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The purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review of the studies that have analyzed the impact of culture on innovation.

The authors carried out a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles in the past 37 years (January 1980-January 2017). Based on a total of 61 identified primary studies, the authors developed two clusters of culture definition studied in relation to innovation, including organizational culture and national culture.

After reporting the findings of the systematic literature review, the authors discuss how a variety of culturally related factors combine to facilitate or restrict innovation performance in their corresponding cluster. The findings highlight the complex and idiosyncratic relationship between culture and innovation. Future research lines are recommended.

The authors adopt a systematic literature review method to probe into existing literature, inevitably missing some empirical studies. Implications for future research are suggested.

The paper offers interesting implications for managers and academia. For business practitioners, this study can provide a useful reference regarding the role of cultures in the corporate internal management or international operations; for scholars, the study can provide a current research landscape and development process in this field.

The findings are derived from a systematic literature review that has studied the influence of culture on innovation. In addition, implications and insights as to where future research might be usefully inquired in this field are provided.

This paper seeks to discuss the main implications for strategic knowledge management of uncovering the different knowledge flows and interactions in the strategy formation process in emerging and high‐velocity environments.

The study builds on the findings of a case‐study approach of four innovative firms in the internet banking sector in Spain.

The research highlights the relevance of understanding and considering the different dimensions of knowledge involved in such a process in order to promote its emergence and interaction in the organization, and trigger the creation process.

In sum, the paper addresses the main theoretical and practical implications of understanding strategy making as a double‐loop knowledge creating process.

The purpose of this paper is to propose propose a practical framework for the design and measure of active ba and assess whether workplace reformation initiatives actively contribute to promoting knowledge creation by activating ba.

The workplace reformation is first segmented into virtual and physical environments. Then, using the SECI knowledge‐creation process, the effects of each environment as well as their mutual interactions on active ba are analyzed. Next, the case studies of two workplace reformations are introduced, the first using a qualitative analysis and the second the results of a questionnaire survey carried out at three different stages of the implementation.

The effective implementation of workplace reformation in two separate entities enabled the creation of active ba. The influence of the physical and virtual environments on the creation of active ba were significantly different, thus justifying the assumption of the division of such environmental factors. The main factor of active ba generated by a complete workplace reformation was shown to be direct communication.

The two firms studied here belong to the same group of companies, and both departments' workplace reformations were conducted by the same person, whose widely known track record may be seen as a self‐fulfilling prophecy.

Because these two types of workplace reformation reversely impact the emergence of direct communication, and therefore the type of active ba, practitioners could avoid the co‐existence of groups organized under different configurations by simultaneously implementing a workplace reformation across both virtual and physical environments.

This research shows how workplace reformation – achieved with the same people, all things being equal, relatively immediately and inexpensively – can raise knowledge productivity.

In large companies, technological knowledge lies dispersed over individual specialists, business units and locations. Communities of practice (CoPs) are a structure for sharing this dispersed knowledge. However, CoPs are usually seen as being emergent, evolving and elusive. This study aims to investigate if and how it is possible to purposefully create CoPs.

This study describes and evaluates the launch of four CoPs within Rolls‐Royce. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is used to determine and explain the activities and outcomes of the CoPs.

Each of the CoPs provided benefits to its members, but performance differences were found between the CoPs. Longer existing CoPs were more active as the structural elements and dimensions of CoPs take time to evolve and become balanced. But more active CoPs were not necessarily more beneficial to their members. This is partially explained by the degree to which a CoP focuses on local issues.

It is worthwhile to actively pursue the development of CoPs to manage technological knowledge. However, it takes time for CoPs to mature and become effective, and they are never fully under managerial control. Focusing on local issues increases the direct benefits for community members and therewith their commitment to the CoP.

This is one of the few evaluation studies of CoPs. While literature often assumes that CoPs have to emerge, this paper finds that it is also possible to purposefully create CoPs.

The paper aims to identify the requisite attributes and organisation to be displayed by a research university in order to engage successfully in collaborative research with industry partners.

The conceptual framework contrasts the traditional public funding model against the requirements of the “triple helix” model of government‐university‐industry research funding. The framework supports the exploration of a case study of a long‐standing and successful joint research partnership, the Dundee‐Kinases Consortium, which links a world‐class life sciences research centre and a group of global pharmaceutical companies.

The case study provides a starting point, and additional case examinations will confirm the role of resource competences and organisational capabilities in facilitating performance by way of knowledge generation and transfer between partners.

The design and leadership of the consortium achieves vital performance outcomes, namely: accelerating the production of new knowledge about cell signalling processes relating to serious diseases; and faster transfer of new knowledge into drug development processes of pharmaceutical companies. The development of key enabling capabilities by the university, allied with routines for academic‐industry researcher interface, are essential elements of the partnering design.

The paper demonstrates that university‐industry partnerships build on government‐university funding, that university‐industry relationships foster new university capabilities, and moreover, that academic publication is not displaced by the requirements of industry partners.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the failure of science parks to become a central actor in the knowledge economy and, with the help of new organizational theory, to propose new solutions.

The paper reviews a number of recent studies of science parks and their effect on innovation and economic growth, measured by revenue or survival rate of new firms, but demonstrating no positive result of the parks. The paper then introduces modern organization theory, specializing in analyzing the processes of creating, managing, organizing, and transferring knowledge distributed through a number of networks and other volatile organizations in order to investigate the set‐up of science parks in the knowledge economy.

Using Nonaka's concept of ba as a metaphor for the new tradition in organizational theory, the paper finds very few – if any – signs of these new ways of organizing in traditional science parks. The paper argues that principles from modern knowledge organizations has to be installed in science parks if the parks are to regain the initiative and become an important actor in the new regime of knowledge production. Otherwise, science parks must be viewed as an outdated institution, left over from the industrial society.

The paper proposes a system of certification and quality assessment that might speed up the change in science parks from organizations formed by the industrial society to organizations serving the needs of the knowledge society.

The paper is an original contribution to the theory of science parks and innovation policy. The use of new organizational theory on knowledge management, illustrated by Nonaka's concept of ba, presents a new solution to overcome the traditional thinking on how to organize science parks.

In offering a critical account of project‐based innovation projects, this paper aims to assess the creation and sharing of knowledge from a social constructionist perspective.

Using findings from an in‐depth longitudinal study of a UK Government Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) programme, the paper shows that the ability to adopt knowledge is linked to the efforts of actors to cope with the uncertainties that emerge from crisis events when actors can transform their social context in ways that allow them to overcome the politicisation of tasks. By conceptualising “knowledge” as a social process, this paper proposes that the individual and collective ability to introduce new meaning is not simply related to the propositional aspects of knowledge (through the acquisition of new systems and practices), it also relies on the socially embedded nature of knowledge – the legitimating role of the local context.

To ascertain a better understanding of knowledge creation and sharing this paper considers the process through which individuals appropriate knowledge where crisis events disrupt and jeopardise the social relations between the members of the innovation project. Here the paper demonstrates how actors renegotiate participation in projects and therefore reconstitute the context through which such activities are organised.

Based on a single case study, this research offers a limited view of context. The study is also based on the appropriation of practices linked to TQM. Future work should look at a range of contexts and technologies to ascertain differentiation in the way the social context mediates knowledge communication.

This paper offers a critical account of knowledge management and innovation. It stands in contrast to more mainstream positivist accounts.

University business incubators (UBIs) are born as tools of the academic world to market research results, for the transfer of technology and to promote entrepreneurial spirit. In these contexts, the exchange of knowledge among entrepreneurs can be a key variable for the development and success of their businesses. This paper aims to analyse the characteristics of entrepreneurs' resources and the institutional logic that prevails in the incubator as determinants of the exchange of knowledge, and the authors examine the results in terms of entrepreneurial commitment and the generation of innovations.

The empirical study carried out on a sample of 101 entrepreneurs in UBIs in Spain and The Netherlands.

The results reveals how complementarity, supplementarity and transferability of resources, as well as incubator predisposition towards business are fundamental for the exchange of knowledge, the development of entrepreneurial spirit and the generation of innovation.

This study makes a contribution towards an understanding of how relationships between university entrepreneurs provide access to and help create useful knowledge for the parties, with this resource constituting one possible source of sustainable competitive advantage.