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Artifacts are rarely used today to visualize thoughts, insights, and ideas in strategy work. Rather, textual and verbal communication dominates. This is despite artifacts and visual representations holding many advantages as tools to create and make sense of strategy in teamwork. To advance our understanding of the benefits of visual aids in strategy work, I synthesize insights from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and management research. My analysis exposes distinct neurocognitive advantages concerning attention, emotion, learning, memory, intuition, and creativity from visual sense-building. These advantages increase when sense-building activities are playful and storytelling is used.

Why is it that highly trained and seasoned executives fail? On the surface, this doesn’t make sense because they are very successful; yet research in the organization sciences provides no shortage of evidence to prove just that. From the classic Mann Gulch fire disaster of Weick’s famous collapse of sensemaking study, to studies of myopia of learning, escalation of commitment, threat-rigidity, dominant logic, the architecture of simplicity, the Icarus Paradox, to core competencies turning into core rigidities, and navigating new competitive markets using “old” cognitive maps, and many more such examples point to a ubiquitous phenomenon where highly trained and experienced professionals find themselves “stuck” in the heat of battle, unable to move and progress. On the one hand, for some, there is a desperate need for change, but are unable to do so, due to their trained incapacities. On the other hand, some simply cannot see the need for change, and continue with their “business as usual” mentality. For both, their visions of the world shrink, they have a tendency to cling onto their past habitual practices and oversimplify the complexity of the situation. In moments like these: DROP YOUR TOOLS and UNLEARN! This book chapter introduces a framework (grounded in clinical psychology) that has had consistent success in helping seasoned executives and key decision-makers open up the alternatives whenever they find themselves stuck with complexity.

Great uncertainty accompanies entrepreneurs’ processes of designing promising business models (BMs). Therefore, stabilising factors act as important means in this process. In this study, we examined the impact of cognitive dispositions and visual BM frameworks on the BM process and outcomes. By using partial-least-square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and an experimental setting, our results show that the stabilising function of BM frameworks depends on entrepreneurs’ cognitive dispositions. This finding contributes to the cognitive BM perspective and explains how cognitive dispositions and visual framing effects act as boundary conditions for the theory of stabilising factors. This also has important implications for applying frameworks in practice.

The paper aims to propose a knowledge visualization approach and algorithm to support public decision makers to define the inner areas, which represents a strategic topic in the European debate about territorial inequality and development.

The study has been developed by following the design science research, which includes six steps: problem identification and motivation; identification of the objectives for a solution; design and development; demonstration; evaluation; and communication. As for the design and development step, the proposed approach and algorithm ground on association mining to discover hidden relationships existing among municipalities. They have been applied to analyse the 97 municipalities of the Lecce province, and each municipality has been described through 30 multi-domain indicators organized into seven categories, whose data have been collected from institutional datasets, local sources or web-scraping process.

A set of complementary analyses has been generated through the construction of dynamic and interactive knowledge maps that show “similar” municipalities according to the indicators selected.

The approach and algorithm proposed allow discovering similarities existing among distinct municipalities, based on the analysis of a set of multi-domain indicators. The approach may complement or completely substitute the existing ones used to define inner areas, thus overcoming both the methodological limits of the “top-down” line imposed by the central legislator, and the “bottom-up” paradox consisting in the illusion that single (and often small) towns have the economic and cognitive resources necessary to implement effective territorial mapping and development strategies. In such a way, policy makers can be aware on similarities existing among distinct towns and can thus share cognitive and financial resources to define a common plan and a set of practices for territorial development.

Scenarios are cognitive aids for thinking about the future in a sustained and disciplined manner. Because scenarios must be facilitated, scenarios must be considered in the context of their practice. In the strategic management literature, there has been a considerable conversation on the practical difference between “hot” and “cold” cognition. Thinking in this conventional literature demonstrates how the facilitators of scenario planning workshops establish and channel the productive cognition of their clients away from hot cognition and toward cold cognition. But how? As a thought experiment, we examine whether the sociological concept of “emotional labor” helps explain the cognition management of clients by facilitators during scenario planning. We end by considering how a deeper practical understanding of emotional labor might help facilitators identify mechanisms and adapt their tools to better manage the cognitive-affective dimensions of scenario planning in practice.

This paper assesses the role of collaborative knowledge building in the co-creation of artifacts in the knowledge management field.

Fifty-eight papers published in six knowledge management-related journals were analyzed. The framework for analysis included 13 codes. Studies were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods.

Findings showed that several factors influenced the co-creation of artifacts in collaborative knowledge building. At the micro level, individual motivation, capabilities and reflexivity seemed to play a central role in co-creation processes. At the meso level, teamwork and shared understanding were identified as two key major factors. At the macro level, structural, behavioral and cognitive factors were identified; they included organizational rules and workplace setting, organizational culture and learning and memory. Managerial agency, characteristics of artifacts and knowledge brokers and boundary spanners also seemed to have an influence at the inter-organizational levels of analysis.

This study has limitations related to scope of contribution, covered time span (17 years) and restrictions in journal subscriptions.

The study will help managers understand the intricacies of collaborative knowledge building practices to increase organizational overall effectiveness and performance.

This study is a first attempt to systematically assess the role of collaborative knowledge building in the co-creation of artifacts, and therefore, it represents a primary reference in the knowledge management field. It proposes some initial propositions that can guide future empirical studies.

Performance management is the ‘Achilles heel’ of many reforms and public management practices and requires changes. Governance in general and co-production in particular impose an organizational setting which requires rethinking performance management, which is still conceptually embedded in New Public Management paradigm. This chapter builds on the latest co-production framework and service-dominant logic and outlines new challenges for rethinking performance measurement and management. It also discusses how public service design (PSD) may interact with them. As a result the need to shift between performance control loops has been emphasized, suggesting that service design may significantly support internal ex-nunc performance management. Although it should be facilitated in addressing some of the performance challenges, an outline of a framework for appropriate method has also been proposed.

This empirical study examines the psychometric comparability of Aaker's Brand Personality Scale (Aaker, 1997) in sponsorship matching. It employs a structural validation protocol - the congenerity test (Ohanion, 1990) - to investigate the extent to which sports events and sponsors can be psychometrically matched. The results show that sports events and sponsors are comparable only in terms of limited numbers of the dimensions of the a priori scale. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight important aspects of adopting a lifelong learning mindset as a way to improve entrepreneurial employability and self-employment capabilities among older workers, and to examine their practicality in enterprise services.

This paper takes a two-method research approach that synthesizes an original conceptual framework based on current gerontological and work psychology literature with qualitative organizational case study in the Israeli labor market.

The process of lifelong learning and accumulation of employability underpins a fulfilling career in self-employment later in life, through continuous self-acquisition of necessary knowledge and complementary skills. Adopting a lifelong learning mindset may contribute to older workers developing lifelong employability by self-realizing their meaningful life wisdom alongside becoming lifelong learners, and consequently, by becoming protean career owners capable of acquiring entrepreneurial competencies and skills. Program analysis of social and business enterprises established in Israel to meet the demand for the acquisition of later life skills demonstrates the various ways in which they play a role in supporting this process.

The need for future research and practice on the conceptual framework presented in this paper is analyzed and discussed in the Israeli context.

This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on third-age entrepreneurship, by conceptually linking the core concept of lifelong learning to entrepreneurial employability, and demonstrating its application in the Israeli work culture.