Self-organizing innovation networks, mobile knowledge carriers and diasporas: insights from a pioneering boutique hotel chain

Abstract

This paper provides insights from the UK’s pioneering boutique hotel chain, Hotel du Vin (HduV) to explore the dynamics of self-forming innovation networks within the service sector. In particular, it focuses on HduV’s diaspora of spin-off and follow-on enterprises, examining the nature of innovation and creativity, and the significant role of human mobility in knowledge transfer and in the dynamic reconfiguration of such networks. Through the use of participative’ research methods and ‘close dialogue’, it provides a contribution to understanding processes of innovation in an under-researched industry—utilizing the concept of ‘diasporas’ to encapsulate the temporality and spatiality of those processes. In particular, it explores the various re-uses and re-combinations of the organizational processes and value propositions that defined the innovatory nature of the original chain, showing how those re-combinations were critical to the entrepreneurial nature of the diasporic network which developed around HduV