Business is changing from an industrial- to a knowledge-based environment, building more from professionals and their expertise. Corporations need to create internal organizations in which there is more emphasis on human capital and creating/sharing knowledge and talents. Talent management and knowledge creation should be new foci to create sustainability and long-term success. On the whole, organisations are working too much on an ad hoc basis, focusing on technology instead of creating an environment in which talents reinforce each other. In this review article we explore knowledge circulation, link knowledge, and talent to innovation, and discuss optimum circumstances for corporations to benefit from these assets.
Educational innovations often tend to fail, mainly because teachers and school principals do not feel involved or are not allowed to have a say. Angela de Jong's dissertation shows the importance of school principals and teachers leading 'collaborative innovation' together. Collaborative innovation requires a collaborative, distributed approach involving both horizontal and vertical working relationships in a school. Her research shows that teams with more distributed leadership have a more collaborative 'spirit' to improve education. Team members move beyond formal (leadership) roles, and work more collectively on school-wide educational improvement from intrinsic motivation. De Jong further shows that school principals seek a balance in steering and providing space. She distinguished three leadership patterns: Team Player, Key Player, Facilitator. Team players in particular are important for more collaborative innovation in a school. They balance between providing professional space to teachers (who look beyond their own classroom) and steering for strategy, frameworks, boundaries, and vision. This research took place in schools working with the program of Foundation leerKRACHT, a program implemented by more than a thousand schools (primary, secondary, and vocational education). The study recommends, towards school principals and teachers, and also towards trainers, policymakers, and school board members, to reflect more explicitly on their roles in collaborative innovation and talk about those roles.
Business innovation is a multidisciplinary area of expertise that bridges the gap between traditional areas of study such as business administration, organizational studies, marketing, design, engineering and entrepreneurship. Business innovation focuses on creating, accelerating and managing new and sustainable business models through innovation (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010; Keeley, Walters, Pikkel, and Quinn, 2013).
