paper addresses the current state of work and its adherence to free market principles that override considerations of culture and sustainability at the local levels. It posits that globalisation encourages fragmentation and dislocation of the senses by emphasising the visual bias through disembodied structures and communication. In a globalised economy guided by free market principles, it is the systems that matter rather than the individuals using the systems. The visual bias reinforces this favouring of the systemic and programmed over the holistic and organic. The creative work proposed here attempts to address this imbalance by creating zones of intensity in and around areas of work. These areas of artistic production/installation/performance would operate on the informal level of cultural transmission, as set out by Edward T. Hall in his theory of culture, where cultural knowledge and assimilation happen on three distinct but porous levels that can influence each other: the informal, the formal, and the technical. “Zone of intensity” is a term coined by Russell West-Pavlov and deployed by Darko Radovic to address the visual bias of urban planning. By researching spaces through the artistic inquiry of dérive from the Situationists and encouraging modes of recording those investigations through artistic forms such as drawing and poetry, Radovic champions the importance of the subjective in expressing the meaning of spaces. This notion is a key focus point of the work presented here to give equal weight and importance to the qualitative (experience) as that of the quantitative (data) in designing spaces, assigning function to those spaces, and creating the organisational structures for people to live and work in those spaces.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to carry out a literature review on collective mindfulness and identify the key conditions and processes under which it can be developed within organizations. Design/methodology/approach – Systematic analysis of published empirical studies and theoretical models about mindfulness in organizational contexts. The summary of analysis is listed below. Collective mindfulness, defined by Weick et al. (1999) as the “capability to induce a rich awareness of discriminatory detail and a capacity for action” is a fundamental resource for effectively respond to environment changes (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Levinthal and Rerup, 2006; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2006). If so, in an ever-changing environment to promote collective mindfulness is to develop and support a crucial key to organizational success and survival. Therefore, one might ask what can organizations do to cultivate collective mindfulness? What are the fundamental conditions under which it emerges? The body of literature on collective mindfulness describes two different ways of fostering mindfulness within organizations. One answer rests in Weick’s and colleagues (Langer 1989 and Weick et al. 1999) theory about mindfulness in High Reliable Organizations (HRO). In this approach mindfulness is promoted through processes of improving quality and quantity of attention towards work processes and organizational environment. A different answer argues that artistic processes can also promote collective and individual mindfulness, by removing objects from the automatism of perception, by defamiliarizing predominant beliefs and assumptions and allowing people to “see more” and “see differently” (Langer 1989, 2005; Barry & Meisiek, 2010. Moreover, art as one of the most important ways of expression of human feelings and values can provide processes and tools to approach emotional dynamics and aesthetic aspects within organization, which are also expected to broaden people’s perception and people’s willingness to be open to new ways doing things (Schiuma, 2011; Barry, 1994; Barry, 1996; Berthoin Antal, 2009). Originality – We integrate into a single model of mindfulness in organizations, two separate and apparently disparate theories about mindfulness in organizations which hitherto have been developed separately (Arts and High Reliability Organizations). Practical implications – The most important implication is to identify the key conditions and processes under which collective mindfulness can be developed within organizations.

In this anthropocene era, the complexity of the problems generated by human beings present to all but the most optimistic a dead-end. We have yet to find convincing solutions to the problems necessary to heal our world. Our ability to think, understand and most importantly act on today’s major global issues remains attenuated. What knowledge do we need and how should we learn in order to act? Thinking in a systemic way, we see education as a crucial entry point to any deep change in the social and human dynamics. Therefore, we are embarking on creating a transformational journey, of ourselves, and the world. The aim of the project is to contribute to design and facilitate a creative experience-based learning space supporting individual and collective transformation. In coherence with a holistic worldview, where creativity is the basis of social ontology and complexity its epistemology, we initiate a philosophical project that will draw from several sources of knowledge to create a socially innovative process from which social innovations will emerge. We consider that this process must necessarily be reflexive and responsive, and in this sense partly mirror the changes we intend to disseminate. The key assumption that forms the basis of the project is: that transformational change occurs interdependently, and thus to transform the world, we need to transform ourselves and vice versa. This paper presents the project, its meta theoretical ground, initial guiding principles and emerging prototype. Design/methodology/approach – We propose a participative collective arts- and design-based approach to creating a learning space (also referred to as ‘container’), both on a virtual platform and in presence. Originality/value – This methodology puts in evidence the role of artistic creative processes in creating learning spaces in which art-based learning methods, and arts as a creative means to learn about complexity, transformation processes, the self, the commons, and social innovation as key elements are mobilised. Practical implications – The outcomes of the application are a prototype of a learning space and process, which constitute a contribution to renew and/or provide a rich alternative to institutional education programs. It aims at sustaining the development of knowledge and competencies necessary to develop in order to be able to evolve individually and collectively and innovate socially. Each outcome will be subject to a creative strategic process aimed at storyboarding the journey from prototype to sustainable enterprise.

Purpose – This paper concerns the adoption of the industrial symbiosis at the urban level as a tool to improve their environmental sustainability. Accordingly, urban wastes can be valued in new products or energy, able to reduce the amount of wastes landfilled and the amount of inputs purchased from external sources. In particular, we focus on small cities. We are interested to identify which urban features are able to influence the amount of produced urban wastes that can become inputs for processes of industrial symbiosis. As urban features, we take into account household features and the economic and productive structure of cities. Design/methodology/approach – We adopted a multiple case study approach for six small municipalities located in the Alto Bradano Area (South Italy). For each municipality, we collected data of produced urban wastes which can be used for symbiotic processes. In particular, we analyze the influence of two kinds of urban features: i) socio-economic parameters reflecting household features; ii) the area of non-residential activities, which we consider a proxy for the economic and productive structure of cities. Originality/value – This paper spreads new light on the industrial symbiosis application at the urban level. Differently from previous studies about waste production, we focused on small cities and we analyzed the effect of the economic and productive structure of cities on the amount of urban wastes. The value of this work lies in the identification of which urban features should be considered in evaluating the implementation of symbiotic projects at the urban level. Practical implications – This study provides interesting managerial implications about the industrial symbiosis approach at the urban level. In particular, the present work can offer a useful guide to define the symbiotic loops that could be significant for a city.

Purpose – We test whether demand-pull environmental measures, introduced with the 1997 Commission White Paper and following Directives, had an impact on the fragmentation of EU research and innovation effort in the strategic field of renewable energy. By focusing on knowledge spillovers, we study the pattern and evolution of knowledge flows within the EU and between the EU and two frontier innovators: the United States and Japan. This research question is motivated by increased concern that the fragmentation of EU renewable energy research and innovation systems may hamper the ability to address climate challenges at socially acceptable costs. Design/methodology/approach – Following a well-established tradition, we measure the intensity and the direction of knowledge flows by looking at patent citations. We use the EP_CRIOS database to collect information on EPO patent applications in renewable energy technologies by inventors residing in the US, Japan and the EU15, between 1985 and 2010. Since the number of citations depends on countries’ characteristics and on the total number of patents, the analysis focuses on the probability of citations, estimated with a double exponential lag model, as proposed in Jaffe and Trajtenberg (1999), which allows to control for several factors affecting the likelihood of citation. Originality/value – This is the first work studying the fragmentation of EU technological space in the renewable energy sector and examining whether environmental policies can contribute to a strengthening of knowledge networks in this area. Our results suggest that after 1997 Member States’ national innovation systems have evolved towards a more integrated innovation space at the EU level. Environmental policies seem to have pushed the EU to become a frontier innovator, since the EU15’s role as a source of knowledge for the US increased. However, innovative activity at EU level is still poorly integrated if compared to the American and Japanese systems. Practical implications – The redesign of EU renewable energy policy will benefit from a clearer understanding of the links between research and innovative activities across Member States and of their evolution over time. Grasping whether environmental policy can contribute to a strengthening of knowledge networks, lowering the costs of climate mitigation and the burden for firm’s competitiveness, is hence a relevant question for both researchers and policy makers. This study also offers insights for the design and the implementation of specific technology-push initiatives for the renewable energy sector, such as those envisaged by the 2008 SET-PLAN and the 2015 Energy Union package.

Purpose – This study presents some evidence of an ongoing research on smart city platforms. Our analysis is part of the Italian research project OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A (ORganization of Cultural HEritage for Smart Tourism and Real-time Accessibility) meant to develop a crowdsourcing community in the city of Naples (Italy). Successful crowdsourcing solutions require activities that both fulfill the communities administrators’ needs and — by utilizing various motivation mechanisms — account for individual contributors’ needs. Thus, understanding and analyzing the incentives that spur users to contribute are critical to designing crowdsourcing applications (Cuel and Zamarian, 2014). In this study we set up a field experiment, in order to understand which types of incentives are useful to engage users to produce contents for OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A and better address a specific behavior. Methodology – In order to understand the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation with respect to individual behaviours, we administrate a questionnaire to university students related to their education and cultural background and consumptions, and social status, their internet usages, and we follow their behaviour on the OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A community. We explore through multivariate methods the characteristics of our users looking for clusters. Furthermore through our hypothesis we test the impact of the two different motivations taking into account some of the relevant individual behaviours. Originality/value – Our contribution is to provide reflections on extrinsic and intrinsic incentive mechanisms, in order to explore the extent to which incentives are able to engage and to motivate users in community building processes. Second, through the field experiment we shed light on a partly jagged topic and we provide some normative suggestions on how to design a crowdsourcing application. In particular, we try to explain results and emerging issue needed to create a model of incentive mechanisms that could be used in the OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A web platform. Practical implications – OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A falls within the field “Smart Culture and Tourism” and is part of several valorisation projects of the city of Naples. The community aims to be a benchmark of the production of UGC, the engage of the crowd and the users interaction. Many touristic and cultural communities began huge business all over the world thanks to user-generated contents. In fact over the years it has become clear that users handle the review tool for the destinations they visit or for commercial products and services, and for supporting or criticizing the hospitality of some structures.

The purpose of this research is to highlight the need for effective knowledge exchange in intra-organisational contexts in relation to promoting innovation in the development and implementation of regional cultural strategies. This paper presents the first part of an ongoing comparative research project. The first case study (presented here) is based on Aberdeen City Council, the local government authority covering the City of Aberdeen in Scotland. The need for this research is driven by an acknowledgement of the relatively isolated positioning of ‘culture’ within public sector bodies and the potential impact of this position on the wider cultural sector. The research employed a comparative case study approach to highlight comparison between the case study organisations, and to develop an understanding of the impacts of those comparative factors. A review of the relevant literature was conducted to refine the research questions and identify gaps in the literature. A purposive sample of employees was invited to participate in a survey questionnaire. Secondary literature produced by employees for internal and external use was also consulted to enrich the primary data. Primary and secondary data was thematically analysed to generate relevant findings. The research shows that while there is the relevant expertise, a recognised need and genuine desire to exchange knowledge within the organisation in support of the development and implementation of cultural strategies, these are hampered by a range of factors including: the perceived value of the concept of culture; the value and support for cultural initiatives; and the development and maintenance of meaningful relationships. These factors impact on the production of innovative cultural strategies, and concomitantly on the effectiveness and sustainability of regional arts and cultural sector initiatives and organisations, as well as the individuals therein. It is anticipated that this research will be of interest to practitioners in cultural strategy development. In addition to highlighting barriers and enablers of knowledge exchange for cultural strategy development, the research also emphasises the need for a more rigorous attempts to define the culture of concept is contextually meaningful ways, to emphasise the value of culture at regional levels, and to develop a lexicon for cultural activities which can be used in multi-partner initiatives.

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.

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 – New business models emerged within the creative industries when advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) altered the patterns of cultural consumption worldwide. Digital technologies altered the way creative products were created, produced, reproduced, distributed, and commercialised at national and international levels. In the face of the continual emergence of digital disruptions, the traditional, existing sector is failing to rapidly enough adapt. The purpose of the paper is to provide a better understanding of an emerging framework for the transformation of incumbent cultural and creative enterprises in a digital age, called The AmbITion Approach. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical work developed The AmbITion Approach into a framework for business transformation in a digital age: blending participatory action research methods with modern management consultancy tools and design and creative practices. Digital research tools for inquiry were designed and prototyped, tested by a pilot study, and then embedded in a longitudinal study over two years of twenty-one participant organisations from Scotland’s creative sector. Detailed grounded thematic analysis of the data corpus was undertaken, along with analysis of rich media case studies produced by enterprises about their change journeys. Empirical work also introduced to the framework Coghlan and Rashford’s change categories. Originality/value – These enabled the description of the extent to which organisations developed: whether they experienced first order (change), second order (adaptation) or third order (transformation) change. The results of studies on participants, and validation criteria applied to the results, have demonstrated the approach triggers second and third order change. It is suitable for incumbent creative businesses to apply within the continuing landscape of digital disruption. However, all sectors face ongoing digital disruption. Practical implications – Management consultancy practices, and business strategy academics have called for new, empirically tried and tested, strategy development frameworks and toolkits, fit for a digital age. The concepts, methods, toolkits, and processes of The AmbITion Approach have been validated in the field as a new framework for business transformation for creative industries in a digital age. The findings justify provocations on current UK government creative economy policies. Governments must improve digital/economic development policy to better support incumbent, traditional creative enterprises providing cultural value, if they are to survive.

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.

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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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.