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The purpose of this paper is to define the factors of innovativeness in the context of employee involvement and study how these factors could be affected by an employee-driven innovation (EDI) process.

This study follows a quantitative approach through a survey. The survey data were collected from a case organisation, where employees designed an innovation manual in a participatory process to support their daily innovativeness.

According to the results, the EDI manual process can assist the organisation in developing their ideation and organising structures. The employees felt that their ideas were appreciated more after the innovation manual process. Understanding about innovation and innovativeness was also increased. In between two survey rounds, the focus of the most urgent development targets had shifted from internal idea management practices towards customer ideas, cooperation and appreciation of different ideas. This indicates that the internal innovation system has to work before it is reasonable to involve other stakeholders.

The study presents an empirical example of an employee-driven process in the context of public sector healthcare. It increases understanding about the importance of employee involvement in the innovation manual development process and how this process affects the factors of innovativeness.

The purpose of this article is to investigate data, information and knowledge in regional innovation networks. Emphasis has been put recently on regional innovation systems, where various actors are involved in innovative processes. The article responds to the need to study matters related to knowledge management and information quality in such environments.

Regional innovation networks and data, information and knowledge as well as research on them are discussed at a theoretical level. An existing innovation network of the Lahti region, Finland, was utilised as a pilot environment when building the knowledge management framework that is introduced. The framework is based on established knowledge management literature and practice.

The results confirm that the aspects of data, information and knowledge need to be addressed systematically in regional innovation networks. They are intertwined with knowledge management and network management. The knowledge management framework introduced incorporates, apart from information quality considerations, future‐oriented self‐transcending knowledge as well as knowledge vision and knowledge assets. Considerations of absorptive capacity and information brokerage in the regional knowledge environment are emphasised.

The limitations of the framework will be assessed in future studies. This will also improve understanding of practical implications. Research implications are related to data, information and knowledge quality – as well as absorptive capacity between the two subsystems of the regional innovation system.

The article combines in a novel way research fields that have previously barely been combined – information quality, knowledge management and regional innovation networks. It provides new insights into a societally important theme and shows possible avenues of further research.

The aim of the study was to assess the effectiveness of network leadership in meeting the requirements for regional development networks imposed by the network society.

A new framework of three different archetypes of regional development networks was devised. The characteristics of the different networks and the requirements they set for network leadership were assessed as a case study in the Lahti Region, Finland. A special panel of experts of three highly experienced network leaders was organized as part of the present study. Their task was to assess the differences concerning network leadership in different regional development networks. The session was conducted in the (niin sanottu means it was not an inspiration) Inspiration Center in the Lahti Region. Inspiration Center is a platform for brainstorming and stimulation, designed especially to arrive at ideas and form opinions through teamwork. The method used was a half‐structured group discussion, planned especially for the purpose of the present study. The method was used to form a convergent expert assessment among the participants.

The essential differences of the types of regional development networks make it insufficient to talk about network leadership as a general concept. It is important to identify and understand the differences in network leadership required by the different archetypes of regional development networks.

The paper combines leadership, network leadership, and regional development in a novel way.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a possible way for service providers to learn from their customers' experiences and bridge gaps between their and their customers' perspectives. The research question is as follows: how can users' experiences be transformed through research‐based theatre, in particular Forum Theatre, into a utilizable format in the front‐end of interpretative, user‐driven service innovation in public health care organisations?

Research‐based theatre (RBT) is introduced in the study as both an artistic intervention technique – aiming to develop public health care services – and as a qualitative research method for interpretative user‐driven innovation processes.

The study provides a path for the application of Forum Theatre in interpretative user‐driven innovation and highlights the role of “the Joker” as a host of the interpretation.

Further studies could be based on international longitudinal participatory research and combine qualitative and quantitative research methods.

The study contributes to the discussion on the potential of innovation triggered in practical contexts. The potential itself seems to be relatively widely understood, but practical measures to exploit it still seem to be missing to a great extent. This study provides an example of a Finnish application of RBT as it explores the role of Forum Theatre as a sensemaking process in a fuzzy front‐end of innovation.

The study improves the understanding of the implementation of artistic interventions within a user‐driven service innovation in public health care services.

The purpose of this study is to examine the ongoing dynamics of the public service sector reform through an embedding process of a municipal enterprise from the field of basic social and health care services – a pilot model in Finland.

The framework of a multi‐level perspective on transitions is used to describe the change process. At the lowest level of this perspective are the experimental niches acting as “seeds of change” represented by the case organisation, a municipal enterprise operating in the basic social and health care sector. The data consist of 16 thematic interviews with the key persons of the operating system, analysed with the principles of content analysis.

The examination uncovers diverse pressures affecting niche level innovations and manifesting as clashes and controversies between old and new ways of thinking, but these clashes can also act as a platform for innovations when opened up, analysed and facilitated.

Clashes that appear in societal transition processes and regime changes, both in the regimes and also on the organisational level, should not be seen solely as bottlenecks, because they can act as innovation potential when opened up and facilitated. This implies the need for not only new technological, service‐related and organisational innovations in the public sector reform, but also innovative practices, “second level innovations”.

This paper contributes to the discussion on the ongoing change processes in the reform of the social and health care sector, emphasising emerging clashes not only as obstacles but opportunities.

The paper aims to describe creation of knowledge capital and innovation culture within the field of regional development. This covers the development process of the Living Lab environment.

The paper examines knowledge creation in innovation network based on Nonaka and Takeuchi's SECI model and Harmaakorpi's Rye‐bread model. The paper describes the role of Koulii project (funding European Social Fund by the Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment) in understanding, advancing and developing the sense of communality and human sized services in Suurpelto in Espoo. Emphasis is on the project's role and practices in the evolution of knowledge capital. Examination and assessing is based on a practice‐based innovation activity model within multi‐actor and multi‐disciplinary innovation networks.

The innovation arena model involves different actors in a growing and deepening process, which benefits and uses strong and weak ties in those networks. The paper also discusses regional development from structural and symbolic perspectives. Creation and development of the innovation culture of Omnia and Laurea and in Suurpelto is examined.

The case study confirms in practice the usability of both the SECI and the Rye‐bread models in innovation and regional development work. The paper summarizes the accomplishments and results achieved or in horizon during the innovation project at Suurpelto.

The importance of innovations in business management is a widely accepted hypothesis. Lately the research on innovation has widened to include consideration of the impact of social networks on the innovation. This paper aims to contribute to research on this approach by suggesting a framework for studying the social aspects of economic innovations.

The paper discusses economic innovation as a product of organizational competencies, highlighting the importance of social network.

This paper has three goals: we clarify the concept of economic innovation, we present the essential questions for studying the economic innovation process, and we present a proposal for an empirical approach and address problems in collecting data about economic innovations.

The paper opens a new, socio‐psychological approach to studying the innovation processes. It proposes a holistic approach to the phenomenon by combining these with the material aspects of an organization. The paper provides a scientific framework for a new research program.