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The aim of the paper is to carry out a contemporary and concise “state‐of‐the‐art” review of the city branding research domain, in particular how scholars have approached this field of study, what aspects of city branding have been studied, what cities have been chosen, and how the studies are designed.

Through an iterative search in multiple literature databases, 217 qualified research studies on city branding were identified and retrieved. Those studies were examined, analyzed and categorized according to six categories: bibliographical data, methodologies used, empirical foundation, conceptual frameworks, branding elements, and reported outcomes of branding efforts.

City branding is emerging as an internationally recognized research domain characterized by a high degree of multi‐disciplinary, rapid proliferation in and between disciplines, and a somewhat fragmented theoretical foundation. On the basis of research interests, three perspectives were identified (producing, consuming, and criticizing city branding) emerging across academic disciplines

The study is based on research articles in English, published in academic journals, which limits the international and professional scope of the study. Another limitation is the selected time period, which does not include studies prior to 1988 or later than 2009.

As a state‐of‐the‐art review, the main contribution of this paper is a contemporary and comprehensive overview of the field as such. A methodological contribution is the attempt to run a multi‐variate analysis of the branding elements in relation to the output and performance data reported in the studies. Another contribution is the identification of three cross‐disciplinary research perspectives in the field today.

Interdisciplinary approaches to doctoral education have been identified as a route towards enhancing research capacity to address pressing technical and socio-technological challenges. Increasingly, technological supports for part-time, distance, and flexible access to doctoral programmes are bringing together international groups of supervisors and students. Doctoral programmes in the field of educational technology often include academic staff and doctoral candidates from a fairly wide range of originating undergraduate and graduate disciplines. While technologies provide these diverse, dispersed doctoral students and their supervisors with digital connectivity, theoretical continuity remains a challenge for both new and established contributors to the field. This chapter reports results of a grounded theory informed study of doctoral supervisors’ experiences in dealing with disciplinary issues in educational technology. Resultant supervisory challenges and practices are reported. We posit a conceptual framework for examining perspectives on disciplinarity within educational technology and present an argument that the field provides fertile trans-disciplinary ground for represented disciplines to influence and potentially be reoriented by others. Trans-disciplinary reorientation provides a promising avenue towards developing shared discourses and theoretical underpinnings for at least broadly uniting the field and could make a substantive contribution to resolving persistent concerns in educational technology doctoral supervision and perhaps beyond.

Guided by resource-based theory, this study unpacks the relationship between an export entrepreneurial marketing orientation (EMO) and export performance. This is undertaken by investigating quadratic effects and the moderating role of export coopetition (cooperation amongst competitors in an international arena).

Survey responses were collected from a sample of 282 smaller-sized wine producers in Italy. This empirical context was ideal, as it hosted varying degrees of the constructs within the conceptual model. Put another way, it was suitable to test the underlying issues for theorising purposes. The hypotheses and control paths were tested through a three-step hierarchical regression analysis.

An export EMO had a non-linear (inverted U-shaped) association with export performance. Furthermore, this link was positively moderated by export coopetition. With too little of an export EMO, small enterprises might struggle to create value for their overseas customers. With too much of an export EMO, owner-managers could experience harmful performance outcomes. By cooperating with appropriate industry rivals, small companies can acquire new resources, capabilities and opportunities to help them to boost their export performance. That is, export coopetition can stabilise some of the potential dangers of employing an export EMO.

The empirical findings signified that an export EMO has potential dark-sides if these firm-wide behaviours are not implemented effectively. Nevertheless, cooperating with competitors in export markets can alleviate some of these concerns. Collectively, unique insights have emerged, whereby entrepreneurs are advantaged by being strategically flexible and collaborating with appropriate key stakeholders to enhance their export performance.

The purpose of this study is to examine how different disciplines and sectors approach creativity, and how to improve cross-domain collaboration efficiency. Creativity is one of the most important factors that hugely contributes to the growth of economy, and the key to the modern organisation’s survival. There are considerable differences between disciplines regarding how they approach creativity since each discipline has a methodology which is designed to develop new ideas. Specialisation of disciplines can create difficulties when they start to interact in collaborations. Differences between sectors (Industry, Academia, Arts and Public) in definition of creativity, creativity measurement, management and collaboration motivators can hinder cross-sector collaboration efficiency.

A questionnaire was distributed over the Internet, and statistical tests were performed to find differences between groups how they view various dimensions of creativity.

By analysing various disciplines, the study revealed significant differences between the reward system, the creativity measurement, the required management support and the way how various disciplines solve complex problems. Sector analysis revealed significant differences in creativity quantification, personal traits, sensitivity to idea ownership, composition and size of the ideal team, communication and incentives to increase creativity.

In this study, only Internet users were sampled, and the majority of respondent were from Europe working in academic environment.

Misalignment of forces between disciplines causes inefficient cross- and multi-disciplinary collaborations, while inter-sector misalignment results in unproductive inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary teamwork. Special emphasis has to be placed on external factor, creativity measurement and collaboration motivator adjustment that were the most misaligned across the analysed groups.

The study indicates that to increase collaboration, efficiency factors that were scrutinised in this project have to be aligned across disciplines and sectors.

By using the UNISIST models this paper argues for the necessity of domain analysis in order to qualify scientific information seeking. The models allow better understanding of communication processes in a scientific domain and they embrace the point that domains are always both unstable over time, and changeable, according to the specific perspective. This understanding is even more important today as numerous digitally generated information tools as well as collaborative and interdisciplinary research are blurring the domain borders. Nevertheless, researchers navigate “intuitively” in “their” specific domains, and UNISIST helps understanding this navigation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The UNISIST models are tentatively applied to the domain of art history at three stages, respectively two modern, partially overlapping domains, as well as an outline of an art historical domain anno c1820. The juxtapositions are discussed against the backdrop of, among others, poststructuralist concepts such as “power” and “anti-essentialism”

The juxtapositions affirm the point already surfacing in the different versions of the UNISIST model, that is, structures of communication change over time as well as according to the agents that are charting them. As such, power in a Foucauldian sense is unavoidable in outlining a domain.

The UNISIST models are applied to the domain of art history and the article discusses the instability of a scientific domain as well as, at the same time, the significance of framing a domain; an implication which is often neglected in scientific information seeking.

Companies are increasingly leveraging digital technologies toward innovation strategies that deliver novel features to customers sequentially through successive new product generations (i.e., successive innovation). Extant literature examining successive innovation is both limited and fragmented across marketing and management literatures. Our goal is to synthesize literature on concepts related to successive innovation (such as versioning and upgrades) to identify the core dimensions of successive innovation and provide a cohesive framework to guide future research in this domain.

Given the equivocality in understanding the conceptual domain of successive innovation, we review and synthesize literature across three disciplinary domains: marketing, management, and information and decision sciences. Based on the emerging patterns from the literature review, we develop a conceptual framework of successive innovation with the aim of moving the discussion toward greater theoretical clarity.

Based on the literature review and synthesis, we identify three core-dimensions that define successive innovation and compare these across digital and physical product realms: coexistence, embeddedness, and adoption controllability.

Our proposed conceptual dimensions of successive innovation, and discussion of differences across physical and digital product domains, offer important directions for future research and a common vocabulary.

As physical and digital successive innovations can differ in coexistence, embeddedness, and adoption controllability, firms need to consider relevant barriers to adoption of successive product generations and select appropriate strategies to promote and communicate successive innovation. Our proposed successive innovation conceptual dimensions help managers comprehend the complexity of arranging such innovation in business and consumer segments.

Our contribution to the emerging literature on successive innovation is threefold. First, by conducting a comprehensive literature review, we integrate insights from different fields of inquiry (i.e., marketing, management, and information and decision sciences). Second, based on the synthesis of the literature, we offer a conceptual framework of successive innovation, which aims to move the discussion toward greater theoretical clarity. Third, based on our review and conceptual framework, we discuss a set of future research directions to guide academic research efforts.

Education of the surgeon and development of surgical expertise have been debated for centuries. Today, research in surgical education applies terms and methods from other performance domains such as sport and music. However, there still seems to be a lack of consensus as to how talent may be brought into the discourse about surgical education. Especially, when it comes to identifying and developing trainees who in the future will perform better than the average surgeon.

This five-step scoping study aims to map existing literature about talent identification, talent development and development of expertise in the domains of surgery, sport and music in the period of 1985-2014.

A total of 242 studies, divided in the four domains of surgery (69 studies), sport (115 studies), music (34 studies) and cross-disciplinary studies (24 studies) published in the period 1985-2014 were included.

Informed by the performance domains of sports and music and their inclusion of a holistic, ecological approach to research, this study suggests that research in surgical education may benefit from broadening its view on talent by including psychosocial variables and environmental, demographic and structural influencers when considering how surgical talent may be identified and developed.

The purpose of this paper is to present a fresh approach to stimulate individual creativity. It introduces a mathematical representation for creative ideas, six creativity operators and methods of matrix-algebra to evaluate, improve and stimulate creative ideas. Creativity begins with ideas to resolve a problem or tackle an opportunity. By definition, a creative idea must be simultaneously novel and useful. To inject analytic rigor into these concepts of creative ideas, the author introduces a feature-attribute matrix-construct to represent ideas, creativity operators that use ideas as operands and methods of matrix algebra. It is demonstrated that it is now possible to analytically and quantitatively evaluate the intensity of the variables that make an idea more, equal or less, creative than another. The six creativity operators are illustrated with detailed multi-disciplinary real-world examples. The mathematics and working principles of each creativity operator are discussed.

The unit of analysis is ideas, not theory. Ideas are man-made artifacts. They are represented by an original feature-attribute matrix construct. Using matrix algebra, idea matrices can be manipulated to improve their creative intensity, which are now quantitatively measurable. Unlike atoms and cute rabbits, creative ideas, do not occur in nature. Only people can conceive and develop creative ideas for embodiment in physical, non-physical forms, or in a mix of both. For example, as widgets, abstract theorems, business processes, symphonies, organization structures, and so on. The feature-attribute matrix construct is used to represent novelty and usefulness. The multiplicative product of these two matrices forms the creativity matrix. Six creativity operators and matrix algebra are introduced to stimulate and measure creative ideas. Creativity operators use idea matrices as operands. Uses of the six operators are demonstrated using multi-disciplinary real-world examples. Metrics for novelty, usefulness and creativity are in ratio scales, grounded on the Weber–Fechner Law. This law is about persons’ ability to discern differences in the intensity of stimuli.

Ideas are represented using feature-attribute matrices. This construct is used to represent novel, useful and creative ideas with more clarity and precision than before. Using matrices, it is shown how to unambiguously and clearly represent creative ideas endowed with novelty and usefulness. It is shown that using matrix algebra, on idea matrices, makes it possible to analyze multi-disciplinary, real-world cases of creative ideas, with clarity and discriminatory power, to uncover insights about novelty and usefulness. Idea-matrices and the methods of matrix algebra have strong explanatory and predictive power. Using of matrix algebra and eigenvalue analyses, of idea-matrices, it is demonstrated how to quantitatively rank ideas, features and attributes of creative ideas. Matrix methods operationalize and quantitatively measure creativity, novelty and usefulness. The specific elementary variables that characterize creativity, novelty and usefulness factors, can now be quantitatively ranked. Creativity, novelty and usefulness factors are not considered as monolithic, irreducible factors, vague “lumpy” qualitative factors, but as explicit sets of elementary, specific and measurable variables in ratio scales. This significantly improves the acuity and discriminatory power in the analyses of creative ideas. The feature-attribute matrix approach and its matrix operators are conceptually consistent and complementary with key extant theories engineering design and creativity.

First to define and specify ideas as feature-attribute matrices. It is demonstrated that creative ideas, novel ideas and useful ideas can be analytically and unambiguously specified and measured for creativity. It is significant that verbose qualitative narratives will no longer be the exclusive means to specify creative ideas. Rather, qualitative narratives will be used to complement the matrix specifications of creative ideas. First to specify six creativity operators enabling matrix algebra to operate on idea-matrices as operands to generate new ideas. This capability informs and guides a person’s intuition. The myth and dependency, on non-repeatable or non-reproducible serendipity, flashes of “eureka” moments or divine inspiration, can now be vacated. Though their existence cannot be ruled out. First to specify matrix algebra and eigen-value methods of quantitative analyses of feature-attribute matrices to rank the importance of elementary variables that characterize factors of novelty, usefulness and creativity. Use of verbose qualitative narratives of novelty, usefulness and creativity as monolithic “lumpy” factors can now be vacated. Such lumpy narratives risk being ambiguous, imprecise, unreliable and non-reproducible, Analytic and quantitative methods are more reliable and consistent. First to define and specify a method of “attacking the negatives” to systematically pinpoint the improvements of an idea’s novelty, usefulness and creativity. This procedure informs and methodically guides the improvements of deficient ideas.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the problematics of learning across knowledge boundaries in organizational settings. The paper specifically explores learning processes that emerge, when a new knowledge domain is introduced into an existing organizational practice with the aim of creating a new combined practice.

A case study was carried out as a “natural experiment” in an engineering consultancy, where emerging initiatives to integrate the newly acquired competencies into the existing practice were explored. A theoretical framework informed by selected perspectives on learning processes and boundary processes was applied on three illustrative vignettes to illuminate learning potentials and shortcomings in boundary processes.

In the engineering consultancy, it was found that while learning did occur in the consultancy organization, it remained discrete in ‘pockets’ of learning; mainly at an individual level, at project level or as domain-specific learning. Learning processes were intertwined with elements of domain-specific interests, power, managerial support, structural conditions, material and epistemic differences between knowledge domains.

The finding in this paper is based on a single case study: hence, the findings' generalizability may be limited.

The paper argues that learning across knowledge domains needs various forms of supporting initiatives and constant readiness to alter or counteract when an initiative's shortcomings appear or undesired learning loops arise.

The paper contributes to understanding the complexity of learning across knowledge boundaries in organizational settings.