Collaborative Spaces at Work

Collaborative spaces are more than physical locations of work and production. They present strong identities centered on collaboration, exchange, sense of community, and co-creation, which are expected to create a physical and social atmosphere that facilitates positive social interaction, knowledge sharing, and information exchange. This book explores the complex experiences and social dynamics that emerge within and between collaborative spaces and how they impact, sometimes unexpectedly, on creativity and innovation. Collaborative Spaces at Work is timely and relevant: it will address the gap in critical understandings of the role and outcomes of collaborative spaces. Advancing the debate beyond regional development rhetoric, the book will investigate, through various empirical studies, if and how collaborative spaces do actually support innovation and the generation of new ideas, products, and processes. The book is intended as a primary reference in creativity and innovation, workspaces, knowledge and creative workers, and urban studies. Given its short chapters and strong empirical orientation, it will also appeal to policy makers interested in urban regeneration, sustaining innovation, and social and economic development, and to managers of both collaborative spaces and companies who want to foster creativity within larger organizations. It can also serve as a textbook in master's degrees and PhD courses on innovation and creativity, public management, urban studies, management of work, and labor relations.

Fabrizio Montanari is Associate Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, where he is Scientific Coordinator of OPERA, a Research Unit specialized in the study of creativity and innovation. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Bocconi University. He has been a Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, University of Leicester, and WU Vienna. His research focuses on the relational and contextual determinants of creativity, particularly on how cities could create a breeding ground for creative ecosystems. His work appeared in journals such as Human Relations, Journal of Economic Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, and Urban Studies. Elisa Mattarelli is an Associate Professor at San Jose State University, USA. She worked at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, and was a visiting scholar at Stanford University and the University of Arizona, USA. Her research interests include team dynamics, identity processes, and technology use in distributed and knowledge-intensive organizational contexts. Her work appeared in journals such as Organization Science, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, and Research Policy. Anna Chiara Scapolan - PhD in Management, Ca' Foscari University of Venice - is Associate Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. Her main research activities concern organizational behavior, human resource management, and organizational solutions for creativity and innovation. Her work appeared in journals such as European Journal of Innovation Management, Urban Studies, Organization Studies, International Journal of Human Resource Management, and European Management Journal.

Introduction: Collaborative spaces between current trends and future challenges PART I - How collaborative spaces work: Goals, internal dynamics, and (un)expected results in context 1. The relational foundation of collaboration in a cultural and social hub. The case of Le Serre dei Giardini Margherita, Bologna 2. Discovering workscapes: An investigation of collective workspaces 3. Collaborative spaces for urban regeneration: The case of Complesso di Santa Caterina a Formiello in Naples 4. Collaborative spaces in the material world: Toward a typology of space-time regulation artifacts 5. Language in collaborative spaces: Advantages and barriers 6. Makers or breakers? Shared fabrication spaces as a double-edged sword for entrepreneurship PART II - Collaborative spaces and creativity 7. An invitation to the unseen world of networked creativity: Tracing idea journeys through the new infrastructures of work 8. How we look is how we work: Workplace design and the rhetoric of creative work 9. From coworkers to friends: How does the aesthetic experience of third places affect the creative process 10. A diachronic view of the role of collaborative spaces in the creative industries: The singular case of the French "atelier Nawak" 11. Cultural entrepreneurship incubators as collaborative spaces: A systematic review of cultural entrepreneurship incubation PART III - Collaborative spaces in other contexts 12. Turning public libraries into collaborative spaces: The role of multimodal imaginaries 13. Explaining path dependence in boundary work for internal and external innovation. The role of corporate collaborative spaces 14. Greenhouses are made of glass: Tensions in experimental spaces for creative collaboration in front-end pharmaceutical research 15. Festivals as collaborative spaces: The worlding ecology of comic conventions 16. Growing collaborative creative learning spaces: The case of London School of Mosaic