Community, Economic Creativity, and Organization

It has long been an interest of researchers in economics, sociology, organization studies, and economic geography to understand how firms innovate. Most recently, this interest has begun to examine the micro-processes of work and organization that sustain social creativity, emphasizing the learning and knowing through action when social actors and technologies come together in 'communities of practice'; everyday interactions of common purpose and mutual obligation.These communities are said to spark both incremental and radical innovation.In the book, leading international scholars critically examine the concept of communities of practice and its applications in different spatial, organizational, and creative settings. Chapters examine the development of the concept, the link between situated practice and different types of creative outcome, the interface between spatial and relational proximity, and the organizational demands of learning and knowing through communities of practice. More widely, the chapters examine thecompatibility between markets, knowledge capitalism, and community; seemingly in conflict with each other, but discursively not. Exploring the frontiers of current understanding of situated knowing and learning, this book is for all those interested in the economic sociology of organizational creativity and knowledge capitalism in general.

this is a polished and thought-provoking collection that will in time, I am sure, be seen as a crucial intervention in debates surrounding the role of knowledge communities in promoting creativity and economic growth in the contemporary era.

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 andRay 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 inthe New Service Economy, edited with B. Andersen, J. Howells, I. Miles and R. Hull, Edward Elgar, 2000.