Search

The context of 21st century is like nothing we have experienced before. Its multiple disruptive challenges to humanity, societies and our planet, as well as unprecedented levels of complexity require a different way of leading, cooperating, operating and innovating, regardless of the type of organisation. This means that innovative answers and solutions from all sectors have become more urgent and important than ever before. Whereas in the past the government and public sector organisations were primarily concerned with providing the context for other organisations to innovate, it is now imperative that they focus on innovating themselves. In this paper we take a look at the status quo of innovation in the public sector before identifying some challenges and barriers to innovation. We then move on to suggesting a framework for government and public sector innovation that is inspired by the concept of a public service dominant logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encouraging and sustaining economic growth is a key challenge in today's economic climate. Entrepreneurial activity is considered to be a major lever for creating economic growth. While there is evidence that female entrepreneurship can have a dramatic effect on a country's economy there is also evidence that women's participation in entrepreneurship lags behind that of their male counterparts. First studies into this topic have revealed that not only are women less likely to engage in entrepreneurship than men, they also use different strategies and financing. To realise the positive contribution women entrepreneurship can make to economic growth, a better understanding is needed about their different approaches, more specifically we need to understand characteristics of women who do embrace entrepreneurship, supportive contextual factors, and ambitions and aspirations of women entrepreneurs. This article shares first insights from a pilot study of a collaborative, international research study that investigates these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation has been high up on the agenda of commercial, not-forprofit and government organisations alike and is considered to be key for our future. More recently companies have begun to wake up to the fact that current business models based on abundance are no longer sustainable - a fact that international sustainability research has emphasised for quite some time. This paper will introduce some experiences and lessons learned from case studies shared in the SusIN Lab, an initiative of the University of Exeter. Three workshops and a conference were held between 2012 and 2013, exploring the 3- level NBS model of Innovating for Sustainability in a multi-stakeholder setting: (1) Operational Optimisation, (2) Organisational Transformation, and (3) Systems Building. The SusIN Lab methodology provided an active learning environment, and confirmed that innovating for sustainability is generating new forms of value and competitive advantage for companies. Further research is required to understand the dynamics of innovating for sustainability at different levels; to help populate and generate a maturity model; and to help guide thinking related to large scale system transformation urgently required for a sustainable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]