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Strategy scholars have long argued that breakthrough innovation is generated by recombining knowledge from distant domains. Even if firms have the ability to access and absorb knowledge from distant domains, however, they may fail to pay attention to such knowledge because it is seemingly irrelevant to their tasks. We draw attention to this problem of knowledge relevance and develop a theoretical model to illuminate how ideas from seemingly irrelevant (i.e., peripheral) domains can generate breakthrough innovation through the cognitive process of analogical reasoning, as well as the conditions under which this is more likely to occur. We situate our theoretical model in the context of teams in order to develop insight into the microfoundations of knowledge recombination within firms. Our model reveals paradoxical requirements for teams that help to explain why breakthrough innovation is so difficult.

This chapter outlines some of the challenges in assessing teachers’ subject-matter knowledge. After reviewing traditional ways of mapping a domain, such as job analysis and “wisdom of practice,” the author alights on the two constructs, depth and breadth, that have come to define how teachers’ subject-matter knowledge is conceptualized. He argues that these two constructs constitute an impoverished vocabulary that misrepresents the complexity of the subject-matter knowledge teachers most need for effective instruction. He proposes an expanded set of constructs – differentiation and elaboration, qualification, integration, generativity, and epistemological knowledge – that better approximate the complexity of a subject-matter domain and serve as a better guide for creating an assessment system.

This chapter provides a deep dive into knowledge networks. The authors provide an inclusive definition of a knowledge network. A knowledge network includes nodes as sources and targets of knowledge, relationships as knowledge links, and messages as knowledge transactions and flows. The authors note how knowledge networks differ from other types of networks, specifically their dynamic and chaotic state and continuous transactions. These peculiarities reflect the economic properties and behaviors of knowledge. The elements of networks described in Chapter 2 are elaborated for knowledge networks. The chapter calls out knowledge network domains, geographies, typologies, nodes, messages, and relationships.

The internationalisation of industries has spilled over to academia, whereby institutions of higher learning (IHL) increasingly compete in the graduate quality and applied graduate knowledge capabilities that they can offer. With increasing global competition for students, combined with the evolving need for lifelong learning in dynamic industries impacted by digital knowledge management, there is an opportunity for IHLs to be able to evolve to ensure their business models enable services and service delivery to cater to and help shape industry demands. This chapter will look at micro-credentialing (MC) and how the provision of MCs has changed along with the evolving IHL education environment. The demands of students, employers and ecosystem considerations will be addressed through a review of the current landscape, pathways to MC and how MC may be operationalised. The Bersteinian approach to pedagogic classification, which identifies the framework of knowledge as being communicable via three axes of singularism, regionalism and a wider generalist approach is referenced as a framework. The resultant recommendations that draw upon these foundations will conclude the chapter.

“It is now becoming widely recognised that many of the central unresolved problems in economics turn on questions of knowledge” (Loasby, 1986, p. 41). Nearly twenty years after that was written, it may be appropriate to take a (necessarily selective) look at ideas about human knowledge and to suggest some implications for the practice of economists. The ideas with which we shall begin long predate the observation that I have just recalled; and the delay in recognising their implications indicates how the growth of knowledge is dependent on the formation of appropriate linkages – which of course are not recognised as appropriate until they have been formed. Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall and Friedrich Hayek were all confronted with the uncertain basis of knowledge before they began their study of economics; and what their responses have in common is not only a theoretical focus on the process by which people develop what we call “knowledge” but also a reliance on similar kinds of process, which result in the formation of connections within particular domains. Each author recognises the impossibility of demonstrating that any such process can deliver proven truth; instead each envisages sequences of trial and error within particular contexts, leading to the preservation of what seems to work – until it no longer does, when a new sequence of trial and error begins. In other words, they all offer evolutionary theories, Marshall and Hayek explicitly so, while Smith, directly and indirectly, had a major influence on the development of Darwin’s ideas.

This chapter focuses on business and industry networks. All six facets of knowledge networks are described. Three of the six facets have particular importance for these networks, specifically domain, relationships, and how messages are managed and controlled. The authors provide six network profiles, including health care industry networks, fashion industry networks, technology industry networks, food production industry networks, building industry networks, and transportation industry networks.

The expansion of copyright and the shrinking of the public domain did not begin with the Internet, but the Internet has exacerbated the problem. The threat posed by digital technology has led industries to obtain increasingly absolute protection over their “property.” In this paper I will argue that developing a vibrant public domain is essential for resisting the overextension of copyrights and patents. Developing the public domain as a counterpoint to copyright and patent law is vital to an energized public sphere and by extension a democratic system.