'This is a landmark study that tackles an important black box in innovation studies — i.e. communities of innovation. While conventional work focuses on formal organizations, a select group of academic leaders highlights the various communities that cut across firms and form the vital 'underground' for processes of creativity and ideation. While targeted toward business and management, this volume is a must-read for all social scientists interested in the dynamics underlying the current knowledge economy.'Journal of Economic GeographyThis book describes the important role played by communities in innovation processes and how organizations can benefit from it. A community brings together individuals who share a common passion for a given area of knowledge and can contribute to innovation at different levels: capitalization of good practices, problem solving, sharing of expertise, or development of new and creative ideas. The literature has progressively identified many variants of communities such as communities of practice, epistemic communities, communities of interest, virtual communities, etc. These forms of communities differ regarding the type of the specialized activities of knowledge on which they focus. As practitioners and academics increasingly emphasized the needs of collaborative approaches in innovation, they progressively challenged the traditional idea that innovation is mainly generated by hierarchical corporate departments and highlighted the active role that communities play in innovation processes. The aim of this book is to shed light, using multiple examples, on the proactive and fundamental role of communities in the new innovation practices of organizations.

Creativity, whether individual or collective, is often approached without taking into account organizational processes, routines and management systems. However, in today’s constantly changing world, developing creativity at all levels of an organization is the key to developing a continuous flow of innovation and solving complex problems in order to achieve set goals. Organizational Creative Capabilities presents a comprehensive approach to creativity, with a view towards building a genuine organizational capability with the potential to deliver strategic advantages. The book provides an understanding of organizational creative capabilities through methods of openness, slack, socialization, agility, equipment and idea management. It provides keys and examples for developing recurrent, value-creating creativity, and also addresses the question of measuring the performance of creative capabilities.

Co-creation and Smart Cities: Looking Beyond Technology highlights a more robust value-based perspective on public service development and delivery, helping structure co-creation processes that foster responsible innovation and a systemic, value-based approach to sustainable urban development.

The development of technology and online learning has transformed not only the way information is transmitted but also the way learning and teaching are approached. As a socio-cultural construction, arts and creativity reflect the societal context. Accordingly, nowadays, educating the arts and creative potential is necessarily affected by technology. Sustaining Creativity and the Arts in the Digital Age discusses from a global perspective how the relationship between the arts, creativity, and education is evolving and developing in the digital age and considers the multiple dimensions of creativity. Covering key topics such as robots, dreaming, art education, innovation, and digital technologies, this reference work is ideal for artists, industry professionals, researchers, academicians, practitioners, scholars, educators, and students.

Building on past research in the broad field of stakeholder management and entrepreneurship, this book pushes a new agenda for more effective stakeholder engagement and management in entrepreneurial firms in Africa. Adomako, Gyensare, and Ahsan provide a novel lens for entrepreneurs to manage stakeholders in Africa and a sense of current best practices. Issues discussed include how external stakeholders such as government, nongovernmental organizations, media, civil society organizations, and local institutions influence the core business operations of entrepreneurial firms. The book confronts the central challenge of entrepreneurship by providing a comprehensive understanding of how entrepreneurs could identify, select, enroll, and coordinate stakeholders. In addition, it assesses issues such as stakeholder influence on corporate social responsibility strategy, sustainability, and environmental management of entrepreneurial firms. An essential read for postgraduate students, researchers, and public and private analysts.