Coping with a fast-changing world: Towards new systems of future-oriented technology analysis

Transformations linked to disruptive events are causing a shift in future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) activities from individual large-scale foresight actions to smaller in-house exercises and capacity building. The reasons are manifold relating to the need for an even tighter embedding of FTA in policy-making in a fast-changing complex environment as well as to internal drivers for novel forms of future intelligence to support coordinated and coherent decisions within and across organisations. This paper identifies three ideal types: external FTA services, the institutionalisation of FTA, and FTA networks, whilst recognising that in practice these types are complementary. In empirical terms this requires further investigation, in order to understand how different combinations of activities actually operate in their respective decision-making contexts. It is important to improve our understanding of how far institutionalised FTA can form part of customised solutions for building capacity to handle disruption

Almost as helpful as good theory: Some conceptual possibilities for the online classroom

Interest and activity in the use of C&IT in higher education is growing, and while there is effort to understand the complexity of the transition to virtual space, aspects of development, particularly clarity about the nature of the learning community, may only be lightly theorized. Based on an ongoing action research study involving postgraduate students studying in the UK and USA, this paper will identify some theoretical roots and derive from these six conceptual areas that seem to the authors to have relevance and significance for behaviour online. An exploration of these forms the basis for a two‐dimensional model which can account for what happens when groups come together to learn in cyberspace. In depicting this model, there is acknowledgement of the existence of third and fourth dimensions at work. However, the explanatory power of taking these extra dimensions into account is beyond the scope of the analysis thus far

The Borneo Company Limited:The Origins of a Nineteenth Century Networked Multinational

The origins of British-based trading companies are to be found in the international mercantile networks which linked together Britain's commercial centres with the rest of the world during the nineteenth century. One such network, drawing together participants with operations in Singapore and Sarawak, was formalized under the title of The Borneo Company Limited (BCL) between 1851 and 1856. To function effectively, these inter-personal networks of merchants required a high degree of trustworthiness among the participants in order to overcome principal/agent problems, since direct supervision from the headquarters in London was not feasible. However, in order to expand, it was necessary to widen the circle of network participants and to incorporate new types of competence. This contribution analyses the early history of BCL with a view to understanding the way in which the process of growth was managed, distinguishing between three different types of expansion: engaging in production as well as trade; extending the geographical scope of the organization; and diversifying into new markets

International sport federations in the world city network

In this article, we analyze the transnational urban geographies produced by international sport federations (ISFs) through their global, regional, and national headquarter locations. Data on the global urban presence of 35 major ISFs are examined through connectivity analysis and principal component analysis. The connectivity analysis reveals the relative dominance of cities in Europe and Pacific Asia, whereby Seoul, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Cairo, and Lausanne stand out. The principal component analysis reveals the main subnetworks produced through ISF location decisions, which includes inter alia a "winter sports subnetwork" centered on Ankara, Belgrade, Helsinki, and Stockholm; an "Olympic subnetwork" centered on Lausanne; and a decentered subnetwork with truly "global sports."

Public sector purchasers as curators and value creators in the food system.

The 3P Mentorship Program is a community of practice that convenes institutional food buyers around a shared vision to use the $750 million purchasing power of the Ontario public sector to foster resilient local food systems. Five design principles emerged from the program, which ran as a pilot in 2014-2015 with a cohort of four institutional mentees: a hospital, university, college, and long term care home, each represented by a manager influencing the institutions’ procurement. System mapping and informal interviews revealed that the point of purchase was a high leverage, low friction point of intervention where procurement mechanisms, such as the RFP, make institutions passive consumers of value from the food system. A challenge emerged to design a minimally disruptive intervention that would enable managers to re-claim these mechanisms and to re-imagine their institutions as creators of value, in a position to curate the “reconfiguration of roles and relationships among [the] constellation of actors” for a more resilient food system (Normann and Ramirez, 1993). The pilot generated evidence of the ability of networked institutions to collaborate on a shared vision to increase the social good generated through purchasing, and to play a transformative role in food systems

Culture, technology and the city

The 21st century has been described as the “century of cities”. By 2030, 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities, with the most rapid urbanization occurring in the developing world. This paper will draw up geographer Ed Soja’s concept of the “spatial turn” in social theory to consider how the culture of cities can act as a catalyst to innovation and the development of new technologies. In doing so, the paper will develop a three-layered approach to culture as: the arts; the way of life of people and communities; and the embedded structure underpinning socio-economic relations. It will also consider technology at a three-layered element, including devices, practices and ‘logics’ of technology, or what the Greeks termed techne. The paper will consider recent approaches to urban cultural policy, including cluster development and creative cities, and suggest some alternatives, noting that a problem with current approaches is that they focus excessively upon production (clusters) or consumption (creative cities). It will also consider the development of digital creative industries such as games, and the strategies of different cities to develop an innovation culture

When Europe encounters urban governance: Policy Types, Actor Games and Mechanisms of cites Europeanization

This paper examines European Union (EU) causal mechanisms and policy instruments affecting the urban domain throughout the lenses of the Europeanization approach. Instead of looking at EU instruments that are formally/legally consecrated to cities, we use theoretical public policy analysis to explore the arenas and the causal mechanisms that structure the encounters between the EU and urban systems of governance. Policy instruments are related to policy arenas and in turn to different mechanisms of transmission thus originating a typology of European Policy Modes. The paper focuses on four different EU instruments in the in the macro-area of sustainable development and proposes potential game-theoretical models for each of them. In the conclusions we highlight the differences between this approach and the traditional analysis of EU urban policy, and suggest avenues for future empirical research based on typologies of policy instruments and modes of Europeanization

The Learning Organisation and National Systems of Competence Building and Innovation

This paper is based on a hypothesis that we have entered a specific phase of economic development, which we refer to as the 'learning economy', where knowledge and learning have become more important than in any earlier historical period. In this new context the learning capability of firms located in the domestic economy becomes a major concern for national governments and, at the same time, the national infrastructure supporting knowledge creation, diffusion and use becomes a concern for management and employees. To get the two to match and support each other becomes a prerequisite for economic success for firms as well as for the national economy. One of the main objectives of this paper is to demonstrate that societal institutions, which may exist at the national or regional levels, shape the types of organisational learning predominating at the level of the firm. The paper develops the concept of a 'national system of competence building and innovation' by linking national specificities in the formation of skills and labour market dynamics to the micro-level processes of knowledge creation and learning within and between firms. It uses the examples of Japan, Denmark and the high-technology clusters in the US and UK to illustrate the logic of institutionalised variation in patterns of learning and innovation. The paper argues that tacit knowledge, which is difficult to create and transfer in the absence of social interaction and labour mobility, constitutes a most important source of learning and sustainable competitive advantage. Learning builds on trust and social capital. Institutions that are able to imbue these elements into firms and markets encourage interactive learning and are more likely to produce strong innovative capabilities.learning organisations; learning economy; knowledge creation; national innovation systems; institutions; tacit knowledge, competence building

Narrative environments: how do they matter?

The significance and possible senses of the phrase 'narrative environment' are explored. It is argued that 'narrative environment' is not only polysemous but also paradoxical; not only representational but also performative; and not just performatively repetitive but also reflexive and constitutive. As such, it is useful for understanding the world of the early 21st century. Thus, while the phrase narrative environment can be used to denote highly capitalised, highly regulated corporate forms, i.e. "brandscapes", it can also be understood as a metaphor for the emerging reflexive knowledge-work-places in the ouroboric, paradoxical economies of the 21st century. Narrative environments are the media and the materialities through which we come to comprehend that world and to act in those economies. Narrative environments are therefore, sophistically, performative-representative both of the corporate dominance of life worlds and of the undoing of that dominance, through the iterative responses to the paradoxical injunction: "learn to live"