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For quite a while the issues of knowledge management, innovation and performance measurement have been on the agenda of researchers and practitioners alike throughout the world. Not too long ago it was recognised that there are direct cause and effect relations between knowledge reuse and invention. The present paper therefore discusses the constituent elements of innovation from a knowledge perspective which have been identified in the context of a European Union co‐sponsored research project. The six facts of the “innovation cube” are: reuse of existing knowledge; invention of new knowledge; exploitation (i.e. turning knowledge into value); stakeholders' contributions (to the innovation life cycle); the enabling ecology or operating context in which the innovation occurs; and the performance facet, i.e. the bottom line. A toolkit based on performance measurement thinking and implementation process for better management of the balance between reuse and invention in development environments is proposed and results from their deployment in three real‐life case studies are discussed.

The purpose of this article is to describe a future center as an urban innovation engine for the knowledge city, to understand the success factors of a future center and how this success can be replicated systematically in the implementation and development of future centers in the future.

Nine future centers were visited and a longitudinal action research‐based case study was conducted at the regional Be'er Sheva PISGA Future Center in Israel, within the educational domain.

There are 13 conceptual building‐blocks for a future center and the unifying principle is conversations. The PISGA future center put the concept of a future center into action and was guided by six operating principles: values, experiment and learning, organizational structure, partnerships, physical space, and virtual space. They were able to initiate ten new educational projects within the first two years of operation. A conceptual model of a regional future center was developed and tested on the PISGA case, defining the five key ingredients as community conversations, future images, an innovation lab, a knowledge and intelligence center and implementation projects.

After two years of testing the findings, only intermediate results are available. Further research is needed to develop and test the concepts and model further.

This paper provides building‐blocks and a generic model that can be used by the creators of next generation future centers.

This paper provides the first generic building‐blocks and the first generic implementation and operational model for a future center.

Innovation is the process of turning knowledge and ideas into value. An “urban innovation engine” is a system which can trigger, generate, foster and catalyze innovation in the city. This paper describes the concept of the “urban innovation engine”, provides some historical and contemporary examples, and suggests a set of guidelines for turning ordinary urban institutions into innovation engines. The paper has two purposes: to trigger further theoretic and action research and exploration in the domain of urban innovation. In recent years there has been intensive research about the conditions (“ecology”) which enable and catalyze knowledge development and innovation in the business world. A second new focus area in the research of knowledge development is the role of the city as a hub for intensive flows and exchanges of knowledge among its habitants and additional stakeholders. We suggest weaving the learning from the business and urban worlds by attempting to apply the dimensions of innovation ecology models to knowledge cities. More specifically, we look at multiple traditional urban constructs, and show how they might act as significant drivers for creativity and renewal. Typically an urban innovation engine is a complex system that includes people, relationships, values, processes, tools and technological, physical and financial infrastructure. We suggest that what innovation engines really do is to create conversations – which are the foundation of most innovations. We bring some examples and snap‐shots from several urban innovation engines such as the museum, the library, the stock exchange, the café, the brownfield, the grand fair, the outlook tower, and the industrial district. The paper conceptualizes the notion of “urban innovation engines”. Based on this concept, it provides a set of guidelines for creating a knowledge city using innovation engines as its building blocks, and innovation ecology elements as an important part of its operating system.

To present a generic empowerment ecology framework to guide the operation of Future Centers and to empower Future Center visitors to respond to the challenges facing them and develop and implement innovative solutions.

An in‐depth case study was conducted in Be'er Sheva PISGA Future Center in the educational sector in Israel. Visits to a further 20 Future Centers around the world and a literature review helped to generalize the key findings and develop and validate the framework further.

Although empowerment is not always explicitly discussed in Future Centers, it is an important underlying philosophy. The framework developed in this research helps to ensure empowerment issues are systematically addressed and contains four perspectives: operating principles; resources; supporters and processes. These combine to form the empowerment ecology.

The empowerment ecology framework has been developed from observation predominantly in one Future Center. It should now be more fully tested and validated in other Future Centers.

This paper provides a framework to help Future Center practitioners and other future oriented working environments stakeholders to explicitly address empowerment issues.

This paper provides a detailed description of the operation of a regionally focused Future Center in the educational sector. The paper presents a novel empowerment ecology framework for use in facilitated user‐centered collaborative working environments, such as Future Centers.

The purpose of this paper is to consider knowledge from a new perspective that permits a rational analysis and interpretation of knowledge as it applies to learning and action in simple, complicated and complex situations.

This paper provides a fine‐grain analysis of knowledge. Specifically it looks at: the special relationship between knowledge and information (Kn_I and Kn_P); knowledge types, the characteristics of knowledge used for different types of work; and levels of knowledge in terms of surface, shallow and deep. Following a discussion of knowledge from the these three frames of reference, this model is used to explore similarities in levels of learning, then it is applied to the complexity of situations, the complexity of making decisions and the complexity of actions.

There appears to be a correlation among the levels of knowledge and the corresponding levels of learning and action. In addition, the breakdown of systems into the classic three areas of simple, complicated and complex carry over into the three corresponding levels (surface, shallow and deep) as applied to learning and knowledge.

This is a new frame of reference for considering knowledge. This analysis can be used to ask relevant questions about specific levels of knowledge. It also enables managers to recognize the scope and depth of knowledge available to maximize problem solving, decision making and action in simple, complicated and complex situations. Further, it permits knowledge developers to tailor learning and knowledge to improve knowledge sharing and conservation.

The purpose of this article is to provide organized, synthesized information related to initiatives throughout the world based on knowledge‐based development (KBD) such as knowledge cities (KCs), knowledge regions, and knowledge countries. A first search was conducted using the Internet and specialized databases under the keywords “knowledge cities”. The information compiled led to other related keywords which branched out the search. All resulting information was then collated and integrated into a number of categories all unified under the field of knowledge‐based development. A compilation of information on the topic “knowledge cities” and other topics related to knowledge‐based development. The information is presented in eight sections: a glossary of KC‐related terms, a list of knowledge‐based development initiatives, a list of associations and organizations related to the topic, a list of urban KBD‐related value dimensions and their indicators, a list of international rankings, a list of special editions on KCs, a bibliography, and a directory of related sites on the Internet. This effort resulted in a public service available at the World Wide Web. The information included in this compilation is limited mainly to public domain information available throughout Internet in both English and Spanish, as well as in selected databases.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrated framework of complex relations among innovation characteristics, organizational capabilities, innovation potential and innovation performance.

The model is tested using partial least squares (PLS) modeling and 22 high- (96 respondents) and 16 (93 respondents) low-performing innovation projects from nine companies from the European industry.

The results show that the level of innovativeness of the project is an important determinant of product potential, whereas the complexity entailed in innovativeness entices integrative communication among innovation project team members. As expected, projects which are new to the company are related negatively to adequateness of the existing functional capabilities of the firm. The negative effects can be mitigated through integrative communication capabilities. Management can foster communication and knowledge integration through adequate databases and communication structures as well as social relations. Also, higher project potential and successful project performance can be attained through focus on product superiority and quality but also on speed of product introduction into the market.

An integrated framework which includes innovation characteristics, organizational capabilities which bring together project execution proficiency and synergy of firm capabilities with the innovation project, as well as innovation potential and performance is absent in the existing literature. The absence of an integrated framework may be the reason why still a large number of innovation projects result in failure. The emphasis on management of complexities in innovation in the paper requires the focus on the under-explored effect of innovativeness and newness of innovation projects on the functional and integrative communication capabilities of firms. While studies which focus on the synergy between firm capabilities and the innovation project regard mainly the functional capabilities, the inclusion of also the integrative communication capabilities allows the present paper to integrate the synergy view with the view that proficiency of project execution is decisive for innovation project performance (Harmancioglu et al., 2009).

The correlation between organizational unit managers’ leadership styles and the level of organizational learning in their units was tested.

A positive correlation was hypothesized between transformational leadership and organizational learning as manifested by organizational learning mechanisms – OLMs (the structural component) and by organizational learning values (the cultural component). The research was conducted at 44 community clinics of a health‐care organization in Israel.

The findings attested to the central role of organizational leaders in determining the effectiveness of organizational learning. The theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Suggests that, in addition to separating the sources of reporting, and increasing the number of measures, future studies should also extend the research to different kinds of organizations, addressing different purposes, environments, work forces, and so forth.