Knowledge management and innovation: How are they related?

Companies in today’s globalised world must innovate to compete. Many successful companies have found that knowledge management strategies and practices are central to ongoing innovation (Boutellier et al., 1999; David & Foray, 2001; ADLittle, 2001; Tidd et al., 1997). This paper brings together research regarding knowledge management processes and practices that are found in R&D organisations and in other innovative firms. The paper contends that such practices could be employed across a range of firms to enable and enhance the potential for innovation within firms in multiple sectors

Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field

The sustainability transitions literature seeks to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental ‘niches’; but recent research on ‘grassroots innovations’ argues that civil society is a promising but under-researched site of innovation for sustainability, albeit one with very different characteristics to the market-based innovation normally considered in the literature. This paper aims to address that research gap by exploring the relevance of niche development theories in a civil society context. To do this, we examine a growing grassroots innovation – the international field of community currencies – which comprises a range of new socio-technical configurations of systems of exchange which have emerged from civil society over the last 30 years, intended to provide more environmentally and socially sustainable forms of money and finance. We draw on new empirical research from an international study of these initiatives comprising primary and secondary data and documentary sources, elite interviews and participant observation in the field. We describe the global diffusion of community currencies, and then conduct a niche analysis to evaluate the utility of niche theories for explaining the development of the community currency movement. We find that some niche-building processes identified in the existing literature are relevant in a grassroots context: the importance of building networks, managing expectations and the significance of external ‘landscape’ pressures, particularly at the level of national-type. However, our findings suggest that existing theories do not fully capture the complexity of this type of innovation: we find a diverse field addressing a range of societal systems (money, welfare, education, health, consumerism), and showing increasing fragmentation (as opposed to consolidation and standardisation); furthermore, there is little evidence of formalised learning taking place but this has not hampered movement growth. We conclude that grassroots innovations develop and diffuse in quite different ways to conventional innovations, and that niche theories require adaptation to the civil society context

Challenging the Enterprises' Business Model: helping entrepreneurs to understand and interpret opportunities and threats

Christopher Brown, Diane Morrad, ‘Challenging the Enterprises' Business Model: helping entrepreneurs to understand and interpret opportunities and threats’, paper presented at the 15th Annual Edineb Conference, Malaga, Spain, 15-18 June, 2008.Enterprises are presented with ever increasing challenges regarding marketplace uncertainty and ambiguity. They face competitive pressures from local and international sources, their competitors are constantly tweaking products and services to jostle ahead of them, and their customers expect responsiveness and innovativeness to their expressed and latent needs. The enterprises’ very success, and survival, depends on their ability to change their business, market and product strategies to fit these challenges. Underlying these business, market and product strategies is the enterprises’ business model. Simply, business models are an organisation’s understanding and interpretation of how they currently, and in the future, achieve their revenue and profit streams. These business models, used by the senior management and employees, are often based on outdated perspectives of both how the marketplace works and the changing business and customer values expected by their demanding stakeholders. In SMEs the creation, development and creative deconstruction of business models is most often driven by the founding entrepreneur, or subsequent corporate entrepreneurs brought in to provide professional management of these rapidly growing businesses. Interestingly, more recent research has strongly linked entrepreneurs’ mindset, or mental models (Zahra, Korri et al. 2005), associated with the challenges to the enterprise, with their drivers for innovation and changes in their enterprises’ business models. Certainly research has identified the potential value changes, business and customer, that can often facilitate the construction and deconstruction of business value-based innovations (Munive-Hernandez, Dewhurst et al. 2004), and then reflecting these in their overall business processes. This paper discusses the research study, undertaken by the authors, to explore the link between entrepreneurs’ understanding and interpretation of business opportunities and threats, and the potential influence in challenging their mindset business model. The paper begins by discussing the two broad approaches to modelling enterprise strategies and the resulting integrated business models: innovation and process orientations.Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio

Community innovation for sustainable energy

As in other countries, there is a growing public, policy and business interest in the UK in the roles and potential of community-led initiatives for sustainable energy consumption and production. Such initiatives include green lifestyle-based activities to reduce energy consumption (e.g. Transition Towns, and Carbon Reduction Action Groups), more traditional behaviour change initiatives such as neighbourhood insulation projects and energy-saving campaigns, as well as renewable energy generation projects such as community-owned windfarms and biofuel projects. Case studies of specific projects identify a variety of rationales amongst participants, whilst policy interest suggests a more instrumental concern for facilitating additional, larger-scale sustainable energy transitions. Amongst participant rationales are ideas that bottom-up, community-based projects deliver energy savings and behaviour changes that top-down policy instruments cannot achieve, due to the greater local knowledge and engagement they embody, the sense of common ownership and empowerment, and the social capital and trust that is generated among local actors. These resources provide organisational and values-based 'grassroots innovations' which experiment with new consumption practices based on alternative 'new economics' values. However, previous research shows 'grassroots innovations' face a series of critical challenges requiring support to overcome, in order to achieve their potential benefits more widely. This includes developing 'niche' networks for mobilising reforms both to highly centralised energy institutions and infrastructures, as well as deeply ingrained social practices of 'normal' energy consumption and everyday life. What makes this experience fascinating for the purposes of the SCORAI workshop is the way these community-based initiatives are trying to develop new energy-related consumption practices with a view to the socio-technical transition to local, renewable or lower carbon energy systems. Understandably, many projects remain practically focused on securing early successes and resourcing their long-term survival. However, the institutional and infrastructure reforms that will help in this endeavour require strategies for addressing the wider (national and international) political economy of consumption which adopts an ecological modernisation approach to sustainability. In surveying the community energy scene in the UK, our paper pays particular attention to this last issue

Role of Networking in Innovation Promotion and Cluster Modernization: “House of the Future” Case

This paper stresses the potential of innovative business cooperation networks in promoting regional competitiveness. It is based on the case study of a cooperation network, named “House of the Future”, carried out in the framework of a project where the University of Aveiro has an important role. It suggests success factors in the development of co-operation networks between firms from various sectors and a university. The aim of the “House of the Future” initiative is to promote an innovative approach to inter-organizational cooperation joining together firms from a number of different industrial activities related with the habitat meta-sector. This collaborative effort can function as an experiment for the design of regional innovation policies.

A grassroots sustainable energy niche? Reflections on community energy case studies

System changing innovations for sustainability transitions are proposed to emerge in radical innovative niches. ‘Strategic Niche Management’ theory predicts that niche level actors and networks will aggregate learning from local projects, distilling and disseminating best practice. This should lower the bar for new projects to form and establish, thereby encouraging the innovation to diffuse through replication. Within this literature, grassroots innovations emerging from civil society are an under researched site of sociotechnical innovation for sustainable energy transitions. We consider the emerging community energy sector in the UK, in order to empirically test this model. Community energy is a diverse grassroots led sector including both demand and supply side initiatives for sustainable energy such as community owned renewable energy generation, village hall refurbishments, behaviour change initiatives and energy efficiency projects. Our analysis draws on in depth qualitative case study research with twelve local projects, and a study of how intermediary organisations aim to support local projects and encourage replication. This rich data allows us to examine the extent and nature of interactions between projects and intermediary actors in order to evaluate the utility of niche theories in the civil society context. In particular, we investigate which types of knowledge, support and resources were needed by our case study projects to become established and thrive, and compare and contrast this with those offered by the emerging community energy niche. Our findings indicate that while networking and intermediary organisations can effectively collate and spread some types of learning and information necessary for replication, this is not sufficient: tacit knowledge, trust and confidence are essential to these projects’ success, but are more difficult to abstract and translate to new settings. We draw out the implications of our findings for niche theory, for community energy and other grassroots practitioners aiming to build robust influential niches, and for policymakers eager to harness civil society’s innovative potential for sustainability

Managing In Knowledge-Based Economies: Managing for Knowledge, Absorptive Capacity and Innovation

Management processes have evolved to meet changing internal and external environments through different organisational forms, systems and processes. The emerging phenomena of the knowledge based economy challenges not only the strategic management of a firm but also the understandings and competencies of managers, both individually and collectively. This paper examines the challenge of managing in the global networked context of the knowledge economy. Using the knowledge based view of the firm and knowledge of management processes, we argue that management in the twenty-first century involves not only the familiar processes of managing tasks, managing others and managing change, but also requires a strategic approach to managing for knowledge, absorptive capacity and innovation

Innovation and Collective Entrepreneurship

This paper examines different forms of innovation including social innovation, and why innovation and social innovation have become important themes in public policy in a context of the increasing and diverse demands on welfare regimes, and in an era of constrained budgets. It will review different perspectives on innovation and social innovation and the dynamic interaction through collective entrepreneurship in the social and solidarity economy; bringing out process and outcome dimensions of innovation. And it will develop an understanding of the drivers and barriers to innovation, including the role of the institutional and policy framework. It will set this analysis within the context of public policy, demonstrating their role in enabling such innovations in the social and solidarity economy

Methods and models of next generation technology enhanced learning - White Paper

Our understanding of learning with technology is increasingly lagging behind technological advancements, such that it is no longer possible to fully understand learning with technologies without bringing together evidence from practice-based experiences and theoretical insight to inform research, design, policy and practice. Furthermore, whilst practical experiences and theoretical insights make significant contributions towards understanding learning with new technologies, the dynamic nature of learner practices and study contexts make it difficult to predict future requirements in terms of methods and models for next generation technology enhanced learning. We therefore require formal and comprehensive methods and models of learning with technology that accommodate theory and practice whilst allowing us to anticipate methodological innovations that capture future transitions and changes in learner practices and study contexts, in order to inform research, design, policy and practice. Workshop participants represented different communities of interest including research, design, evaluation and assessment. The overall objective was to anticipate methodological innovations in technology enhanced learning research and design over the next 5/10 years

A strategic niche management approach for shaping bio-based economy in Europe

The goal of this paper is to investigate the transition towards a bio-based economy as part of a broader sustainable transition in Europe. To analyse the challenges and opportunities associated with the bio-based economy, we applied the Strategic Niche Management approach to investigate the drivers that boost the emergence of the bio-based economy, the factors hindering it, as well as institutional changes which are at the base of the socio-technological transition. Although considered as just one piece of the sustainability puzzle, the bio-based economy behaves as a socio-technical system on its own, providing valuable hints on systemic transitions