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Effective leadership is critical in driving innovation and success in organisations, particularly in today’s rapidly changing environment. However, achieving effective leadership at all levels of the organisation can be challenging. This chapter argues that understanding how the brain functions is essential for innovation leaders to achieve positive results and higher rates of success in their projects. By analysing relevant research on neuroscientific functioning patterns and developing interventions based on these foundations, this chapter establishes that the brain’s self-organising ability and cognitive processing systems offer valuable insights for effective innovation leadership. Based on neuroscientific evidence this chapter concludes that effective innovation leadership should focus on inviting others to engaged co-creation, rather than directing others to perform specific tasks as if they were ‘a prolonged arm’. Additionally, effective innovation leadership integrates insights from information processing in the brain by providing behavioural-oriented impulses that activate the brain, enabling individuals to maintain focus, restore motivation or emotional stability, enhance mood and confidence, and increase cognitive flexibility. Evidence-based interventions range from structured breaks to powernapping and walking. The importance of self-leadership is stressed throughout the chapter. By deriving solutions from an understanding of how the brain functions, interventions that may have been known for a long time can become evidence-based and optimised for use in organisations. Future research could explore the intersection of neuro- and behavioural science with leadership to further innovate organisational principles.

Key international and intergovernmental organizations assess the size of the Roma population in Serbia to be around 4–600.000, rendering Serbia among the five countries in Europe with the highest percentage of Roma population. Although Roma in Serbia have a long history of self-organization, cultural and media organizations, and are formally recognized as national minorities with a National Council of the Roma National Minority as a body with political decision-making influence, the Roma community in Serbia, as in most other European countries, is the most disadvantaged and underprivileged group in the country, often living in underdeveloped neighbourhoods with limited access to social services, especially education and health.

The educational attainment of the Roma population in Serbia, as in other countries in Europe, is far below the attainment of the general population. The education indicators are showing a developing trend, albeit slow. Roma integration policies evolved in Serbia from the early 2000s in the general policy framework of Equity of Education and Inclusive Education and a comprehensive education reform agenda, promoted and legally endorsed by the 2009 Law on the Foundations of the Education System. As the consequence of such an approach, the Roma integration policies intertwined and mutually reinforced with other reform policy areas. The most important post-2000 policies supporting the integration of Roma students into education are the introduction of pedagogical assistants in elementary schools and preschool institutions as a profession, paid from the budget, abolishing the system of school readiness assessment, introducing individual education plans and intensifying affirmative action and scholarships for enrolment in secondary and tertiary education.

This chapter outlines the research management and administration (RMA) as a profession and work field in Slovenia. Thus, we present an overview of the Slovenian research system, describing how this system has evolved over time. In addition, we explain the emerging need for RMA skills, including its self-organisation component and the challenges that lie ahead. A section is dedicated to Slovenian RMA demographics using RAAAP-2 and RAAAP-3 surveys. The conclusions of the chapter focus on a forecast for the future of RMA in Slovenia and several possible paths to follow for its community.

In this chapter, the authors explore collective entrepreneurship through the lens of how public entrepreneurship boosts collective action towards a common good. The role of public entrepreneurs and the collaborative nature of innovation community members evidence a collective action that pursues a socio-political change. Through a case study contextualized during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in Spain, the authors explore how a public entrepreneur triggered a collective action that led to the creation of the innovation community: The Coronavirus makers. This collaborative network groups more than 20,000 researchers, developers, and engineers. They altruistically put their knowledge and resources at the service of the community to provide solutions for one of the healthcare system’s main problems at that time – the shortage of medical supplies to cope with the increasing number of COVID-19 cases. The collective action of the Coronavirus makers has impacted the health and wellbeing fields, the community and the values that should define social change and allow the construction of a more open, equitable and sustainable society. Potentially, our findings confirm that collective entrepreneurship derives from a function of collective action.

In this chapter, the author explores and discusses the transformation of management from the perspective of complex systems, systems change and the Taoist yin-yang theory. Modern complex organizations require innovative management practices that move beyond traditional approaches. Consequently, many organizations are experiencing a management shift towards more holistic and sustainable methods. This shift encompasses changes in organizational structures and modes of inquiry. Organizations are transitioning from rigid hierarchies to more collaborative and agile configurations while adopting a systemic approach to management that acknowledges the interconnectedness and interdependence of all organizational aspects. Simultaneously, there is a paradigm shift in management thinking, replacing the conventional focus on ego-action with eco-action, which emphasizes the integration of diverse perspectives and the cultivation of self-awareness and introspection. This shift in mindset is embodied in the yin-yang paradigm, highlighting the importance of balance and harmony between contrasting forces.

Pulse check on discipline degrees for changed status quo is vital to ensure global futures for international enrolments (IEs). While employers spend less on training and more on innovating, can IEs manage time spent wisely and profitably (self-sufficiency) via collecting demand-driven credentials (micro-credentialing, Mc)? Due to limited research on Multidisciplinary, Micro-credentialing (MdMc), communication among stakeholders becomes difficult – there is no sense of self-sufficiency and course crossbreed lags; thus, diploma initiatives rarely succeed. Hence, MdMc aims to generate industry-necessitated, new knowledge hybrids where courses could generate adaptable Md links and intersections towards self-sufficiency. We propose a methodology based on Md content analysis on rapidly deployable knowledge bases suitable for multisector employability: a market survey to identify new knowledge areas. The outcome is to be knowledge mapped to identify gaps in skills required for applications to meet across disciplines. Finding the nature of these gaps intends to present possible knowledge links and intersections among courses. Diagrammatised and textual analysis of self-sufficiency-related benefits that could forge robust faulty-industry partnerships will be discussed – to demonstrate fluidity between credentials and careers. The resulting MdMc rigour model would present avenues for new content, training programmes, and a potential HE-industry manifesto. This MdMc model may offer a quick and dynamic process of epistemic, accessibility and instructional rigour checks to achieve professional currency towards self-sufficiency for IEs.

Cities evolved into quite complex urban systems. The rigid management process must reflect the complexity of the current political, social, and economic environment. With the vast city growth, citizens experience new difficulties – traffic congestion, pollution, immigration, overcrowding, and inadequate services.

In our research, we analyze problems and benefits that occur with the growing complexity and offer a new concept considering every city as a live and constantly developing complex adaptive system of many participants and actors that operate in an uncertain environment. These actors (residents, businesses, transport, energy, water supply providers, entertainment, and others) are the main elements of city life.

The new concept of “Smart City 5.0” is based on a previously developed model of Smart City 4.0 (compared with Industry 4.0) and implements the Urban Digital Ecosystem, where every element can be represented by a smart agent operating on its behalf. It is shown that smart services can interact vertically and horizontally in the proposed ecosystem, supporting competition and cooperation behavior based on specialized network protocols for balancing the conflicting interests of different city actors.

The chapter describes the design principles and the general architecture of the Urban Digital Ecosystem, including the basic agent of smart service, protocols of the agent’s negotiation, the architecture, and basic principles Smart City knowledge base.

The developed evolutionary methodology of implementation will ensure a minimum of disruptions to city services during its transformation into an urban ecosystem to harmoniously balance all spheres of life and the contradictory interests of different city actors.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. That is, without critically inquiring into the knowledge of life, which is well-being and valuable, life is not worth living. Critical thinking questions existing theories and their unexamined and obsessive assumptions and generalizations, constraints, and the so-called “best” practices of the prevailing system of management and tries to replace them with more valid assumptions and generalizations that uphold the dignity, uniqueness, and inalienable rights of every individual and the community. In our diverse and pluralistic cultural environment, the promise of a truly generative dialogue among occidental (western) and oriental (eastern) cultures and civilizations holds great hope for the future. Critical thinking can facilitate this dialogue such that all of us have a meaningful place in this universe. In this chapter, we explore introductory working definitions of critical thinking so that we can early enough understand its demanding domains, moral calls, and ramifications in its current critical applications. Specifically, in Part I, we examine the structured layers of our thinking and reasoning to dismantle them progressively, and in Part II, in support of our claims, we explore complexity and chaos theories as a new resource for critical thinking.