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This chapter aims to investigate the driving forces in the creation of knowledge and in the process of innovation and the relevance of the governance model with respect to the free market model or the government model in the regulation of the knowledge and innovation networks.

According to a cognitive approach, a conflict is the result of a closer spatial distance between two actors or firms, leading to a contact stimulus and a reciprocal stimulus, which is perceived as a threat for the respective security or identity. This occurs when the two considered parties are characterised by a too large cognitive distance or a too different mindset or culture, which hinders collaboration.

This chapter highlights that the fragmentation of a modern knowledge economy and the pervasive conflicts between various interest groups, conflicts of interests in the roles of the same actors, bottlenecks, rents and income and power disparity in society require a new form of regulation, that is, multi-level governance and new instruments in innovation policies.

The governance or partnership model is based on the principles of negotiation, exchange and consensus, which are different from the principle of authority as in the planning model and from the principle of competition and survival of the fittest as in the free market model. Governance is an approach to the industrial policy that is more suitable to steer or manage a modern capitalist system and the knowledge and innovation networks that characterise this system.

As public service deliverers, funded by public money and performing tasks on behalf of government, many non-profit organisations (NPOs) are under pressure to increase their performance. More and more NPOs have to prove they work efficiently, effectively and in line with the overall mission. As a result, the challenges these organisations are confronted with put pressure on their management. For NPOs, innovation and performance are managerial key issues. Ultimately, the question is what the factors are that lead to innovation and/or improved organisational performance in NPOs, given their important role in public service delivery, often acting as agents of government. For academics, this creates an ambitious research agenda. With a risk to oversimplify the picture, we could summarise this agenda as consisting of some crucial descriptive and explanatory questions. Major descriptive research questions concern the level of innovative behaviour of NPOs, their performance, and their organisational governance characteristics. In terms of explanations, there is a possible relationship between organisational governance features and organisational performance, between organisational governance features and innovation, and between innovation and organisational performance. In this chapter, we discuss the recent academic research concerning these issues, and, secondly, based on the assessment of this literature, we will propose some directions and challenges for such a research agenda.

This study assess how governments can nurture innovation activities by supporting the research of individual companies, establishing new networks for innovation activities, and by contributing to the general contextual factors supporting innovative behavior.

This chapter analyzes alternative possibilities for the governance of innovation support and develops a framework to evaluate the governance of innovation support activities provided by a national innovation agency.

The framework is developed by analyzing how the governance principles in various national innovation systems have emerged when the countries have pursued low-carbon innovation strategies.

This chapter empirically shows a need to broaden the perspective on what can be expected from an adaptive innovation system, as well as the new types of arrangements facing public-private innovation collaboration.

This chapter explores new opportunities for the research community to further the understanding of how to apply various governance mechanisms in different contexts of innovation support especially relating to multi-level governance and co-governing.

Actors of territories faced with new managerial innovations have to develop new knowledge and behaviours to seize these innovations and create a vision of the territory. This is part of what we call governance learning: the ability of individuals to create new knowledge and behaviour for collective action within the territory. The purpose of this chapter is to explore this concept.

Drawing from a case study of a periurban territory in France, we analyse how the board members of a Community of Communes can learn to work together, articulating organisational learning theories, actor-network theory and the concept of organisational myths.

We explore the enrolment process necessary to ‘build’ the network and interest them in using the innovation; identify three types of governance learning that turn the network into a collective: sensemaking, instrument-seizing and sensegiving; show how these myths are necessary to turn collective knowledge into organisational knowledge.

With both a behavioural and evolutionary approach to governance, we show that power, relationships and learning processes are tightly intertwined within the governance networks. Our use of organisational learning theory also demonstrates how it can be used in a more systematic way to describe the learning processes witnessed in governance situations.

This research brings new light to the understanding of how territorial governance can be developed and how managerial innovations can provoke learning situations and more specifically how stakeholders learn to define common goals and a shared vision of their territory to enable collective action.

Laboratories or “labs” outside science and technology have become increasingly popular in recent years. Their proliferation raises questions about what they have in common and the extent to which “lab” as a metaphor is still pertinent. We develop six criteria to assess these types of labs: (1) theoretical foundations; (2) experimentation; (3) collaboration; (4) boundaries; (5) governance; and (6) temporality. We identify a number of paradoxes in the operation of labs and explore their implications for research and practice.

This chapter, which concludes the volume, develops what was argued in Chapter 7 in light of the need to identify policies capable to support sustainable, resilient and food-secure systems where the role of farmers, and small farmers in particular, as active drivers of change is fully recognized. The chapter presents a discussion on innovation policy guidelines consistent with the illustrated frameworks, and on the best governance arrangements, to support system change vis-à-vis pressures that are both internal and external to the sociotechnical networks (Smith, Stirling, & Berkhout, 2005). Attention is given to the definition of adequate measures to support transition towards a sustainable, resilient and food-secure system with a valorization of small farms' role. Finally, indications on how to assess the effectiveness and the efficiency of the public policies and supports are provided, highlighting the principles to be followed for the design of an effective and consistent monitoring and evaluation system. The discussion hinges on three questions, to be answered in the aim to find the most governance arrangements best suited to promote innovation processes: Who to involve in decision-making? What are the appropriate knowledge infrastructures? How to assess the effectiveness and the efficiency of the public policies and supports?

Purpose – Grant-giving foundation leaders are increasingly concerned with understanding the primary role their institutions are pressured to play in financing the growing nonprofit sectors. The main objective of the chapter is to determine whether effective governance plays a major role in driving foundations’ innovation and value-creation processes.Methodology – Building on the idea that foundations should act as financial partners, managerial experts, and innovator facilitators who deal with the projects proposed by nonprofit organizations, this chapter uses a survey and the annual reports of Italian grant-giving foundations to isolate their records in term of governance, innovation attitude, and performance.Findings – The results of this chapter contribute to improving understanding of the drivers that help foundations to improve the sophistication level of the grant-giving process. In particular, the analysis of governance provides relevant insights about the path foundations follow to incorporate selected tailored methods and practices from the “for profit” competitive arena to improve foundations’ output and nonprofit grantees’ outcomes.Social implication – Many academics, political leaders, and practitioners expect foundations to play the unique dual role of merchant bank and venture capitalist to foster the positive impact of nonprofit organizations on societies and people. The findings of this chapter facilitate this process.Originality/value of the chapter – The main contribution of this study lies in proposing and testing a theoretical framework that foundations can implement to disseminate liquidity and managerial expertise efficiently among selected grantees and to improve grantees’ social outcome.

This is a paper about the soft and hard drivers for English sub-national governance. It posits that the recurrence of claims for inter-urban linkages across the two distinct conurbations of the North-West of England have been bedevilled by entrenched differences in the leadership cultures of the city-regions.

It contrasts the highly localised forms of ‘soft power’ – or the ways in which leaders mobilise brands, plans and strategies to tell stories about place – arguing that there is a considerable divergence between the way that this symbolic capital has been deployed within and across the two city-regions. Whilst this is striking it is still true that ‘Hard powers’ – fiscal, legislative or regulatory mechanisms – are elusive for both Manchester and Liverpool notwithstanding recent moves towards combined authorities for both places. The only model of English urban governance with statutory powers covering transport, economic development and planning is located in Greater London, a legacy of the post-RDA institutional landscape in England.

This paper argues that it would be extraordinary if forms of leadership capable of meaningfully connecting the two cities cannot be found but that this must be seen within a sclerotic English context where there is a huge disconnect between desirable form and functions of urban governance, and the effect this has on regional economic performance. It concludes that local government austerity has had a negative effect on the sort of ‘soft power innovations’ necessary in both cities and that rhetorics of English localism have provided neither a propitious context for inter- nor intra-urban governance innovation.

This paper seeks to describe some of the ways in which collaborations within the city-regions of Manchester and Liverpool have been achieved, making the case that there have been divergent governance experiments which may hamper the aspiration for extensions beyond their border and for intra-urban leadership and governance which combines the two great cities and their areas of influence.

In this chapter the authors discuss that despite public sector reform being a primary concern of successive national leaders of the Philippines, ‘massive – and sometimes impressive – reorganization plans have not met their declared objectives’. They note that intractable and stubborn problems of Weberian bureaucracy, such as excessive rules and regulations, overlapping structures and procedures, inefficient procedures, lack of coordination, excessive partisan politics and corruption, remain. They examine how leadership can play a pivotal and key role in addressing these problems. Specifically, they argue that reforms should be multi-dimensional, going beyond reorganization and shifting organizational boxes and encompassing changes in behaviour, perspectives and attitudes. Using a concept of ‘phronetic leadership’, they examine three cases of national, local and civil society leaders, as well as a survey of university leaders. They conclude that leaders can make a difference by developing capacities of themselves and of others, and pushing the boundaries of continuous improvement. However, to be sustainable, public sector reforms have to be complemented by reforms of institutions, structures and procedures and anchored in behaviour, values and a common vision that is communicated well and owned by all.