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.
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