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The following paper is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned successful business leader, regarding the commercialization and challenges of bringing technological inventions to market while overseeing a company. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

The interviewee is Melonee Wise, an entrepreneur and veteran robot designer. In this interview, Wise candidly discusses her career journey, including the successes and lessons learned in the transitioning from an engineer to the CEO of two robotic start-up companies in just six years.

Melonee Wise had a love for building mechanical things since childhood. At the age of eight, she built and programmed a plotter out of Legos. Wise received BS degrees in mechanical engineering and physics engineering, and an MS degree in mechanical engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While in school, Wise spent her summers interning at Alcoa, DaimlerChrysler and Honeywell Aerospace. She was able to parlay her passion of building robots when she had the opportunity to work on the DARPA Urban Challenge through her university. From there, Wise joined the start-up Willow Garage as a Senior Engineer in 2007. In 2013, she left her position as Manager of Robot Development at Willow to co-found Unbounded Robotics. When Unbounded unexpectedly shut down 18 months later, Ms Wise gave birth to Fetch Robotics, a manufacturer of autonomous and affordable robots for the warehouse and logistics industries.

Melonee Wise is an ambitious robot engineer-turned-entrepreneur in pursuit of fast-paced career and personal growth, and taking on unprecedented challenges. After interning at three large US manufacturing companies, Wise decided to pursue her PhD until the right company and opportunity came along. In 2007, she was asked by a Willow Garage co-founder to leave her PhD studies and join them as their second employee. Willow Garage, the creator of Robot Operating System (ROS) open source software and the PR2 hardware platforms, would go on to become one of the most significant robot incubators of the decade. Wise was one of the co-creators of TurtleBot, a consumer robotics product developed in nine months, and she helped with the design of the PR2 and ROS. Additionally, while at Willow Garage, Wise created the Intern Program, increasing the number of interns from one to over 60. Melonee Wise spun-off Unbounded Robotics in 2013 and headed Fetch Robotics in 2014. Wise and Fetch recently raised more than US$20 million in Series A funding. Wise holds the patent for a steering column lock assembly and has been honored with the prestigious awards: MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators under 35; The 2014 Business Insider’s 15 Most Important People Working in Robotics; and Robohub’s 2013 25 Women in Robotics you need to know about.

The sector of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) has grown considerably all across Europe during the last few decades. Unfortunately, many governments do not have a clear sight on the profile of WISEs they are supporting. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed profile of WISEs in Flanders and identify shifts and differences within and between WISE work forms.

Data are utilized from a newly designed monitoring instrument to capture the profile of WISEs in Flanders (Belgium). This paper discusses some methodological issues in using administrative data to monitor this sector, and present a profile at the enterprise level and at the worker level. Parametric and nonparametric tests are applied to assess the significance of profile shifts and differences within this sector.

One of the dominant features of the analysis has been the identification of profound differences that can be observed between the work forms and the slighter differences that are observed within the work forms while comparing start‐ups to their mature counterparts. Therefore, it might be concluded that the policy framework on the social insertion economy as it currently exists in Flanders has a strong regulative impact on the WISEs in Flanders. This impact translates itself through differences in the profile of enterprises, as well as differences in the profile of the target group workers they employ.

A dataset combining administrative data are created to estimate enterprise and target group worker profiles in this sector. The discussion on methodological aspects involved contributes to the literature on monitoring this sector.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

Work integration social enterprises (WISEs) create jobs through business ventures that function as locations for training and employment of disadvantaged workers. A key challenge for US WISEs is that the businesses that are easiest to launch and best suited to absorb large numbers of unskilled workers may be located in the same low wage labor market sectors out of which these interventions are designed to catapult workers. This paper aims to present data on an understudied aspect of WISEs: the labor market niches where they are active, the occupations associated with these labor market positions, and the work conditions offered through their WISE businesses.

Data presented in this paper are from a national WISE database developed by the author that includes 254 businesses associated with 123 WISEs, and a pilot study of 15 WISEs testing an instrument for use in a national survey of US WISEs. Each business associated with the WISEs in the national database was coded for industry, occupation and wage data using categories developed by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each WISE business was further coded as preparing its workers for either low or middle skill jobs. These data were analyzed using frequency counts, chi square tests of association and a two‐step cluster analysis. To explore employment conditions inside WISE businesses, the pilot study data were analyzed using a multiple case study analysis approach. Through focused coding techniques, descriptions of the employment conditions associated with the WISE jobs are reviewed.

Analysis at the level of occupation category reveals that about 72 percent of the jobs that WISEs train clients to perform exist in low skill occupations. Chi‐square tests of association between NTEE code (a proxy for target population) and job skill level are not significant suggesting that low skill training is utilized by organizations serving clients facing a range of disadvantage. Cluster analyses indicate that for WISEs targeting disabled populations and for newer organizations targeting the general unemployed populations, low skill job training pervades but for education organization and for older employment organizations, middle skill job training is more prevalent. The pilot data analyses show that the WISEs offer minimum wage or higher wage positions but many without guaranteed hours or a clear pathway out of WISE employment.

These data suggest WISEs in the USA have grown well beyond their earlier, narrower niche working with the disabled to employ a much broader portfolio of client populations, many higher functioning. However, the findings that many WISEs are positioned in the low skill labor market and on some dimensions can mirror the low skill labor market employment conditions suggest that additional aspects of WISE workforce development strategy should be taken into account.

The paper focuses on the labor market niches where WISEs are active, the occupations associated with these labor market positions, and the work conditions offered.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) in the Swedish establishment programme for newly arrived refugees, and how its set-up affects WISEs preconditions for social innovation.

The paper builds on a longitudinal and qualitative action research study of a WISE and its work in organising a course for labour market integration, in the context of the Swedish establishment programme. The authors were actively involved in the study as embedded researchers.

The exploration identifies a number of roles that WISEs take on in the establishment programme. It illustrates how WISEs hybrid character places participants at the centre of the innovation process, where their opinions and knowledge are considered crucial, and how this positively affects their ability to gain skills and confidence. However, the study also makes visible how issues of coordination between stakeholders in the programme lead to mismatches between course content and participant profiles, colliding activities and sporadic participation. In short, the bureaucracy embedded in labour market integration systems erodes the preconditions of WISEs to foster social innovation.

The embeddedness of the authors provides in-depth knowledge regarding how complex state systems affect WISEs in practice. Importantly, it also gives insights into the experiences of refugees, a group that is often mentioned in the literature on WISEs, although mainly in passing.

The purpose of the present study was to advance a theoretical understanding of the mechanisms by which WISEs can influence the stigma associated with mental illness. Many people with serious mental illnesses want to work, but despite much attention to work entry strategies, unemployment rates remain exceptionally high among this population. Stigma has been identified as a particularly pernicious barrier to the full community participation of people with mental illnesses. If work integration social enterprises (WISE) are to positively impact the full community participation of people with mental illnesses, then addressing stigma will be integral to their operation.

A comparative case study approach was used to address the following research questions: “How is the stigma of mental illness experienced in the everyday operations of WISE?” and “What influence do WISEs have on the stigma of mental illness within the workplace and beyond?” Five established WISEs that pay workers at minimum wage or better were selected for inclusion. The maximum variation sample included WISEs that varied in terms of geographical location, form of commerce, business size, revenues and degree of connection with mental health systems and local communities. Data analysis was conducted in four stages using qualitative methods.

The study findings suggest processes by which WISEs can positively impact the stigma of mental illness. Three social processes are associated with the potential of WISE to contribute to stigma reduction: perception of legitimacy, perception of value and perception of competence. Each of these social processes is fueled by underlying tensions in practice that arise in the context of negotiating the dual goals of the business.

This study advances theoretical understanding of the ways in which stigma may be perpetuated or reduced in WISE by revealing the social processes and practice tensions that may be associated with operation choices made by WISEs and their partners. Further research would be required to determine if the processes described actually lead to reduced stigma. Although efforts were made to select WISEs that demonstrate a variety of features, it is likely that some important features were absent. Additional research could further explore the findings identified here with WISEs from other sectors, including youth and workers with transient or less severe forms of illness. This work should be replicated internationally to explore how contextual factors may influence individual and public perceptions.

The findings provide guidance for WISE developers in the mental health sector concerning strategies that may help mitigate the development of stigmatizing features within a social enterprise and by extension improve the work experience and workforce integration of employees. The identification of these processes and tensions can be used to advance the development of consensus principles and standards in the WISE field and contribute to ongoing evaluation and research.

WISEs have the potential to reduce stigma, an important goal to support their efforts to improve employment and integration outcomes for people with mental illnesses. Through their business structures and operations they may be able to impact stigma by positively influencing perceptions of legitimacy, value and competence – all issues that have been associated with public assumptions about mental illness that sustain stigma.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to specifically focus on stigma in the WISE sector, particularly as it relates to the work integration of persons with mental illnesses. The findings provide a range of theoretical and practical implications for future development in the field and highlight factors that merit consideration more broadly in the sector.

The aim of this exploratory, mixed methods study was to develop and test a tool that identifies foundational dimensions of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) for use in empirical studies and enterprise self-assessment. Construction of the initial prototype was based upon a review of the literature and prior qualitative research by the authors.

A 20-item question pool with a four-point response scale was constructed to explore WISE business and employment practices and strategies for worker growth and development. Three sequential field tests were conducted with the prototype – the first with 5 Canadian WISEs, the second with 14 WISEs in the UK and the third with 6 Canadian WISEs involved in an outcome study in the mental health sector. Each field test included completion of the questionnaire by persons with managerial responsibility within the WISE and evaluative feedback captured through questions on the applicability and interpretability of the items.

Testing of the prototype instrument revealed the inherent diversity in the field and the difficulty in creating questions that both embrace that diversity and produce unidimensional variables definable along a spectrum. A number of challenges with question structure were identified and have been modified throughout the iterative testing process.

This study identified central domains for inclusion in a multi-dimensional WISE assessment tool. Further testing will help further refine scaling and establish psychometric properties.

This measure will provide a descriptive profile of WISEs across sectors and identify WISE core dimensions for research and organizational development.

Work integration social enterprises (WISEs) address the chronic unemployment of disadvantaged populations. However, WISEs face challenges, in part, because they embody both social mission and market logics which potentially contradict one another. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the founders of WISEs perceive the relationship between logics and how they manage any resulting tensions, to help determine if they are effective vehicles for alleviating unemployment.

This study used in-depth interviews with social entrepreneurs in nationally recognized WISEs to assess how they perceived and managed logic tensions.

A total of eight out of the ten WISEs emphasized one dominant logic and did not perceive significant internal conflict. Only two cases experienced prolonged and ultimately irreconcilable tensions between their social mission and market goals, when social entrepreneurs were guided by the blended logics of providing training and services to disadvantaged populations within a for-profit legal form.

Future research is required to determine the generalizability of these findings due to small sample size, an exclusive focus on the founder’s perspective and an exclusive focus on WISEs.

Findings contribute to greater understanding of logic tensions in WISEs and the opportunities and limitations that result from aligning dominant logic(s) and organizational form.

This research suggests that the founders of WISEs perceive market and social mission logics as options to be selected, and that WISEs struggle to succeed as organizations with two dominant logics. The market appears as yet unprepared to support singlehandedly organizations with a social mission of work integration.

Although the notion of wisdom confronts the economic rationale of business organizations, this paper aims to argue that organizations are coming under increasing pressure not only to learn, change and adapt, but also to take actions that are ethically acceptable and respond to the expectations of multiple stakeholders, or in other words to act wisely. Accordingly this article seeks to progress the debate on the relationship between organizational learning, learning organizations and wisdom, in pursuit of a new version of the model of the learning organization, the practically wise organization.

First, the literature on the learning organization and organizational learning is reviewed with a view to the identification of useful models and concepts. The paucity of reference to wisdom in that literature is noted. The following sections develop the theme of practical wisdom and, the essence of the practically wise organization, respectively. Finally a model for the practically wise organization that is both a virtuous and a learning organization is proposed.

The paper finds that a practically wise organization is a learning organization whose learning architecture is based on the principles of practical wisdom. Such an organization manages the processes associated with the seven pillars of wisdom: understanding dynamic complexity; developing personal wisdom competency; deliberating towards ethical models; refreshing shared sustainable vision; group wisdom dynamics; deliberated praxis; and embodied learning.

The article is a first step towards extending the theory and practice associated with the learning organization and organizational learning to embrace the multi‐stakeholder, ethically and morally informed perspectives embedded in the notion of practical wisdom.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the limitations of specific statutory support for the long‐term survival of rural based Irish work integration social enterprises (WISEs).

The paper is based on empirical research derived from a combination of qualitative and qualitative research methods which entailed a national survey of Irish social enterprises, a series of in depth interviews with the management of 13‐rural based WISES and a survey of a sample of employees across these 13 WISEs.

Empirical evidence is used to provide a profile of the characteristics of the workforce of a sample of 13 rural WISEs. The paper argues that the rural location of these WISEs along with the prescriptive nature of the statutory support they receive have combined to both create and compound these challenges which in turn are argued to restrict the long‐term survival potential of these organisations.

As there is a lack of information on Irish WISEs in general and rural‐based WISEs in particular, this paper is of value in addressing the deficit.