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Social entrepreneurs who use market mechanisms to solve wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973) may benefit from practices based on design thinking. Design thinking offers approaches to work iteratively on both problem and solution spaces collaboratively with multiple diverse stakeholders, which is characteristic of innovating for social change. This research conceptualizes designing as a construct formed by three practices: making improvements, generating creative leaps, and problem-solving. Using Boland and Collopy’s (2004) conception of a sense-making manager, it proposes “how” nascent social entrepreneurs take actions and also proposes “what” specific activities they undertake for the development of the venture. A conceptual model proposing “what” it is that social entrepreneurs do and “how” they go about their activities affecting new venture development is tested using structural equation modeling. Preliminary support for the predictive capability of the model is encouraging, suggesting that practices based on design thinking may be further developed in order to advance theoretical understanding of the application of design thinking for social entrepreneurship.

Resilience while learning is the capacity to initiate, persist and direct effort toward learning when experiencing unpleasant affective states. The underlying mechanisms of resilience are emotional buffering and self-regulation when experiencing unpleasant affective states. The authors identified four factors that support resilience while learning: positive emotional engagement, creative problem-solving, learning identity and social support. The authors developed and tested scales and found evidence to support the four-factor model of resilience. The authors offer a person-centered approach to resilience in learning by conducting a latent profile analysis that tested the likelihood of resilience based on profiles of differences in scores on these factors under two affective conditions: (unpleasant) learning during frustration versus (pleasant) learning during progress. A quarter of individuals activated the four resilience factors in pleasant and unpleasant affective states, while 75% of participants saw decrements in these factors when faced with frustration. The results support a four-factor, person-centered approach to resilience while learning.

The authors develop and test a four-factor model of resilience and test the model in a group of 330 management undergraduate and graduate students. Each participant identified two learning episodes in their responses, one while frustrated and one while making progress, and ranked the level of intensity on the four resilience factors. Analysis on an additional 88 subjects provided additional support for the validation and reliability of scales.

Results revealed 2 latent profiles groups, with 25% of the sample associated with resilience (low difference on resilience factors between the two learning episodes) and 75% who remain susceptible to unpleasant emotions (high difference between the two learning episodes).

The study supports a person-centered approach to resilience while learning (in contrast to a variable centered approach).

The study provides a means to classify individuals using a person-centered, rather than a variable-centered approach. An understanding of how individuals buffer and self-regulate while experiencing unpleasant affect while learning can help educators, consultants and managers develop better interventions for learning.

This study addresses the growing concern over student success associated with increased dropout rates among undergraduate business students, and the failure of many management developments and executive training efforts. This study suggests that looking at specific variables may not provide insight into the complex relationship between learning outcomes and factors that support resilience in learning.

There is growing interest in understanding resilience factors from a person-centered perspective using analytical methods such as latent profile analysis. This is the first study to look at how individuals can be grouped into similar profiles based on four resilience factors.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the need for African Library Schools to repackage their curriculum to be able to produce graduates that will match up with jobs demand in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. The discussion argued for the review of African Library Schools, identified the technologies that drive the 4IRs which LIS graduates will be working with, if employed, and relevant skills needed for functionality in the era.

This viewpoint adopts discussion method with reference to some review of literature to argue the pints.

This viewpoint finds out that to be relevant in the 4IR, LIS graduate will have to possess the required skills relevant to function in the 4IR. The skills identified among other are information curation, in-depth research, digital scanning, preservation, cloud data expansion, collaboration, teaching and facilitation, analytical thinking and innovation, active learning and learning strategies.

This paper is an original idea from the author and has been published or submitted to any platform. This paper is original because it has been able to emphasise that African LIS schools should work closely with the employer to make sure their courses and curriculum are designed in such a way to teach employability skills. Moreover, this paper is important, as it made it clear that there is need to ensure removal of barriers to implementing better assessment and training and providing much-needed funding and resources to support the efforts. LIS graduates or those in training should also work to develop in-demand skills and learn to use tools that reveal their capabilities to their potential employers.

The phenomenon of creativity spans research topics across Marketing and Consumer Behavior. Interest in, and research on, creativity has grown over the past several decades. With this heightened attention comes the question of how best to conceptualize and measure creativity. This question is addressed by reviewing the conceptualizations and measures used in the psychological study of creativity. From this review, we build a framework by which to analyze papers from the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Marketing Research. Based upon this analysis, we provide recommendations and best practices for future research. Of particular importance, we recommend the use of convergent problem-solving tasks in combination with ratings of novelty and usefulness reported separately. Such measures allow one to distinguish between instances of effective-creativity (when an idea is both novel and useful) and instances of quasi-creativity (when an idea is novel but lacks usefulness). The importance of the framework to research and analysis beyond the experimental paradigm is discussed.

This paper aims to help people in organizations understand why so much of the talk and effort focused on innovation fails to generate real results.

The paper describes the origins of the Synectics® approach to creative problem solving based upon observation of successful innovators. This approach resulted in a tool kit that has applicability for anyone in organizational life struggling to get new ideas and to take these to action.

The paper has reference to a number of organizations and the results realised.

The originality is the reference to a holistic view of creative problem solving connected with a behavioural approach to make it happen. The value to any organization is beyond measure. At a simplistic level the time in meetings can be halved while simultaneously doubling the output. That is a huge cost saving and release of human energy into more productive effort.

Teachers advocating for increased engagement by culturally and linguistically different (CLD) students in gifted and advanced programs can use Community Problem Solving (CmPS) to promote cultural competence, positive future images, a future orientation, and critical and creative thinking skills. This chapter provides an overview of standards for developing cultural competence for working with CLD students (Ford & Whiting, 2008), taking into account principles of multicultural education (Banks & Banks, 2010) and stages within the Incubation Model of Teaching (Torrance & Safter, 1990). A guide is presented for teachers as culturally responsive coaches of CLD students in their use of CmPS to enhance their engagement in learning in gifted and advanced programs. In addition, the types of projects and documentation required as part of CmPS projects are discussed, including the written report sections and scoring criteria used in the evaluation.

This paper aims to explore professional product designers’ views on creative design and to compare their viewpoints with the related academic literature on product marketing.

To find the designers’ views on creative design, face-to-face in-depth interviews based on repertory grid analysis and semi-structured questions were conducted with 32 professional and award-wining product designers who mostly design for international producers.

Although marketing scholars often approach design as a noun – something that can be viewed and analysed as a bundle of attributes, dimensions or characteristics – professional designers view design differently. To them, design is a verb, a problem-solving process through which they meet the challenges consumers have with products. Comparing professional product designers’ views on design creativity with the main topics in the product marketing literature places scholars’ dispositionalism against designers’ situationalism; it also enables marketing scholars to improve their viewpoints on product design and to bring practical problem-solving and design thinking into their research. This also increases mutual understanding between marketers and designers.

This research enhances the knowledge of marketing scholars, marketers and designers about each other’s perspectives on product design creativity, which will improve their mutual understanding and the business-to-business relationship between marketers and designers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first study that has attempted to discover product designers’ opinions on the main topics in the related academic literature.

Purpose: This chapter explores the strategic role of human resource development (HRD) as a function of talent management (TM) and discusses how HRD activities can help to facilitate more creative behaviours, in the international hospitality industry.

Approach: We focus on TM and HRD research exploring how these lenses are conceptually positioned given our current knowledge on creativity. We draw on the system-based approach to creativity and reconceptualise the creativity components by levels of flexibility/plasticity and outline how such approaches can help creative practice development.

Findings: We rationalise the existing conceptual approaches to creativity and propose a simplified model considering the developmental aspects of creativity. First, we theorise the TM/HRD strategies, such as training and development via learning, as a mechanism to connect TM/HRD to creativity in the organisational setting. We inform the current literature on whether and how creative processes emerge at work and affect creative flow in the bottom-top and top-bottom directions. Second, we advance the development of creativity theory by reconceptualising the established creativity components by degrees of flexibility/plasticity. Such re-conceptualisation allows for more nuanced examinations of organisational stimuli (i.e. training and development) on developmental conceptions of creativity.

Originality: This is the first piece of work that has investigated the fit between TM/HRD and creativity research. Our conceptual model illustrates that creativity can be promoted and developed at work by incorporating developmental initiatives such as TM/HRD.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the link between knowledge management practices, problem-solving processes and organizational performance.

This study uses survey data from 112 leading Italian companies. To test the structural relations of the research model, we used the partial least squares method.

Results show a strong relationship between knowledge management practices and intermediate activities of creative problem solving and problem-solving speed. In addition, creative problem solving has a direct impact on both organizational and financial performances, whereas problem-solving speed has a direct effect only on financial performance.

The focus on top Italian firms limits the generalizability of results.

This study provides empirical evidence of the importance of knowledge management practices for problem-solving activities and firm performance.

The present paper fills an important gap in the extant literature by conceptualizing and empirically testing the relationship between knowledge management, problem-solving processes (creative problem solving and problem-solving speed) and firm performance. This study is the first ever to study these relationships within the Italian context.

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.