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The advent of the 21st century is characterised by the increase of cultural interaction in relation to a widespread digital environment. Moreover, we are witnessing an ongoing movement and transformation within the use and the sharing of knowledge, and collaboration through the growth of mobile devices and their associated products. The current digital development, particularly through mobile technology, has given way to new emerging players, intermediation platforms and new human behaviour. In addition, mobile technology can increasingly play the role of catalyst for creativity. It will sometimes even become an active agent of innovative capacity and capability across peculiar spaces and time, either physically, digitally, and, via connectivity, an exchange of intangible resources outside regulated and/or established procedures. This paper examines how mobile technology enables a contemporary consideration of the Nonaka and Konno’s concept of ba within organisations by using a qualitative and hermeneutic approach.JEL Codes: O3

While creativity is most commonly associated with idea generation and problem solving at the individual or team level, it is likewise associated with environments, technologies, tools and artefacts favouring or hindering creative capabilities. Research struggles to bring these elements together. We develop a model for the integration of mobile devices into creative processes. More specifically, we elaborate on existing works on creativity to define how firms can make good use of mobile technology in order to enhance the creativity of their employees. Therefore, we suggest a model revisiting the notion of “creative slack” (with the introduction of the notion of mobile slack, or m-slack) and absorptive capacities, explaining how firms might better integrate digital natives; subsequently, we discuss the managerial and theoretical implications.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine mobile technology as being a key apparatus and interface for collaborative innovation, which allows organisations to develop their information ecology. Design/methodology/approach The qualitative research was performed by in-depth interviews, observations and field notes. The eight main interviews are supported by an interdisciplinary narrative literature review of knowledge management and associated fields. Findings This study validates the following propositions: mobile technology can offer users timely information, mobile technology can foster collaboration beyond physical and organisational boundaries, in general, mobile technology enables a wider amount of interactions between people. Thereby, this paper draws some implications about the knowledge management of creative (and non-creative) workers. Research limitations/implications The collected data sheds light on how organisations and individuals positioned themselves about mobile technology co-creative practices before the COVID era. Therefore, it shall be pertinent to further investigate these findings through a quantitative approach to better ascertain path models and to strengthen the new results with another qualitative perspective, in the post-COVID era. Practical implications The study highlights how mobile devices are facilitating collaborative innovation practices by improving management decisions, enabling new business and/or operating models, developing a flow of ideas inner/outer an organisation and fostering the ability to make innovation. Social implications Mobile technology transforms the way to work (knowledge creation and/or conversion) and it changes the relations between collaborators in a working environment (beyond physical boundaries). This study deciphers how a creative and/or decision-making person can change their work schedule and/or routines based on the use of mobile devices. Originality/value The added value of this transdisciplinary study is that it improves research on collaborative innovation and collective knowledge by revealing three pertinent characteristics of mobile technology: enabling quick decision; connecting with a glocal network and fostering collective creativity. It also creates a bridge between the fields of education and business.

The ethos of open sharing of experiences and user generated content enabled by Mobile social media can be problematic in some cases (politics, gender, minorities), and it is not fully understood within the creative and academic sector. Creative people, students, and lecturers can misconceive the value and issues around open and public access to their work online, which include: professionalism, Intellectual Property (IP), collaboration (Gayeski, 2002; Londsdale, Baber, Sharples, & Arvanitis, 2003), peer esteem VS individualism, amateurism, and paranoia. Collectively the authors of this paper have accrued a wide portfolio of experiences in global educational collaboration and practice-based research and, in this position paper, they highlight some of the key ethical challenges that they have found need to be negotiated within global mobile social media education (Andrews, Dyson, Smyth, & Wallace, 2011) and mobile media production (i.e.: photography and video – Wishart & Green, 2010). In order to ground this reflective discussion, the authors use Heutagogy as the learning and teaching framework to guide the qualitative analysis of a specific case study which is built upon the scenario-based approach utilised by Andrews et al., (2013).