Cultural Organizations Push for Territory's Growth

If “entrepreneurship has become the engine of world economic and social development” (Audretsch, 2003, p.5), culture is becoming more and more a specific context in which is possible to invest and create new opportunities of labor and value. The principal aim of this contribution is to understand how it's possible for cultural organizations to influence the environment and local development. So, the work wants to highlight - through the analysis of an empirical case of success - what might be the indicators able to create virtuous relationships among cultural organizations and social and economic context. The work aims to contribute both theoretically and practically on the topic of cultural entrepreneurship. The results of this research can be utilized for further reflections in order to develop a framework with high practical relevance.

Students' Creativity and Entrepreneurial Learning for Developing Corporate Entrepreneurship

The chapter aims to contribute at the discussion on the role of creativity in sustaining corporate entrepreneurship development by focusing on entrepreneurial learning in the context of incumbent enterprises. Empirical evidences coming from the case study of “Mimprendo” project (www.mimprendo.it), an initiative promoted by the Italian Conference of the University Colleges and the Italian Association of Young Entrepreneurs, are presented. Findings provides insights about the collaborative entrepreneurial learning as happening in the community composed by University students, entrepreneurs, and researchers to solve relevant managerial and entrepreneurial innovation's needs. Those evidences are at the basis of an integrated framework aimed to provide a coherent and a systematic view on the collaborative entrepreneurial learning processes to nurture, select, and implement creative ideas of universities students for sustaining the corporate entrepreneurship in incumbent companies.

A Fuzzy Cognitive Map-Based Approach for Understanding Value Creation Mechanisms of Artistic Interventions

A number of organizations have started to approach the “arts world” looking for new ways of dealing with the management uncertainties and seeking new approaches in response to social changes and economic pressures. The planned managerial use of Arts-based Initiatives (ABIs) can sustain organisations in their efforts to face today's competitive challenges. But how do ABIs contribute to improve value creation capacity of an organisation? There are several anecdotal evidences from practitioners who tend to emphasize the positive experience that employees report during or after ABIs. However a better understanding of the dynamics linking ABIs to business performance is still required. This study proposes the use of Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) to model and dynamically analyze the integration of ABIs in the operation and strategy of an organisation. Referring to the “Arts Value Map” framework (Schiuma, 2011), the paper suggests the use of FCM as a dynamic modelling tool to analyze the reciprocal influence, simulate and predict the behaviour of factors involved in value creation dynamics.

The Creative Economy in Balkan Countries

The competitiveness of territories requires creative abilities to support innovation, performance as well as the capacity of catching and anticipating emerging needs in the society. The creative process through which the territorial resources, knowledge and culture are used, exploited and configured to match needs as well as to achieve congruence with the changing business environment is the crucial process for competitiveness. This is much more relevant for economies of developing countries which are continuously struggling to reap the benefits of globalization as well as to grasp the new opportunities for competitiveness. This chapter aims to provide a snapshot of the creative economy of Balkan countries, by using a set of indicators to capture the different dimensions related with the core elements of creative economy. Considering a large set of indicators and statistical data analyses the measurement framework proposed in this chapter is composed of 32 measures classified in 7 dimensions.

The Case for Informal Spaces in the Workplace

This chapter makes the case for informal spaces in the workplace by emphasising the qualitative benefits they can provide, most specifically in the realm of innovation. This goes against the current bias in evidence-based policy that the most valued evidence is that which can be measured (Belfiore & Bennett, 2008, p.5) and aligns with qualitative forms of representing experience, knowledge, and outcomes. The link is made here between transformation and innovation. Innovation is seen as the fertile offshoot of creating a space for growth, debate and experimentation; one parallel to and overlapping with the more formal channels of established communication and interaction in the workplace. Transformation is difficult to substantiate and requires qualitative forms of expression and analysis to come into view. This chapter aims for a more balanced view of all forms of analysis and argues that qualitative forms are the most effective at capturing innovation.

Crowdsourcing and Crowd Participation

This chapter provides reflections on extrinsic and intrinsic incentive mechanisms, in order to explore the extent to which they are able to motivate users in starting community building processes. The authors present some results of the research project OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A (ORganization of Cultural HEritage for Smart Tourism and Real-time Accessibility) that means to develop a crowdsourcing community directed towards a smarter valorisation of the city of Naples (Italy). Successful crowdsourcing solutions require activities that both fulfill the communities' administrators' needs and account for individual contributors' needs. Thus, analyzing the incentives that spur users to contribute are critical to designing crowdsourcing applications. The authors set up a field experiment in order to understand which types of incentives are useful to engage users to produce contents for OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A and address specific behavior. The authors shed light on a partly jagged topic and provide some normative suggestions on how to design a crowdsourcing application.

Employee Creativity to Deliver Organizational Performance Improvements

This chapter aims to present an empirical model aimed to explore relationships among the elements within the process of employee creativity as driver for organizational performance improvement. The analysis employs a multiple case study research design, focusing on four organizations. The results derive approaches to improving organizational performance. Those approaches' characteristics are: an emphasis on openness to experience in developing novel ideas; the prevalence of creative self-efficacy on the creative behavior. A mutual combination of these characteristics leads to four possible outcomes, pictured in a 2 × 2 matrix as approaches to improving organizational performance. The proposed research design can be used to analyse how changing the form of skill and ability facilitates improvements of organizational performance. The chapter concludes with discussions and limitations, proposing a future research agenda.

Searching in the Past New Strategic Approaches

Starting from the increasing difficulties for firms to create new value for customers and consequently to achieve competitive advantage, the present paper proposes an alternative strategic approach based on the notion of tradition. Specifically, tradition is defined as the whole set of competencies, knowledge, values, and culture that characterize a specific firm, territory, and/or age. Analyzing three successful Italian companies (Barilla Group, Brunello Cucinelli Group, Aboca), the paper clearly shows how tradition may be effectively employed to face competition, allowing companies both to create and to appropriate value.

Re-Inventing Organizational Creativity and Innovation through Adopting a Service-Based Working Culture

By considering creativity to be a necessity for organisational competitiveness in today's rigorously changing working environments, this study seeks to examine whether adopting a service-based working culture could significantly improve organisational creativity and innovation. Grounded on the concepts of the Service-Dominant Logic and Complex Adaptive Systems, this research develops on understanding of the complexity of the emerging socially and digitally connected networks of individuals, teams and institutions. By introducing a novel framework for facilitating and improving the adaptability of a service-based working culture, this study offers both deliberation and practical advice for business organisations seeking valuable insight into how to develop and manage organisational creativity and innovation in increasingly digitalised service ecosystems. Specifically, the proposed framework encourages organisations to invest in the learning capacities and motivations of their employees.