Purpose – The purpose of this study is to evaluate and identify feasible means of assessing the dynamic capability of Finnish Small and Medium Sized (SME) firms from the angle of the supporting and promoting capability of top management. The aim is to provide for suitable tools and means for the assessment that could be further tested in future research. A questionnaire is developed based on theoretical and empirical findings and acid tested in SME CEO interviews against the framework created. The interview results are analyzed and preliminarily interpreted for steering further research. Design/methodology/approach – This study draws on the empirical data gathered in an ongoing Top Leader research project in the Small Business Center of Aalto university school of business, funded by ESF. The datasets are gathered in facilitated workshops, expert round table forums and personal interviews of selected SME management and HR expert representatives. The theoretical background is provided by the extant body of knowledge in organizational dynamic capability, SME strategy, innovation and leadership. Qualitative research and theory building approach using grounded theory method is selected in order to produce explanatory and pragmatic models and proposals. The main units of analysis are the personal, inherited and acquired capabilities of the CEO and the management team. These are operationalized through a framework derived from the literature of the Dynamic Capabilities. Originality/value – In firms operating with scarce resources, like in SMEs, this paradigm is of greatest importance. While sustained superior financial performance or the survival of the firm is a result of multiple independent and cross-dependent variables, an often neglected factor is capability of the CEO and management team of the firm. In a small company, the effect of the personal traits of an entrepreneur and other key influencers are claimed to be of remarkable meaning for the success. While the topic is touched in various streams of scientific research, the results are mostly presented on a conceptual level, thus leaving the full potential in managerial impact untapped. Here we are going to step down to produce a model that can be further leveraged also in managerial context. Practical implications – The preliminary outcomes of the research give implications that especially the external and internal networking abilities of the SME CEO prove to be a fruitful area for more concentrated research. The theoretical model chosen together with empirical data has been successfully translated into a questionnaire that will be used and improved in further interviews. The method is believed to be particularly useful for practitioners of SME leadership and strategy.

Purpose – Recently, the role of place-based innovation has gained relevance and is being explored by a growing number of scholars. We see this as an opportunity to instantiate a new discourse on bottom-up governance, where the role played by the circulation and management of knowledge is at the same time crucial and displaying unexpected dynamics. Starting from the evidence that places, namely urban places, are more and more showing up as innovation drivers (Hou, 2010), the paper first describes the social streets phenomenon as an example of place-based innovation, then analyses three Italian cases, and finally discusses the relevance of spatial proximity for knowledge sharing and behavioural alignment, thus contributing to the theoretical and pragmatic debate on Urban Living Labs and related innovation processes. Design/methodology/approach – Social streets are informal associations of residents, living in the same street or in close urban proximities (blocks or neighbourhoods), aimed at establishing links, sharing needs, exchanging abilities or knowledge, and collaborating on shared projects, so as to reciprocally benefit from a deeper social interaction and collaboration. This paper explores social streets as innovative examples of place-based innovation. We first investigate the nature of social streets’ innovation, in order to discover the role space has in it. Three specific cases are analysed in detail that differ to one another in having various origins, governance/organizational models and also spatial scales. These three dimensions are used as relevant to describe place-based innovation. Originality/value – The analysis conducted in this paper contributes to the theoretical discussion on Living Labs in general (Følstad, 2008; Ståhlbröst, 2008; Svensson et al., 2010) and Urban Living Labs in particular (Concilio and Molinari, 2014; Concilio et al. 2013), by adding to the analysis of the specific role of urban space in user driven, open innovation environments, where users are no longer passive consumers of services but rather protagonists of real innovation, thanks to their being place dwellers, “owners” and “shapers”. The proposed paper focuses on place-based innovation through the analysis of the social street phenomenon. In discussing alternative governance models of the related socio-digital environments, it suggests deepening the operational perspective of emerging, alternative models of urban government and management.

Purpose The scientific-technological hub “Magna Grecia” rises up to establish intense synergies and interactions with the local, regional, national and international entrepreneurial systems promoting environmental technological innovation, with the objective of significantly growing the competitiveness of the productive system on site and in a territory, like the Ionian territory, of which they think results of economic politics and industrial bankruptcy. All of this in coherence with the European program “Europa 2020: a strategy for intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth”. Design/methodology/approach The paradigm of the complexity is the characteristic paradigm of the historic period in which we live and from which we are launching our project. One systematic way (Bertalanffy, 1959) that was conceived and shaken to answer the challenge to which today we have been called to construct a sustainable community, in which different stakeholders can satisfy their needs without compromising the possibility that future generations can do the same. Educational systems elaborated in the scientific-technological hub “Magna Grecia” have been constructed to be able to encounter the needs of a society which is extremely variable and unpredictable; to shape to the complexity means, first of all, to change the way in which each of us knows and learns both in methods, and in content. The methodology is based on evidence based case study (Trinchero, 2004). Originality/value The possibility to work on a vision of a sustainable future depends on the capability of the citizens to open up to a new idea of citizenship. It is for this that to obtain a role of primary importance in the world of education, and that of the university, to be specific, called in order to accommodate and to make a new idea of development, founded on the systematic paradigm and capable of guaranteeing a holistic vision of the world: culture and the dynamics of education connected have great generative potential for the creation of economic value and consent the retrieval of the authentic sense of the territory, of its vocations, promoting educational routes accurate and capable of constructing a future of sustainable growth. This is how much we have and are looking to create. Practical implications To aim for and bet on, as we have done, the creation of a district highly qualified, capable to offer services of an elevated scientific-technological-environmental content means to consent the youth in the territory, who persist in this action to make business specializing in the environmental sector, a field that until a short time ago seemed impossible to develop in an Ionian city.

Purpose – Many researches try to individuate the entrepreneurial intent of different categories of individuals, and the factors that impact on their intent. Anyway, many of these investigations are based on homogeneous samples without, however, verifying if firms actually arise, nor the type of company created. The paper aims to going over the limitations of previous researches on the knowledge of the process of the entrepreneurial intention by investigating a population of individuals which seized the opportunity to participate at a university-based start-up competition (Suc). Design/methodology/approach – In the frame of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) the paper examines the influence of factors affecting the entrepreneurial intention, the perception of external of environment and the perception subjective competencies. The questionnaire to measure intent is based on an integration of psychology and entrepreneurship literature and is very close to the Entrepreneurial Intent Questionnaire adopted in intent approach leading articles. The population is from seven universities localised in a specific region and the TPB is tested using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach. Originality/value –The study is unique given that, within the entrepreneurial process, the individuals of the population investigated could be positioned beyond the intent but before the starting-up. Furthermore, these participants are considered high likely to start an high-tech or innovative businesses, and include individuals with heterogeneous characteristics who decide in team to start a business. Practical implications – The outcomes this survey show that competencies have a strong effect in favouring the entrepreneurial event while, the external environment doesn’t appear to exert a clear influence on intent. These considerations have two relevant implications. On the one hand the role of universities as natural provider of skills is emphasized. On the other hand it is shown how the support promised by the universities themselves under these initiatives can help aspiring entrepreneurs to overcome the conditionings of the external environment.

Purpose – This presentation deals with the relationship between identity and physical aspects of the urban and public places. The importance of the urban and public spaces in the communication of identity might be seen as one aspect of the broad area of research into the meaning of the urban space and its relationship to the physical form in Algiers. Typically, the urban and public spaces symbolize accepted notions of the appropriate function of the plaza and preferred public relations, such notions are in themselves profoundly important in structuring gender relations. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is based on two methodologies: • Deductive: a theoretical investigation based on the properties of the city structure, definitions, principles of design, and the dilemma of achieving modernization is as much cultural as technical. This combines information from literature reviews and the ideas of key figures in the urban development field and the place-identity, social identity and identity process as theories for cultural models of the city. • Inductive: a study of Algiers as example of historical settlements that have undergone much change processes. The study looks to elicit the images of the city main structure to support the theoretical propositions of surface and deep structural city elements. The conclusion to this part is based on an analysis of the case study. Originality/value – The city of today differs from its past in several respects: size and scale, street layout, land use patterns, architectural style and type of housing. Traditional urban form and building which would have provided information about regional and national identity have been largely replaced by forms characterizing the international and universal buildings and spaces. These changes have altered the city’s form and have given rise to questions about the impact of these changes on the image of the city in terms of size and cultural values. So the concept of urban space becomes a determinant of the ability of planners, architects, engineers and administrators to provide an environment which is adequately structured to avoid chaos and to maintain an acceptable quality of life. Practical implications – How people experience places, what constitutes a place and how identity is formed.

Purpose – This paper starts from the smart city concept and addresses its relevance for the tourism management literature to develop a process framework of “smart tourism destination governance”, which identifies the temporal stages and the crucial actions to take for designing and implementing a governance model oriented at the smart transformation of destinations. Tourism management literature has recently showed increasing interest in exploring the potential offered by the smart city concept, mainly conceived as the integrated use of ICT solutions, for achieving higher competitiveness. However, the pure adoption of innovative technologies is likely to be ineffective without adequate governance structures and processes that are required for ensuring the commitment and effective coordination and integration of firms, government and communities towards a holistic smart-oriented development plan for the tourism destination. This paper aims at bridging the smart city paradigm with the destination governance literature: the elaboration of a smart tourism destination governance process framework provides a valuable contribution for understanding how to effectively apply smartness principles for increasing the sustainable competitiveness of the destination beyond the mere technology dimension, making explicit the role of collaborative structures, user-driven service, social innovation and local community involvement. Design/methodology/approach – We draw on a critical review of the literature on destination governance and smart cities and tourism to identify the main temporal stages and the crucial actions to take in each stage for designing a smart tourism destination governance. The model makes explicit the linkages existing between relevant theories and all the identified stages of the development pathway for implementing an effective tourism destination smart governance model. For each stage the principles of a “smart logic” are integrated into the model, being used to define the specific content and form of actions to be taken to move along the destination journey towards smartness. Originality/value –This paper contributes to fill a relevant gap in the literature on tourism management by offering an original and integrative perspective for designing and implementing an effective smart tourism destination governance model. Practical implications – This framework is a flexible tool in the hands of destination managers for increasing the destination competitiveness; it shows how to match the design of governance structures and processes with the destination context, especially in terms of relational and knowledge capital of relevant stakeholders and implement smartness principles for its development following an incremental step by step logic.

Purpose – The aim of the paper that is to underline the economic and social policies needed for the promotion of entrepreneurship as this is an area that has benefited from initiatives that have failed throughout the Arab economies. Moreover, the paper tries to find out ways for the promotion of appropriate cultural values that could help promoting further, the creation of enterprises through the enhancement of entrepreneurship. This paper looks at the links between cultural variables, knowledge indices and entrepreneurship in Arab countries. Design/methodology/approach – In order to undergo the research the authors will use a regression analysis, hypothesis testing as well as secondary data on Arab countries. These data cover Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and variables related to enterprise creation that will be retrieved from several databases like Doing Business and World Bank. For further analysis, the outputs from Arab countries are also compared to those from the Eastern European economies as both groups of countries went through liberalization after a period of heavy government intervention. Originality/value – The innovativeness of the paper resides in the search for cultural determinants of entrepreneurship as these are related to individuals with their specific cultural characteristics. The use of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions is an important step towards looking for the link between entrepreneurship and the cultural values of each arab country. In addition, the outcomes of the paper have important value for both academia and policy makers as entrepreneurship is connected to specific cultural values that relate to the context in which enterprise creation policies are conducted. Moreover, this paper promotes the role that culture plays in knowledge economy and entrepreneurship in Arab countries. Practical implications – The outcomes from this paper are directly geared towards policy makers and those that are operating in the area of enterprise creation and development. In the context of a given country, different locations and regions might exhibit varieties of cultural dimensions that could affect the results of local initiatives focusing on entrepreneurship. Enterprise creation and entrepreneurship promotion policies need to be accounting for local cultural specificities. They should not be universal and omitting the cultural values that could drive for their entrepreneurship need to be promoted over time besides the implied specific instruments.

Purpose – (1) To study the impact of verifiable information on the multi-bilateral negotiations and their outcomes. (2) To explain the reasons for the sellers’ lower satisfaction despite achieving better results in verifiable vs. non-verifiable multi-bilateral negotiations. Design/methodology/approach – We propose an experimental approach, in which groups of students participate in multi-bilateral negotiations. Collected process data and data obtained from two questionnaires is used to compare non-verifiable and verifiable multi-bilateral negotiations. Originality/value –This is, arguably, the first study on the role of information in multi-bilateral multi-attribute negotiations. It shows that social-psychological aspects affect the process and that new information may increase the impact of these aspects on the results. Practical implications – While more experiments need to be conducted the results of these experiments are applicable to market exchanges and transactions which involve government and business organizations. Multi-bilateral negotiations are more flexible than auctions and they allow for the consideration of multiple attributes in a dynamic way. This is one of the reason for using them instead of multi-attribute auctions. The social-psychological aspects and the role of information needs to be carefully considered. The results from our experiments suggest that in business negotiations disclosure of verifiable information may have unintended consequences. These results should be verified in other experiment and field studies both in commercial and non-commercial contexts.

Purpose – This contribution identifies and addresses two lacunae in research that may be considered essential when addressing enterprise sustainability. Firstly, it seeks to provide a theoretical explanation for, and justification of, the reasons why successful processes in social and individual experience, as well as activity within an enterprise, need to be supplemented by a “quasi-theoretical” understanding of what individuals are doing (viewed both from inside and outside) when they act upon their experience in the interests of sustainability. Further, it elucidates the way in which theoretical explanations and their practical application/projection into reality work in general together. The central aim is, however, to provide both empirical insights resting upon experiential success derived from a case study and a sort of theoretical foundation provided by philosophy and theory of science. As a result, we will provide means for decision support in an explanatory (and not just descriptive) way to understand and improve evolutionary processes influencing how to integrate the idea of sustainability into an innovative modelling of enterprises. Design/methodology/approach – A short review of related research traditions is provided, followed by both a conceptual framework LIR (Language-Information-Reality) that rests upon research in the philosophy and theory of science, and empirical evidence both to challenge unreflective or – in the Socratic sense – “unexamined” organizational life intended to innovate towards sustainable enterprise models. Originality/value – Research related to enterprise sustainability has expanded in recent years, making room in the “representational” approach to accommodate an “enactive” or rather performative one. However, it appears that at the point of this integration a theoretical explanation and justification in organizational and management research is still absent. This contribution seeks therefore to explicate the above-mentioned model-theoretic systemic framework of analysis LIR and point out the many ways in which the mutual limitations inherent in the two approaches mentioned above clash with respect to examining organizational life, and are in need of interaction if they are to avoid misapplication and overexploitation of organizational knowledge. Practical implications – The proposed theoretical extension and explanation facilitates understanding and controlled reproducibility of those events that are considered and accepted as examples of sustainable success within an enterprise, economic or otherwise.

Purpose –Water scarcity is one of the main problems facing humankind, due to the population increase and the obsolescence of water distribution pipelines. Water services providers offer the defense that they are operating as efficiently as they can, given their specific circumstances, and that further increases in efficiency to reduce levels of leakage would require increased tariffs that are always politically unpopular. As a result, one of the main challenges for water supply managers is the definition of a sustainable plan to reduce water losses caused by leakage. The objective of this research is to support the decision makers in selecting a set of engineering solutions (e.g., leak detection and repairs and rehabilitation projects) to reduce leakage, namely a leakage plan or program, that takes into account the conflicting objectives of the actors involved, as well as the uncertainties characterizing these contexts. Design/methodology/approach – To accomplish with the research objective, an original approach is developed to determine a “sustainable plan of leakage reduction”. Starting from the concept of sustainability and its dimensions, it is able to combine different types of engineering solutions to reduce leakage (rehabilitation plan, pressure control, etc.), the conflicting objectives of the actors involved (water company and community), as well as the uncertainty-related factors that characterize these contexts (meteorological events, demand variability, etc.). Originality/value – This paper focuses on water supply system leakage, a high-profile topic worldwide due to the increasing international trend towards sustainability, economic efficiency and environmental protection. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it fills the existing gap in the literature on leakage management through the development of an innovative approach. It overcomes the limitation of the existing studies, by i) combining different types of engineering solutions to reduce leakage and not analysing just one type of intervention (e.g., rehabilitation versus pressure control activity), ii) considering the conflicting objectives of the actors involved (water company and community) and iii) including the uncertainty-related factors that characterize these contexts. Second, this paper develops an approach that will support the decision makers (practitioners) in selecting a “sustainable plan of leakage reduction”. Practical implications – The outcomes of the analysis is intended to provide some managerial implications that can be useful for water company managers that face with water resource management planning.

Purpose – Open innovation (OI) literature suggests that firms can improve their innovation performance by learning from a large set of actors in the innovation process. However, although this premise, the extant literature has rather completely overlooked the ‘who’ question: which partners should be included in the different phases of the innovation funnel? How should they be selected? This paper, while focusing in the early phases of the innovation process, offers a list of possible criteria for partner evaluation and suggests a structured methodology for their selection. An empirical test of both the criteria and the methodology is presented with reference to a company operating in the Advanced Underwater Systems sector. Design/methodology/approach – In order to support a group of decision makers (DM) in the complex process of selecting partners at the beginning of OI process, we propose a peer-based modification of intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) multi-criteria group decision making with TOPSIS method (peer IF-TOPSIS). The combination of IF set theory with TOPSIS, IF-TOPSIS allows coping with subjectivity, imprecision, and vagueness in group decision-making problem under multiple criteria. Originality/value – This work contributes to the extant literature in different ways. Firstly, it is one of the first papers in the OI literature to focus on the ‘who’ issue, giving firms indications on how selecting the external partners. Secondly, this paper advances the criteria that could be used in the selection process, avoiding focusing on single specific aspects of the collaboration phase or on specific types of partners (suppliers). Lastly, while providing an example of empirical application in a real context, it extends the application of IF-TOPSIS to a challenging decision problem – never considered before in the decision making literature. Practical implications – This work provides firms which are in the early stages of OI processes with a set of criteria for selecting partners and a structured methodology supporting the decision process.

Purpose –The dilemma posed by March (1991) about the contradictions involved in exploration and exploitation learning gave rise to the emergence of the “Organizational Ambidexterity (OA)” concept as a metaphor to define those organizations which are able to develop exploitation and exploration learning at the same time. On the other hand, special attention has been paid from the human resource management (HRM) field to the link between high performance work systems (HPWSs) and performance. The main objectives of this research are: firstly, to determine whether the utilization of an HPWS exerts a positive influence on OA; secondly, to know the extent to which HPWSs and OA contribute to organizational performance; thirdly, to verify the potential mediating role played by OA on the HPWS-performance relationship. Design/methodology/approach –The theoretical model and the hypotheses proposed were tested using a sample of 100 Spanish hotels. A questionnaire pre-tested by academics and professional experts and sent online to the Human Resource Manager was used to collect information. The data analysis method used was that of Partial Least Squares (PLS). Originality/value – This paper represents a valuable contribution to the literature in several ways. Firstly, this research advances in the understanding the factors that stimulate the OA. It determines the extent to which HRM influences organizations to develop exploration and exploitation learning. This “micro” approach about the OA complements the current literature about this topic. Secondly, this paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between OA and performance. And thirdly, our findings demonstrate that the relationship between HPWSs and performance is not direct. This relationship is mediated by OA. This conclusion can be a reference for further research in this area. Practical implications – The practical implications are the following. OA is a decisive element in generating competitive advantages. The ability of the firm to follow, at the same time, exploration and exploitation learning, has a positive effect on organizational performance. However, the managers must be aware that the use of an HPWS is a key antecedent factor in this process. Therefore, those organizations which articulate a complementary group of human resource management practices will improve the firm’s capacity to simultaneously carry out exploitation and exploration activities, essentially because they develop a suitable context which encourages workers to the learning exploitation, on the one hand and, furthermore, boosts the support of learning exploration. The managers should include the basic practices that configure an HPWS (i.e. comprehensive staffing; extensive training; development performance appraisal; and equitable reward systems).

Purpose – In the last years, many researchers have recognized the importance of adopting innovative business model to stay competitive in dynamic business environment (Amit and Zott, 2010; Chesbrough and Rosenbloom, 2002; Teece, 2010). Although the importance of business model innovation affects all the economic activities, this is particularly true for some industries more involved to face the acceleration of the pace of change, the relevance of value networking, the greater availability of knowledge, the increasing growth and role of new competitive players: it is the case of the technology-intensive industries. In fact, in the last decade, in business scenario changing and under an high competitive pressure, technology-intensive organizations are revisiting and expanding their traditional borders and modalities to do business, trying to re-think their value propositions and to integrate more effectively new products and services, customers segmentation, places and channels, partnerships, competences and cost-reduction needs. According to this great relevance, this paper aims to analyze more-in-depth the notion of Business Model (BM) and Business Model Innovation (BMI) and then to set the scene for understanding the state-of-the-art about the orientation, perceptions and adoption of innovative business models as lever that supports new entrepreneurship, performance improvement and sustainability by a sample of companies operating in specific technology-intensive industries. Design/methodology/approach – A review of the relevant literature – both at academic and practitioner level – has been carried on the notion of BM and BMI. Then, a case-study methodology has been adopted. Specifically, the analysis of three Italian spin-offs operating in the ICT industries let to draw some first information and insights about their orientation, elaboration and implementation about BM and BMI. Originality/value – This paper provides a new interpretive framework to identify the orientation and the managerial issues about BM and BMI of a specific sample of technology-intensive companies such as spin-offs operating in the ICT industries.

Purpose – This paper investigates the interrelationships between knowledge integration (KI), product innovation and capability development to enhance our understanding of how firms can develop capability at the firm level, which in turn enhances their performance. One of the critical underlying mechanisms for capability building identified in the literature is the role of knowledge integration, which operates within product innovation projects and contributes to dynamic capability development. Therefore, the main research question is “how does the integration of knowledge across product innovation projects lead to the development of capability?” Design/methodology/approach – We adopted a case-based approach and investigated the case of a successful firm that was able to sustain its performance through a series of product innovation projects. In particular this research focused on the role of KI and firm-level capability development over the course of four projects, during which the firm successfully managed the transformation of its product base and renewal of its competitive advantage. For this purpose an in-depth case study of capability development was undertaken at the Iran Khodro Company (IKCO), the key player in the Iranian auto industry transformation. Originality/value – This research revealed that along with changes at each level of product architecture “design knowledge” and “design capability” have been developed at the same level of product architecture, leading to capability development at that level. It can be argued that along the step by step maturation of radical innovation across the four case projects, architectural knowledge and capability have been developed at the case company, resulting in the gradual emergence of a modular product and capability architecture across different levels of product architecture. Such findings basically add to extensive emphasis in the literature on the interrelationship of the concept of modularity with knowledge management and capability development. Practical implications – Findings of this study indicate that firms manage their knowledge in accordance with the level of specialization in knowledge and capability. Furthermore, firms design appropriate knowledge integration mechanisms within and among functions in order dynamically align knowledge processes at different levels of the product architecture. Accordingly, the outcomes of this study may guide practitioners in managing their knowledge processes, through dynamically employing knowledge integration modes step-by-step and from the part level to the architectural level of product architecture across a sequence of product innovation projects to encourage learning and radical innovation.

Purpose – In the field of virtual reconstruction of architectural heritage cooperation and management highly influence a project progress and success. This paper presents and discusses practical problems and challenges related to cross-disciplinary cooperation within professional and educational contexts. The usage of SCRUM as a procedure model from agile software development will be presented and discussed as a promising approach to deal with these challenges. Moreover, the paper sketches a lay-out to implement and evaluate this method in context of a project based learning setting. Design/methodology/approach – To discover challenges and problems in cooperation practice, authors performed five case studies about reconstruction projects in academic context. By using Grounded Theory as a qualitative empirical approach, several typical challenges of objective setting, cross-disciplinary communication and project management were identified. Against this background, an application and prospected additional values of SCRUM are discussed on a conceptual level. Originality/value – The article inherits a discussion of general potentials of SCRUM in context of virtual reconstruction projects. Moreover, a layout for a usage of SCRUM within an educational project setting is sketched. Practical implications – A practical course which bases on the developed layout is proposed to take place in early 2016.

Fablabs and makerspaces equipped with new generative technologies e.g. 3D scanning, 3D printing, or laser cutting do not only change the way how innovative products come into being. Increasingly, they are are discovered as means for the production of scientific knowledge. Over the past years, fablabs have successfully found their way into universities and research institutes, while makerspaces have become a popular and social variation of it. Based on exploratory experiments and field research on fablabs in academic settings, the article discusses the role they can take in the context of scientific work, and the epistemological status of their output. Can fablabs turn into genuine ‘science fabs’? And what kind of ‘fab science’ emerges from them? The article suggests three specific roles for fablabs: 1) For strongly differentiated and sophisticated high-end science, they function as translators for otherwise difficult to communicate research items; 2) for newly developing ‘proto-sciences’ at the intersection of disciplines, they provide a facilitation platform, bringing together highly diverse research cultures, attitudes, and viewpoints; 3) they provide testbeds and living labs for the research of inter- and transdisciplinarity itself. Developing these streams, the paper gives an outlook onto potential assets that fablabs may contribute for future science, especially in regards to R&D collaboration.

Purpose – In the last years the awareness that absorbing the arts in organisational working mechanisms and business models can drive performance improvements has gradually risen (Darsø 2004, Meisiek and Barry, 2014; Styhre and Eriksson 2008) and experiments with arts based initiatives (ABIs) in organizations have increased. Anecdotes, observations, empirical evidences demonstrate that artistic interventions can provide several benefits. From a research perspective, to date there are few, if any, existing theories, models, approaches that can provide conceptual and methodological frameworks as a basis for evaluating the effects produced ABIs. This is not surprising for a relatively new field of practice. Particularly, the definition of structured approaches to assess the potential value-added of ABIs in organisations represents a key research challenge. Building on the framework of the Arts Value Map (Schiuma, 2011), this paper aims to shed light on how to integrate ABIs in the operation and strategy of an organization, and offers some insights to understand how these initiatives can turn into the desired business performance results. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a literature review about artistic interventions as a tool to enhance organizational performance and mapping and narrative approaches for evaluation, the paper suggests a mapping based model for disclosing -according to a narrative approach – how arts contribute to organizational value creation. Originality/value –Seeking to understand how artistic initiatives affect organizational dynamics and outcomes and the kinds of value generated still represents a critical issue. The paper proposes a model – based on mapping and narrative approaches- to face this challenge. Practical implications – Nowadays practitioners are more and more intrigued by what happen when the “diversified ad original world” of arts meets the “more conventional world” of public and private organisations. The proposed model can be deployed as a complementary framework to other approaches and tools to understand the benefits of bringing the arts in organisations as innovative managerial instruments to face business challenges.

Purpose – In the current competitive scenario, innovative thinking is a fundamental addition to traditional business thinking. Increasingly organizations have to face unstable and unclear scenarios and to undertake challenges, that sometimes are so complex that organizations can’t just dive in. In such scenario, rather than identifying right answers or wrong answers, the goal should be exploring multiple possibilities, not relying on past experiences and known facts and consider ambiguity an opportunity. In other terms it is appropriate to ponder and approach the situations in an unconventional way using innovative thinking. The paper analyses the use of projective techniques as tool for stimulating innovative thinking in organization. These techniques are generally used in the field of psychotherapy, forensic and market research. However they can be advantageously used in business and can pave the way to bring more innovation into organization. Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on a case study carried out at a research marketing company which uses projective techniques as a tool to support, lead and develop innovative thinking. The research was conducted in two main phases. In the first phase we analyzed literature on projective techniques, putting particular attention on their use in practice. Then, attending a series of focus groups and interviews we examined the employ of the techniques in the investigated company. Finally, combining the gained theoretical and practical insights we designed a matrix tool for helping users of projective techniques in various phases of the business life cycle. Originality/value – This paper represents one of the first attempts to investigate at practical level, the application of projective techniques in a business landscape. Specifically, it shows how the projective techniques can be applied at various stages of the company’s life cycle: from initial idea generation up to the change management stage. Practical implications – In today’s business landscape, organizations need to identify new approaches for developing creativity and innovation. Projective techniques can be deployed as effective tools to develop the innovative thinking of management and employees and as an approach to capture insights from customers. The paper suggests insights on the practice use of projective techniques and provides a matrix to guide the application of the techniques in company’s life cycle.

Purpose – This paper investigates the strategies and policies that a sample of selected small and medium companies in a given geographic area (i.e., Apulia region, in Southern Italy) adopt with respect to sustainability issues. The companies have been selected as they are considered (by the local industrial associations) as sustainability champions in the targeted geographic area. In particular, four research questions are addressed: Which meaning do the analyzed companies attribute to “sustainability”? How do they put sustainability into practice? In which way do their specific actions reflect the meaning they give to “act sustainably”? Which are the main barriers companies found in embracing sustainability? Which benefits do arise from practicing sustainability and which disadvantages do they deal with? Design/methodology/approach – We use descriptive multiple case studies to investigate the dynamics related to corporate sustainability. We conducted open-ended in-depth interviews with managers and executives for each of the selected cases. Every interview was conducted through direct visits to companies and lasted at least two hours, so allowing the issues under investigation to be comprehensively analysed and the management’s views and opinions to be more correctly perceived and interpreted. Originality/value – Based on the in-depth analysis of the selected cases, some initial theoretical findings can be pointed out: when a company embraces sustainability, so simultaneously focusing on the economic, environmental, and social dimensions (e.g. Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002), it also focuses on quality – in its broad meaning, which ranges from product quality to quality of human relationships – and adopts a long-term orientation in decision making. Both quality and long-term orientation are aptitudes that reflect on mental models of any organization; therefore, the company’s commitment to embrace sustainability principles shapes its strategy and affects its programs and initiatives. Practical implications – This paper highlights some benefits that the interviewed managers or entrepreneurs put into relation with the adoption of sustainability. They concern profitability, image improvement, attraction of talented workers, better organizational climate, better relationships with partners, development of specific know-how and abilities, access to new markets, and long-term (i.e. sustainable) growth. Nonetheless, adopting a sustainability strategy requires to overcome some barriers – such as the need of strong financial efforts and a high dependency upon public subsidies for conducting investments – and presents some disadvantages (most benefits need time to be fully appreciated and there are higher risks of significant revenue losses).

Purpose – The objective of this paper is twofold. On one hand it explores the relationship between a firm ownership structure and R&D, on the other it tests the relationship between the board structure and the investments in innovation. Design/methodology/approach – This investigation is based on a sample of Italian listed companies observed over the period 2005-2013. In particular, through a regression analysis, it will explore the relationship between ownership concentration and R&D, as well as the relationship between the characteristics of the board of directors and R&D. Originality/value – This methodology highlights both the relationship between the ownership structure and the expenditure on R&D and the relationship between board composition and R&D. If the research, on one hand, extends the extant literature on aspects of corporate governance and innovation, on the other it is rooted in the resource dependence and agency theory frameworks. Our findings appear of interest since a relationship has emerged between ownership concentration and R&D on one hand, and some dimensions of the Board of Directors and R&D on the other. Practical implications – The outcomes of the application, besides improving the current understanding of the relationship between firms’ ownership structure, board characteristics, innovation and corporate performance, intend to reveal if the governance of Italian listed companies is efficient in determining company results and in pursuing growth through innovation. Moreover, our results could be of interest to both policy makers for the regulation of corporate governance and of BoDs, and to companies that regularly appoint the members of the board of directors.