Community, Economic Creativity, and Organization

How knowledge is created, and how innovation in products and practices occurs, have been long-standing concerns of socio-economists. This book argues that 'communities of practice', communities and networks of joint enterprise, are the prime site where knowledge and innovation are generated. It sees the everyday interaction that takes place in different working and professional contexts as producing this creativity, learning and knowing through action. In this book, leading international scholars examine the concept and our understanding of the relationship between situated practice and economic creativity. Chapters examine the development of the concept, the link between situated learning and knowing, and the economy in general, what challenges these links raise for organization and knowledge management to encourage knowledge exploitation and breakthrough innovation, and, more generally, the socio-spatial aspects of creativity in its different knowledge settings. Exploring the frontiers of current understanding of innovation and learning, this book is for all those interested in the economic sociology of knowledge creation.

Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at Durham University and Executive Director of the University's Institute Advanced Study. His current research interests lie in the areas of knowledge practices, the social economy, race and multiculturalism, social and spatial theory, urbanism, and political invention. His most recent books include Cities: Reimagining the Urban, with Nigel Thrift, Polity, 2002; Placing the Social Economy, with Angus Cameron and Ray Hudson, Routledge, 2002; Architectures of Knowledge, with Patrick Cohendet, OUP, 2004; Cultural Economy: A Reader, edited with Nigel Thrift, Blackwell, 2005. He is completing a book with Nigel Thrift on reinventing Left political thought and practice.
Joanne Roberts is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Newcastle University Business School where she is a member of the Centre for Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Enterprise (KITE). Her research interests include knowledge intensive services, new information and communication technologies and knowledge transfer, inter and intra organizational knowledge transfer and the internationalisation of business services. She is a participant in the Dynamics of Institutions and Markets in Europe, Network of Excellence and an Honorary Associate Fellow at the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition, University of Manchester. Her recent books include Living with Cyberspace: Technology & Society in the 21st Century, edited with John Armitage, Continuum, 2002; Knowledge and Innovation in the New Service Economy, edited with B. Andersen, J. Howells, I. Miles and R. Hull, Edward Elgar, 2000.