No abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and performance of public universities in emerging countries in order to identify patterns and provide recommendations that may turn the universities’ IC into development opportunities, in terms of research, innovation, and education. Design/methodology/approach The analysis targeted the whole population of the public universities in the Republic of Colombia. A cluster analysis, based on five performance variables, has been conducted. Then, the IC of the universities pertaining to the three resulting clusters has been compared. Subsequently, for each performance variable, the IC of above-average and below-average universities has been benchmarked. Findings The results of this study show how different aspects of IC are associated with University performance. Among the many, the authors found that universities should achieve a critical mass to obtain outstanding research and innovation results. The findings also identify the particular importance of both students and scholars’ international mobility programs for most of the performance variables. Social implications This study provides a baseline for the assessment of the impact on society of the IC available in the universities of emerging countries. The application may serve as a guide in the choice of public policies, dedicated to the strengthening of the universities’ IC in order to improve their performance. Originality/value This paper proposes an innovative model to analyze the relationship between IC and university performance in emerging countries. The model identifies the association between the IC accrued in the universities and their capability of transferring it to the society under the form of science, innovation, and education.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has caused unprecedented public health and economic crises. As a response to face the current emergency, science and innovation communities are realizing a fundamental contribution to tackle the crisis. During the past few months, we have witnessed an impressive number of initiatives to encourage networking opportunities, to foster interactions between the different stakeholders involved (health care, industry, governments, academics, ordinary people), and to develop innovative solutions and collaborative infrastructures in support of the health sector. Adopting an open and collaborative approach and joining forces is essential in the fight against the COVID‐19 crisis. Also, the involvement of crowds as innovation partners can be of great support. Therefore, our work aims to review and classify those initiatives, based on the crowdsourcing model, that have been put into place to face the emergency generated by the novel coronavirus pandemic. We illustrate the 16 crowdsourcing initiatives devoted to the SARS‐CoV‐2 outbreak that we identified, detailing their development and implementation. Then, we propose a classification of them, along two dimensions: type of crowdsourcing configuration and kind of tasks, being able to find a relationship between these two aspects. Evidence from the analyzed projects suggests that across disparate domains, crowdsourcing can be an effective strategy in the response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. To conclude, we suggest some important implications for innovation best practices and lessons that can be learned for the future: crowdsourcing, harnessing the power of crowds and online communities, can help tackle the COVID‐19 pandemic, by providing original, actionable, quick, and low‐cost solutions to the challenges of the current health and economic crisis.

No abstract

Purpose -The evolution of organization, management and production processes is moving towards complexity. The ever growing competition presses firms to give intangible internal and external exclusive resources the utmost attention. The improvement of the performance, through the retrieval of resources, neither available internally nor achievable autonomously, can be reached by going beyond traditional firm boundaries and by enforcing an external relationship system: proliferation of networks, partnerships, and inter-organizational collaborations should be, consequently, triggered. The purpose of this paper concerns the evaluation of knowledge impact on relationships among the members of an inter-organizational collaboration. It also aims to suggest conditions for the improvement of knowledge management in different types of knowledge-based inter-organizational collaborations.Design/methodology/approach -Critical success factors of the networked organizations have been defined. Distinctive characteristics, that cannot be disregarded, whatever the environment, have been singled out from literature analysis; successively, they have been arranged into a classification schema to design knowledge-based collaboration types. Properties of knowledge and peculiarities of knowledge management processes (identification, creation, storage, sharing/distribution, application, and capitalization/refinement) have been assessed according to the types of the collaborations. Findings -The theoretical framework can be applied by network managers to adopt the most favourable knowledge management strategy and process, independent of the distinctive characteristics of the collaborations. Originality/value -The paper provides a theoretical framework to arrange the knowledge-based inter-organizational collaborations into an innovative classification schema on the basis of their cognitive, strategic and structural aspects.