Innovation for development and poverty reduction: an integrative literature review

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a critical analysis of the innovation discourse, arguing that a more contextualised understanding of the challenges of innovation for development and poverty reduction in low-income economies will help the authors’ to unravel new development opportunities and provide alternatives to conventional capitalist paths to innovation. Design/methodology/approach – The authors offer an integrative review of the literature addressing the topic of innovation emerging from within developing countries. Because existing innovation models are generally presented in ways that reflect practices and thought patterns inherent to the industrialised world, a literature review that offers an initial conceptualisation and synthesis of the literature to date on the theme of innovation from within developing countries provides for a more valuable contribution than a reconceptualization of existing models. Findings – The paper highlights different narratives of innovation, how they emerge and what are their implications. The authors outline a research agenda for generating new knowledge about innovation capabilities in what is generally known as the developing world. Originality/value – This paper shows that the recent evolution of the discourse of development is increasingly intertwined with elements that originated in other discursive worlds. The last three decades of innovation research have been characterised by a “cross-pollination” between different disciplines: development studies, science and technology studies, business management and organisation studies. By reviewing major research works conducted by scholars in these disciplines, this paper weds literature that heretofore have remained largely isolated from each other. The key innovation narratives that the study unveils – e.g. inclusive growth, bottom of the pyramid, grassroots innovation – address major questions of concern to these academic scholars around the political and socio-technical aspects that influence a firm’s capacity to innovate in the context of developing countries

Review of practice-led research in art, design & architecture

This review report sets out the outcomes of a 10 month investigation to describe the landscape of practice-led research in Art, Design and Architecture (ADA) in the UK and beyond. We were asked for a qualitative review but of course it has been important to gather some numbers to check and illustrate our observations. We have consulted widely, both face to face and in the virtual world, with experts and novices in the UK and around the world. We have tried to strike a balance between the natural desire of our colleagues to debate the more contentious aspects of this territory (they were never going to forgo that opportunity) and the equally strong wish of the AHRC that we should provide a clear description of what is happening. We have collected some diverse examples of research and subjected them to various examinations. We have also examined a selection of research projects funded by AHRC and other projects by creative practitioners, funded by a non-research organisation. From all this we have been able to describe the landscape in a straightforward sense: We have measures of the proportions of ADA academics involved in practice-led research. We have clarified differences in the ways that the different ADA disciplines engage with practice-led research and identified some problems that indicate possible future support strategies. We have discussed some problems with general definitions of research and identified issues that should be addressed to ensure that the AHRC definition can be applied to the full range of practice-led research. We have picked out some specific case examples that illustrate the range of contexts, methods and contributions made by practice-led researchers, and more are described in detail in Appendix F. We have also sought to assess how this research relates to the wider international picture in which the UK appears to have a strong position in both volume and development of research. We have also set out some issues that affect this community of researchers: What strengths and weaknesses have we observed and where is there a need to support development? Do the AHRC definition of research and guidance on practice-led research provide an effective framework? We have illustrated the state of development of research in ADA, and some reasons why it is less robust than might be expected from such long established disciplines. We recommend that the career path of researchers in ADA needs some attention and make some suggestions about how that could be achieved. We have also indicated some areas of inquiry that might be supported to advance the theory and methods of practice-led research. In particular we have come to the conclusion that conventional ideas of contribution to knowledge or understanding may not be serving us well. This is significant to fine artists but we believe that it relevant across ADA and a shared effort to develop appropriate new models would be a constructive development. The full set of recommendations can be found in chapter 5

Technology education in the New Zealand curriculum

In this chapter, the way in which experience of existing school programmes influences teacher perceptions of technology education is discussed, and reasons for teaching technology are outlined. A relationship between technology and technology education is suggested and the structure of technology education in the New Zealand technology curriculum is described. A particular focus is the role of technological activities in technology education, and this is developed in the final section

Co-creative expertise: Auran games and fury: A case study

This article discusses the ways in which the relations among professional and non-professional participants in co-creative relations are being reconfigured as part of the shift from a closed industrial paradigm of expertise toward open and distributed expertise networks. This article draws on ethnographic consultancy research undertaken throughout 2007 with Auran Games, a Brisbane, Australia based games developer, to explore the co-creative relationships between professional developers and gamers. This research followed and informed Auran’s online community management and social networking strategies for Fury (http://unleashthefury.com), a massively multiplayer online game released in October 2007. This paper argues that these co-creative forms of expertise involve co-ordinating expertises through social-network markets

Transformative spaces in the making: key lessons from nine cases in the Global South

Creating a just and sustainable planet will require not only small changes, but also systemic transformations in how humans relate to the planet and to each other, i.e., social–ecological transformations. We suggest there is a need for collaborative environments where experimentation with new configurations of social–ecological systems can occur, and we refer to these as transformative spaces. In this paper, we seek a better understanding of how to design and enable the creation of transformative spaces in a development context. We analyse nine case studies from a previous special issue on Designing Transformative Spaces that aimed to collect examples of cutting-edge action-oriented research on transformations from the Global South. The analysis showed five design phases as being essential: Problem Definition Phase; Operationalisation Phase; Tactical Phase; Outcome Phase; and Reflection Phase. From this synthesis, we distilled five key messages that should be considered when designing research, including: (a) there are ethical dilemmas associated with creating a transformative space in a system; (b) it is important to assess the readiness of the system for change before engaging in it; (c) there is a need to balance between ‘safe’ and ‘safe-enough’ spaces for transformation; (d) convening a transformative space requires an assemblage of diverse methodological frameworks and tools; and (e) transformative spaces can act as a starting point for institutionalising transformative change. Many researchers are now engaging in transdisciplinary transformations research, and are finding themselves at the knowledge–action interface contributing to transformative space-making. We hope that by analysing experiences from across different geographies we can contribute towards better understanding of how to navigate the processes needed for the urgent global transformations that are being called for to create a more equitable and sustainable planet Earth