Search results

Among the key challenges facing today’s business organizations is that of ongoing innovation for survival. To meet this challenge, new skills for effective leadership are required: knowledge workers need to be creative and entrepreneurial. Leading them, however, can be like ‘herding cats’. The classic metaphor of the organization as a machine does not offer an effective approach to leading complex human organizations. New thinking is needed, such as complexity theory, which considers the organization as a living organism and so provides a basis for innovative approaches to organizational structure and management. In this context, performing arts organizations can be a fruitful source of leadership inspiration. Performing arts organizations have never adopted the concept of the organization as machine and have therefore managed to keep alive the passion of their people. Thus these organizations constitute a valuable example for managers in the Knowledge Age, who must replace traditional leadership approaches to attract, keep and grow talent. Here, a case study is presented in which the authors, including the conductor Maestro Roni Porat, decode the key success factors in conducting an orchestra and consider their transferability to talent management in business organizations. While setting the tone, the conductor gives each of the players a chance to shine and co-evolve with the rest, thus creating a winning harmonic orchestra.

Cities, like other ecosystems, are changing and evolving at a growing pace. Therefore, innovation has become a critical success factor in the creation of ‘smart cities’. A smart city is one that uses technology as a platform to serve its citizens’ needs and foster innovative processes that enhance their quality of life. In this chapter, the authors present two case studies of urban open innovation processes in, respectively, Haifa in Israel and Bremerhaven in Germany, which demonstrate the engagement of all stakeholders, motivated by passion, altruism and the desire to cooperate. The first case concerns open innovation with the young, and the second open innovation with the elderly. Both case studies demonstrate how passion led to altruism which encouraged citizens to volunteer to contribute and co-create a better future for all the city’s residents by enabling better communication among stakeholders in the context of a complex urban environment.