This paper explores the relation between the notion of “communities” and the emergence of new spatial settings for innovation and creativity that we subsume under the term ‘open creative labs’. The paper starts by observing the omnipresence of the term community in both, self‐descriptions of coworking spaces, fab labs, etc., and first scientific publications on these spatial phenomena. However, attempts to conceptualize the relation between communities and these new spatial settings are still rare. This paper assumes that this gap can be addressed by adding the relation between organizations and communities to the conceptual debate. Therefore, this paper first presents a brief literature review on different forms of community–organization relations. Here, communities are regarded as entities that may exist within organizations, as alternative structures to organizations, as substitutes for organizations or as intermediaries between individuals and organizations. Second, we take a fresh look at an empirical data set on open creative labs in Berlin. We present a taxonomy of four lab types (experimentation labs, working labs, open innovation labs, and investor‐driven labs) and explore differences in terms of their community orientation and objectives. Thus, this paper sets out to contribute to conceptualizing the relation of communities and space.

In the past 15 years, we have witnessed an upsurge of collaborative spaces providing an arena for individual and collective creativity, (co)creating craft‐based products, urban manufacturing, and experimentation with business or creative ideas using innovative technologies such as 3D printing or CNC milling machines. The discourses on spaces such as coworking, hacker‐ or makerspaces, accelerators, Fab Labs, and open workshops promise new communities, more innovation, and a transformation of work. This has called for interdisciplinary scholarly attention, primarily from organization and management studies, sociology, and entrepreneurship studies. However, little attention has so far been paid to this development from the perspective of geography. This paper employs Open Creative Labs as an umbrella term for the diversity of spaces and aims at, first, providing an overview of recent interdisciplinary perspectives on the functions of labs in coordinating creativity and entrepreneurship, as well as the motivations of users to utilize these spaces for their projects, and, second, offers an approach to a multiscalar spatial conceptualizations of labs. The paper concludes by exploring policy implications that may benefit from an economic‐geography perspective.

The starting point of the article is the observation of an increasing convergence of regional development and innovation policies. These policies are heavily influenced by territorial innovation models that have been extensively revised since they first came about over 30 years ago. Yet, more recent trends towards digitalisation and conceptual advances towards a time-spatial perspective on innovation processes require a more fundamental re-thinking of the nexus of development, innovation policies and territoriality. This paper therefore aims to advance an agenda for reconceptualising region-based innovation policies beyond the assumptions of territoriality implicit in territorial innovations models and related policy schemes. “Open Region” is a heuristic way of thinking about proactive policy measures for redesigning the dialectic interplay between territorial openness and closure. These measures, in essence, aim at creating and exploiting opportunities for innovation within a region by mobilising external expertise and establishing local anchors for innovation. Finally, we address the limitations of applicability and discuss incentives for regional actors to embark on Open Region strategies. The suggested measures can work together, yet it is also possible to utilise them in an eclectic manner or to selectively recombine them in order to address different local conditions.

We define innovation and creativity labs as physical spaces for testing innovative ideas, alternative business models, new economic practices or flexible cooperation structures. As such, they are fields of experimentation and crystallization points for temporary practices that generate product, process, and organizational innovations. In these places, processes of interdisciplinary collaboration, and open innovation embrace and combine knowledge from multiple fields of expertise, most prominently from the creative and technology intensive sectors. This paper discusses the results of a research project that compiled an inventory of the dynamic spatial and organization development of innovation and creativity labs in Berlin. The empirical evidence highlights the variety of temporary spatial configurations ranging from grassroots labs, different forms of coworking, design and research and development (R & D)-oriented studios, to incubation and acceleration models. This diversity epitomizes distinct temporary social settings in an economic environment characterized by diverse modes of democratization, flexibility, commercialization and decentralization of innovation processes.

In this paper, we are concerned with the relationship between creativity, ignorance and mobility. We understand creativity as a social process of recombination, which is strongly shaped by the actors’ lack of knowledge (or: ignorance) and thus argue in favor of a conceptual shift: Instead of analyzing creativity from a knowledge perspective, the analytical focus is on the participants’ evolving ignorance. In a qualitative multiple-case study research of creative processes in three domains, biotechnology, legal services and board game design, we explore the time-spatial dynamics of collaboration under the influence of two distinct forms of ignorance: unrecognized and specified ignorance. Initially, participants do not know what they do not know and are unable to purposefully directed search for inspiration. In this stage, overlapping local opportunities play a significant role to afford serendipitous encounters. Creative processes take a decisive turn, once participants manage to specify their ignorance. It becomes possible to circumscribe missing expertise and to search for it more purposefully – or to intentionally refrain from further inquiry. Now mutual attraction of experts enables interaction across distance. Places deemed irrelevant are circumvented.

No abstract

Abstract:The labor market for musical actors is very challenging for several reasons. On the one hand, it is difficult to acquire a position: qualification requirements are high, competition is fierce and reputation is difficult to build up. On the other hand, once in it is often necessary to get out: once being in, market demand for roles with a stage age above 45 drops dramatically and it becomes increasingly hard to stay healthy due to the threefold exposure to bodily strains of acting, dancing and singing. This labor market thus presents potentially interesting situations, in which the meaning of the concept resilience-in the sense of valuing preservation-can change fundamentally. While at the beginning of a career, the main challenge is often to adapt to market requirements, in the second half of a career it becomes increasingly important to become adaptable to a broader spectrum of opportunities, including exit scenarios. The paper generates empirically grounded ideal-typical accounts of the meaning of adaptation and adaptability for musical actors with a focus on the actors' networking strategies, their professional identities, and the corresponding ways of perceiving and creating spaces.

This paper explores the potential of considering entrepreneurial ecosystems as a bridging concept that enables a trans‐disciplinary exchange. We aim to contribute to the debate by offering a perspective that takes entrepreneurial ecosystems out of their systemic—often geographically fixed—notion of administrative and territorial boundaries by offering a novel conceptual understanding of it. So far, entrepreneurial ecosystems are appreciated for first exhibiting conceptual strengths in terms of integrating entrepreneurs as economic actors (rather than firms as the smallest unit of analysis), and, second, considering entrepreneurship as a process that focuses on the co‐evolution of entrepreneurial activities and their institutional environment. Criticism of this concept arises on its simplification by translating social elements into entrepreneurial ecosystem terminologies and on focusing on quantifiable indicators for measuring and comparing regional ecosystems rather than appreciating the complexity and interrelatedness of qualitative dimensions and their temporal dynamics. Against this background, we first argue for expanding the debate on entrepreneurial ecosystems by paying particular attention to the spatial as well as to temporal dynamics of entrepreneurship and its environment. Second, we regard entrepreneurial ecosystems as a communicative bridge that enables a fruitful exchange between academic disciplines and practitioners rather than approaching the concept as a mono‐disciplinary theoretical framework.