Since Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum declared the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, there has been much discussion about it. However, there is no commonly agreed-upon definition of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Therefore, we attempted to answer the following four research questions. “What is the definition of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?”, “How can we respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of institutions?”, “How can we respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of technology?”, “How can we respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of firm innovation and start-up strategy?” Brainstorming was conducted by 11 scholars from several countries to answer these four research questions. Therefore, this research is not the end product of four research questions, but a kind of advanced template to answer the four research questions for continuing research.

Purpose: In the digital age, companies require leaders to foster digital transformation entrepreneurship, i.e. the organisational attitude and orientation of the creation of a new business or the development of an existing business by having at the core or embracing digital transformation as the continuous development and application of digital knowledge for companies' value creation. This paper identifies six critical competencies distinguishing the transformative leadership profile supporting enterprises' digital transformation development.Design/methodology/approach: The paper, through a critical literature review focussing on three research streams, i.e. wise, transformative and digital leadership, addresses the following research question: What competencies characterise a digital transformative leader promoting and encouraging digital transformation entrepreneurship? Methodologically, first, explorative analysis of the literature has been carried out exploring the role and relevance of leadership in driving companies' digital transformation. Second, focussing on the three leadership perspectives, wise, transformative and digital, the critical features distinguishing each view have been identified. A set of hypotheses has been formulated to develop a framework to profile a digital transformative leader. In the third stage, the framework of the digital transformative leadership compass has been developed.Findings: The paper profiles the digital transformative leader, a critical figure in companies competing in the digital age to nurture digital transformation entrepreneurship. Six specific competencies are synthesised and proposed throughout the transformative leadership compass. It is presented as an interpretative framework helpful to understand what affects the organisational culture and behaviours driving digital transformation. The proposed model defines theoretical foundations to operationalise an assessment framework and developing empirical research about leadership characteristics hampering and enabling successful companies' digital transformation.Originality/value: The study proposes a novel framework based upon a critical analysis of the leadership literature. Combining insights gathered from the literature review on transformative, wise and digital leadership, the need for nurturing a transformative digital leadership allowing enterprises to stay competitive and able to change and adapt to the scenario's evolution emerged. Accordingly, the paper defines the digital transformative leader as a leadership profile sustaining organisational and digital transformation. The transformative leadership compass is proposed as a model to outline the critical competencies distinguishing a digital transformative leader capable of driving continuous company innovation and specifically digital transformation entrepreneurship.

Purpose: Despite the abundance of research in open innovation, few contributions explore it at inter-organizational level, and particularly with a focus on healthcare ecosystem, characterized by a dense network of relationships among public and private organizations (hospitals, companies and universities) as well as other actors that can be labeled as “untraditional” player, i.e. doctors, nurses and patients. The purpose of this paper is to cover this gap and explore how knowledge is transferred and flows among all the healthcare ecosystems’ players in order to support open innovation processes.Design/methodology/approach: The paper is conceptual in nature and adopts a narrative literature review approach. In particular, insights gathered from open innovation literature at the inter-organizational network level, with a particular attention to healthcare ecosystems, and from the knowledge transfer processes, are analyzed in order to propose an interpretative framework for the understanding of knowledge transfer in open innovation with a focus on healthcare ecosystem.Findings: The paper proposes an original interpretative framework for knowledge transfer to support open innovation in healthcare ecosystems, composed of four main components: healthcare ecosystem’s players’ categories; knowledge flows among different categories of players along the exploration and exploitation stages of innovation development; players’ motivations for open innovation; and players’ positions in the innovation process. In addition, assuming the intermediary network as the suitable organizational model for healthcare ecosystem, four classification scenarios are identified on the basis of the main players’ influence degree and motivations for open innovation.Practical implications: The paper offers interpretative lenses for managers and policy makers in understanding the most suitable organizational models able to encourage open innovation in healthcare ecosystems, taking into consideration the players’ motivation and the knowledge transfer processes on the basis of the innovation results.Originality/value: The paper introduces a novel framework that fills a gap in the innovation management literature, by pointing out the key role of external not R&D players, like patients, involved in knowledge transfer for open innovation processes in healthcare ecosystems.

The pivotal role of Entrepreneurship centers in the development of Entrepreneurship Education (EE) is receiving more attention. This study aims to open the “black box” of “how, when, why and what” entrepreneurial mindset and competencies in the field of technology entrepreneurship are learned over time in the Entrepreneurship Centers. The study adopts an empirical web-based content analysis of ten entrepreneurship centers in European Universities from seven countries, analyzing 105 curricular and extra-curricular entrepreneurship education programs. This method allows researchers to address generalization bias and to effectuate a cross-case comparison, thus revealing more common patterns regarding the phenomenon. Findings reveal some common pillars of EE as developed within the Entrepreneurship centers in terms of five key dimensions: target audience, learning objectives, entrepreneurship contents, learning pedagogies and stakeholders’ engagement. This analysis provides the basis to introduce a process-based framework for entrepreneurial mindset creation in EE that is organized around four main phases: inspiration, engagement, exploitation and sustainment. The process-based model of EE supports entrepreneurship centers in designing learning initiatives that are aimed to inspire students at all levels of education, young entrepreneurs and start-uppers and scientists in their need to be equipped with an entrepreneurial mindset for technology entrepreneurship. The originality of the paper stands on the “process-based” framework that is proposed that serves as an interactive pathway that dynamically combines the phases toward entrepreneurial venture creation, the entrepreneurial competence level, the entrepreneurial learning strategies and collaboration with the University’s stakeholders’ network toward the achievement of the competence goal.

Enterprises aimed at acquiring a sustainable competitive advantage in the Digital Era are challenged to develop a Transformative Digital Leadership marked by a set of abilities. The paper introduces the Digital Transformative Leadership Compass as an innovative framework to assess wise leaders’ characteristics driving organisational digital transformation in today’s complex business landscape. It identifies the critical abilities, attitudes, and behaviours distinguishing the profile of a transformative digital leader leading an organisation to continuously innovate and digitally evolve in the same way as the business landscape. This paper contributes to theory building by proposing an interpretative framework of critical abilities distinguishing a transformative digital leader of a transformative digital company. Furthermore, the paper provides practitioners with valuable insights and theoretical evidence on leadership practices in the digital era.

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the role of design as a knowledge translation mechanism in R&D-oriented open innovation. In particular, the paper intends to look at how design can be used as a means of knowledge transfer among various stakeholders who speak different languages and have divergent needs and interests in a process where knowledge openly flew across the boundaries of a high number of organizations.Design/methodology/approach: The paper combines the insights from theory with the empirical evidences gathered by adopting an extreme case study approach: the detailed analysis of a case study related to an R&D project funded by the European Commission and aimed to investigate and produce innovative serious games in the area of healthcare. The project gathered a large number of stakeholders and deliberately adopted design to support an open innovation approach.Findings: The paper provides insights into the use of design outputs such as artifacts, sketches, visual representations or prototypes to translate ideas, theoretical and technical requirements, documents and outputs into formats that can be more easily understood and appreciated by various stakeholders. This supports and favors coordination in open innovation projects where many different stakeholders are engaged in.Research limitations/implications: Although the adoption of an extreme case study approach offers important implications to understand the role of design in R&D-oriented open innovation, the use of a single case study represents the basis both to explore hypothesis and to provide first evidences that need to be further tested with other qualitative and quantitative analysis.Practical implications: The paper offers practical implications about how design can help individuals and organizations involved in R&D activities to better communicate and share knowledge among various stakeholders by aligning their different needs, interests and languages along the various phases of their project development.Originality/value: The originality of the paper lays at the intersection of three different fields: open innovation, knowledge management and design for innovation, thus integrating mature, but so far isolated, research streams. It provides insights for theory building by explaining the use of design as knowledge translational mechanism as well as it informs the practice by highlighting the power of design as a mean to support knowledge flows into open innovation-based R&D projects.