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This study employs firm-level data to evaluate how the knowledge economy impacts the financing constraints of businesses across 106 low- and middle-income nations, focusing on the influence of technological transformation on corporate financing choices.

The research centers on privately held, unlisted firms and examines the distinct effects of knowledge at both the within-country and between-country levels using a panel dataset. Rigorous sensitivity and endogeneity analyses are conducted to ensure the reliability of the findings.

The findings indicate that greater levels of the knowledge economy correlate with reduced financing constraints for firms. However, this effect varies depending on the location within a country and across different geographical regions. Firms situated in larger urban centers and more innovative regions reap the most significant benefits from the knowledge economy when seeking external funding. Conversely, firms in smaller cities, rural areas and regions characterized by structural and institutional inefficiencies in knowledge generation experience fewer advantages.

The impact of knowledge exhibits variability not only within and among countries but also between poor and affluent developing nations, as well as between larger and smaller countries. The knowledge effect on firms' access to external finance is influenced by factors such as financial openness and development, educational quality, technological absorption capabilities and agglomeration conditions within each country.

This chapter defines a learning culture and discusses the relationship between knowledge and learning. The authors explain why learning is essential to bringing knowledge to life and incentivizing knowledge flows and use. The chapter addresses the interplay between knowledge and learning cultures. A key point in the chapter is the value of mistakes as learning opportunities. The authors explain how mistakes are viewed in the industrial economy and how this perspective impedes critical organizational learning. Specifically, we define mistakes, explain the double cognitive bias of mistakes, explain the tendency and impact of hiding mistakes, the side effects of double mistake bias, learn to learn from mistakes, and take on the challenge of reconciling mistake acceptance and avoidance. Finally, the chapter addresses the importance of cultivating a learning climate to realize your learning culture.

This chapter focuses on corporate cultures as critical focus points for the knowledge economy. The authors explain how culture is a crucial intangible asset in the hyperdynamic knowledge economy. The de facto business cultures in every organization – visible or invisible – are also discussed. The authors describe the four common types of business cultures – bureaucracy, market, clan, and fief. Finally, the importance of aligning culture and strategy is explained. In the event of culture, this chapter explains why culture will always prevail in any strategy-culture conflict. The chapter is supported by practical use cases.

Chapter 4 addresses the importance of internal knowledge cultures. It provides a deeper dive into how internal knowledge cultures can contribute to a company’s performance. The authors explain how knowledge culture shapes practical knowledge processes and fosters intellectual capital. The authors also provide insights into a critical knowledge paradox and discuss the interplay of knowledge paradoxes and cultural collisions. The chapter is supported by practical use cases that illustrate the points in the chapter.

Public libraries are incubators for collective action in the knowledge economy. As three case studies from the United States and Singapore demonstrate, public libraries can serve as influential champions that garner financial resources, communicate an urgent need for change, and respond to the unmet information and economic needs of marginalized individuals and communities. In the Raise Up Radio (RUR) case, public librarians engaged schools, museums, youth, and families in rural communities to develop and deliver STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) content over local radio stations. In collaboration with organizational partners, RUR librarians created a model for library-community-radio projects for the rural United States. In the What Health Looks Like (WHLL) case, public librarians engaged senior citizens in discussions of health and the creation of health comics. In partnership with an interdisciplinary health research team, WHLL librarians developed a pilot for library-community-public health projects aimed at information dissemination and health narrative generation. In the Singapore shopping mall libraries case, the National Library Board (NLB) created public libraries in commercial spaces serving working families, senior citizens, and the Chinese community. The NLB developed an exportable model for locating information centers in convenient, popular, and useful business spaces. These case studies demonstrate how libraries are nodes in the knowledge economy, providing vital services such as preservation of cultural heritage, technology education, community outreach, information access, and services to working families, small- and medium-size businesses, and other patrons. In the years to come, public libraries will be called upon to respond to shifting social norms, inequitable opportunities, emergencies and disasters, and information asymmetries. As the cases of RUR, WHLL, and the shopping mall libraries show, public librarians have the vision and capacities to serve as influential champions for collective action to solve complex problems and foster sustainable development and equitable participation in the knowledge economy.

Continuous advances in digital technology and business models digitalization have decisively altered the entrepreneurial landscape redefining the aims and the requirements of entrepreneurial education to suit the new digital reality in entrepreneurship. The purpose of this study is to shed light in a neglected niche in the intersection between digital entrepreneurship (DE) and entrepreneurship education and outline DE education as field of research. Given that the interdisciplinary growth of DE research outpaces instructional designs in terms of required knowledge and skills, it is important to document how entrepreneurship education responds to the ongoing integration of emerging digital technologies with the entrepreneurial process. Moreover, the introduction of a DE education conceptual framework would facilitate the discussion on theoretical and practical implications and promote new conceptualizations in future research, new educational approaches and new curriculum designs.

A concept-driven, semi-structured developmental literature review methodology, based on grounded theory and reinforced with increased systemization, was used for the identification and analysis of peer-reviewed articles. Previous literature reviews were used to define the search keywords. The articles from three databases were carefully selected, based on protocol and strict eligibility criteria. The papers in the final set were classified in four primary dimensions, synthesized from several sub-streams of research. Each sub-stream highlighting a different view of DE education emerged through open, axial and selective coding of articles. The combined perspectives of these dimensions resulted in a new DE conceptual framework.

Thematic interrelation between the studies examined, revealed an ample view of the various schools of thought in the research field, offering also a better understanding on how entrepreneurial education addresses the practical requirements of digital entrepreneurship. A four dimensional conceptual framework produced highlights pedagogy and learning, success factors and barriers, behavioral approach and ecosystems as the current trends of research. Also, directions for future research are proposed.

The classification framework proposed can serve as a roadmap for entrepreneurship educators seeking efficient pedagogical practices focused on the transfer of knowledge and training on the new skills required by DE and motivate future researchers aiming to propose novel educational interventions.

Although digital entrepreneurship research has gained significant momentum in recent years, little attention is paid to its increased educational requirements. The body of knowledge develops in an uncontrolled and fragmented manner, and the systematic study of the field from an educational perspective was missing. This study offers a representative picture of the topic, highlights current trends of research, synthesizes literature from different disciplinary origins, provides linkages between unconnected streams of research and points out research gaps. Finally, it proposes a conceptual framework to circumscribe DE education as a field of study and serve as a basis to help future research move forward.

This study aims to build upon resource orchestration theory to theorize and empirically test a model that demonstrates how knowledge assets and innovation ambidexterity trigger a synergy in favor of firm performance.

Drawing on a survey of 158 Iranian knowledge-intensive companies, this study uses the partial least squares based on structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses.

The results show that two elements of knowledge assets, namely, structural and relational capital, indirectly affect firm performance through the full mediation of innovation ambidexterity. The findings indicate that human capital has no relationship with both innovation ambidexterity and firm performance.

This study offers fresh insights into the issue of how organizations can create value from an effective orchestration of various strategic resources and capabilities, including knowledge assets and innovation ambidexterity.

This study applies resource orchestration theory to concurrently the areas of knowledge resources and organizational ambidexterity to show how innovation ambidexterity plays a role in translating three various knowledge assets into performance.

The paper seeks to introduce the “critical open access literacy” construct as a holistic approach to confront the challenges in open access (OA) as a dimension of scholarly communication.

The paper first introduces the concepts of information literacy (IL) and OA in the context of transformations in the scholarly information environment. Via a theoretical-analytical exercise on the basis of a literature review of the intersections between the two concepts and of the criticisms of OA, the paper discusses the role of critical IL in addressing the challenges in OA and lays the theoretical-conceptual groundwork for the critical OA literacy construct.

The structural nature of the challenges and transformations in the scholarly information environment require new foci and pedagogical practices in library and information studies. A more holistic, critical and integrative approach to OA is warranted, which could effectively be achieved through the re-conceptualization of IL.

The paper specifies the avenues for putting the theoretical conceptualizations of critical OA literacy into practice by identifying possible foci for IL instruction alongside a transformed role for librarians.

The paper extends deliberations on the role of critical IL for scholarly communication and attempts to advance the research fields of the two domains by proposing a new construct situated at the junction of OA and IL.

Africa's history of trade, production and financial services that propelled the continent's economic systems existed long before an era of colonisation commonly recognised as beginning in the nineteenth century. By the time the decolonisation of a majority of African countries was achieved in the mid-twentieth century, the African economic identity had been, to a great extent, relegated by Westernised methods and orientations. Today, Indigenous practices are once again resurfacing in Africa's ongoing search for sustainable development, with increasing calls to resuscitate and incorporate these age-long business orientations. This introductory chapter provides readers with a synopsis of all the themes of this second of a two-volume edited book with a focus on the philosophies and practices of Indigenous businesses, which, if successfully explored and scaled up, would make significant contributions to Africa's economic infrastructure.