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This investigation provides an understanding of network orchestration as an impersonal, primordial driving force that challenges the view in organizational design that assigns human choice and deliberate intention a central role. The study highlights the importance of emerging strategy and the unintended consequence in bringing about a desirable outcome in MNCs’ efforts to coordinate and integrate globally dispersed capabilities. It is based on a longitudinal action research that embraces a period of transformational change between Vodafone and Ericsson to achieve cash synergies in mobile network operations globally. The findings indicate that enabling knowledge mobility, appropriating knowledge, and fostering network stability contribute to a successful economic performance as interactive, self-governing processes of network orchestration. Accordingly, we conclude that the processes of network orchestration must be understood as driven by choice sets taken while creatively coping with change rather than as primarily choice sets deliberately taken in the sequential pursuit of goals.

Universities face incredibly difficult, complex decisions concerning the degree to which they participate in the process of commercializing research. The U.S. government has made an explicit policy decision to allow funded entities to obtain patents and thereby has encouraged participation in the commercialization of federally funded research. The Bayh-Dole Act enables universities to participate in the commercialization process, but it does not obligate or constrain them to pursue any particular strategy with respect to federally funded research. Universities remain in the driver's seat and must decide carefully the extent to which they wish to participate in the commercialization process.The conventional view of the role of patents in the university research context is that patent-enabled exclusivity improves the supply-side functioning of markets for university research results as well as those markets further downstream for derivative commercial end-products. Both the reward and commercialization theories of patent law take patent-enabled exclusivity as the relevant means for fixing a supply-side problem – essentially, the undersupply of private investment in the production of patentable subject matter or in the development and commercialization of patentable subject matter that would occur in the absence of patent-enabled exclusivity.While the supply-side view of the role of patents in the university research context is important, a view from the demand side is needed to fully appreciate the role of patents in the university research context and to fully inform university decisions about the extent to which they wish to participate in the commercialization process. Introducing patents into the university research system, along with a host of other initiatives aimed at tightening the relationship between universities and industry, is also (if not primarily) about increasing connectivity between university science and technology research systems and the demands of industry for both university research outputs (research results and human capital) and upstream infrastructural capital necessary to produce such outputs.In this chapter, I explore how university science and technology research systems perform economically as infrastructural capital and explain how these systems generate social value. I explain how the availability of patents, coupled with decreased government funding, may lead to a slow and subtle shift in the allocation of infrastructure resources.

The increasing global competition, worldwide economic and political uncertainities, and continuously changing dynamics in business environment require companies act differently and differentiate via smart strategies in order to have sustainable operations, growth, and profitability. Therefore, firms should be more agile, creative, and adaptive in planning and strategizing their mid- to long-term business objectives.

In that regard, for the last decade globally many firms across all industries seek opportunities to utilize benefits of digitalization. Lately, COVID-19 has also accelerated companies' efforts and investments in digital platforms.

Today, supply chain and procurement functions are expected to have a strategic role for organizations contributing to management decisions. The digital transformation in procurement is promising to enhance and lean the total workflow of operations. Data analytics, artificial intelligence, robotics, and other emerging digital technologies are all highly powerful tools supporting strategic supply and supplier management, providing predictability for demand planning as well as value-based negotiation power to buyers.

On the other hand, there are still challenges and conflicts throughout this transformation process. Level of technological maturity, infrastructure and investment decisions, expertise and competency of procurement professionals, cultural adaptation, and compliance of related stakeholders are some of the key barriers that are addressed with a unique model in this chapter.

Digital era offers a lot of advantages to firms to improve their procurement facilities and practices while it may still take time both for the technologies to fully evolve and also for companies to adapt and embrace digitalization on their benefit.

Computer systems firms in Silicon Valley are responding to rising costs of product development, shorter product cycles and rapid technological change by focusing and building partnerships with suppliers, both within and outside of the region. Well-known firms like Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computers and lesser known ones like Silicon Graphics and Pyramid Technology are organized to combine the components and sub-systems made by specialist suppliers into new computer systems. As these firms collaborate to both define and manufacture new systems, they are institutionalizing their capacity to learn from one another. Three cases - a contract manufacturer, a silicon foundry, and the joint development of a microprocessor - illustrate how inter-firm networks help account for the sustained technological dynamism of the regional economy.

This chapter explores some of the key operational steps and marketing activity required to organise a children's sports events based on the experience of event management company ReesLeisure. The chapter highlights the importance of conducting research pre-event, creating robust event aims, developing a target market, marketing the event correctly, working with competent suppliers, hiring the correct number of staff and having the vital paperwork and policies in place. It explores some of the barriers and challenges that organisers face and have to work through when organising events for children.