ABSTRACT Today's grand challenges have to be discussed comprehensively, addressing the current design and the redesign of social and economic ecosystems. Tackling grand challenges requires a step into the unknown, a situation that is well‐characterised today as strongly different in nature from uncertainty and requires specific types of management. This opens the door to radical changes in ecosystems' configurations (new values, new interdependencies and new independencies). Hence, our call for papers for this special issue asked about (re)designing ecosystems to face grand challenges. The papers of this special issue analyse a great variety of empirical situations (energy, organised crime, wind‐energy–air quality). They elaborate extensively on how one can manage the complex intertwined processes that lead to exploring both new products/services associated with grand challenges and new collaborations in the ecosystem, enabling the commitment of new players in new partnerships. This editorial highlights three pivotal constructs deriving from the contributions: (A) ‘generativity enhancer’ as a critical type of action/actor in the redesign of the ecosystem; (B) creative preservation as a critical factor shaping performance; and (C) necessary methods for creating/sparing effective multiple local design spaces. Building on the constructs, it concludes by discussing the (re)design of ecosystems as creative evolution and how to manage it.

ABSTRACT In response to growing pressures for environmental sustainability and technological advancement, this study examines how firms can effectively integrate green and digital innovations within ambidextrous strategies to enhance performance. Using fuzzy‐set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) on a sample of 175 German manufacturing and service firms, the study identifies configurations that balance exploration and exploitation with digital and green innovation initiatives in different operational contexts. The findings emphasize that success hinges not on isolated elements but on their strategic integration into a coherent innovation framework. High‐performing firms in dynamic environments emphasize digital innovation, while those in stable settings prioritize green innovation, and both require alignment with the firm's underlying innovation strategy. However, success depends on firm‐specific factors: Smaller firms benefit from specialized innovation strategies, while large firms, particularly manufacturing firms, achieve resilience by combining green and digital innovation. Service firms gain competitive advantage by adapting their innovation focus to environmental shifts. The study demonstrates that innovation effectiveness results from context‐specific, integrated approaches rather than one‐size‐fits‐all strategies.

No abstract is available for this article.

ABSTRACT This study explores how individual factors—both stable traits (education) and more dynamic states (job satisfaction)—interact with organisational culture (individualism vs. collectivism) to influence innovative work behaviours (IWBs). Drawing on the Interactionist Approach to Organisational Creativity, we propose and test a theoretical model using survey data from 200 employees across 15 Italian organisations. The moderated model is analysed using SPSS PROCESS regression. Results show that education and job satisfaction both positively predict IWBs. Moreover, the effect of job satisfaction on IWBs varies depending on the type and level of organisational culture. Our findings offer two main contributions for research and practice. First, they suggest that contextual factors, such as organisational culture, significantly shape the influence of proximal individual variables like job satisfaction, while exerting minimal influence on more stable traits such as education. Second, they point to a more nuanced and multifaceted role of organisational culture than traditionally acknowledged in the literature. Specifically, collectivism appears to act as lever that amplify or reshape individual‐level processes related to innovation under certain conditions. These insights provide practical guidance for organisations seeking to foster IWBs by aligning cultural values with employee motivations and experiences.

ABSTRACT This study investigates how incumbent firms can actively foster sustainability transitions by strategically engaging across regime and niche levels when developing sustainable innovations. Drawing on an embedded case study of a leading Italian textile company involved in eight sustainable innovation projects, we identify four strategies—namely, Joining, Scouting, Engaging and Bridging—that enable incumbents to develop transition capacity. Unlike conventional innovation efforts, sustainable innovation demands longer timelines, broader stakeholder engagement and the ability to manage systemic complexity. Our findings challenge the traditional multilevel perspective (MLP) view of incumbents as passive regime defenders, instead portraying them as dynamic actors capable of supporting niche experimentation and building bridges across levels. We show that incumbents leverage internal innovation labs, trusted intermediaries and direct partnerships with niche actors to explore, absorb and maintain radical sustainable innovations. Additionally, we highlight the crucial role of intermediaries who must engage with the niche to prevent reinforcing existing lock‐ins. Even ‘failed’ collaborations generate valuable learning spillovers that contribute to organisational resilience and innovation capability over time. This study enriches the MLP framework by offering a more dynamic view of regime–niche interactions and provides actionable insights for firms seeking to navigate the grand challenge of sustainability through proactive innovation strategies.

ABSTRACTGeopolitical uncertainties and the resurgence of security and defence needs present both opportunities and challenges for creativity and innovation management. At both the organizational and the individual levels, we are confronted with multiple ethically challenging choices. Given the changing global security and defence realities, we outline the ethical dilemma for creativity and innovation management scholars and propose an emerging agenda for our field. Our position is that, as citizens of open and democratic societies, we must not withdraw from defending the very values and institutions that have allowed us to pursue our profession freely. With this article, we contribute to an emerging discourse in creativity and innovation management research by making a call for ethical and societal frameworks to guide our profession and by proposing directions for future research on innovation in the defence and security realm.

ABSTRACTAmid growing global environmental concerns, organisations face increasing pressure to adopt sustainable practices. While green human resource management (GHRM) has been shown to improve environmental outcomes, the underlying psychological mechanisms—particularly employee creativity, innovation commitment and psychological safety—remain underexplored, especially in developing economies. This study investigates how GHRM practices influence organisational sustainability, mediated by employee creativity behaviour (ECB) and employee innovation commitment (EIC) and moderated by psychological safety. Drawing on the componential theory of creativity (CTC), data from 282 employees in Djiboutian SMEs were analysed using structural equation modelling (PLS‐SEM) and fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Results reveal that both ECB and EIC partially mediate the GHRM–sustainability relationship, while psychological safety strengthens the ECB–sustainability link but not EIC's. FsQCA identifies four distinct configurations for higher organisational sustainability. Practically, the study offers targeted strategies for SMEs to embed sustainability in HRM systems and cultures. Theoretically, it expands GHRM and creativity literature by contextualising innovation within environmentally challenged economies.

ABSTRACTA large proportion of employees regularly work from home despite doubts about their ability to be innovative while working remotely. The relationship between working from home and innovative work behaviour is a pressing issue that has produced ambivalent research results, presumably because the mechanisms that underpin the relationship are poorly understood. The present study addresses this issue by differentiating spatial, temporal, and task‐related flexibility as mediators between working from home and innovative work behaviour. To test our hypotheses, we conducted an online survey with 173 knowledge workers from a variety of German organizations. After running confirmatory factor analyses, we used covariance‐based structural equation modelling for data analysis. Our results show that working from home is positively related to all three dimensions of employees' perceived job flexibility—spatial, temporal and task‐related. Spatial and task‐related flexibility are positively related to innovative work behaviour, whereas temporal flexibility has a negative relationship. All three mediation pathways are significant. The study contributes to the literature by pointing out the importance of differentiating among the three dimensions of flexibility and challenging the assumption that autonomy is universally beneficial. While spatial and task‐related flexibility are positively related to innovative work behaviour, temporal flexibility might be a threat to innovation. Therefore, organizations should be aware of the differential effects of the flexibility dimensions as a one‐dimensional view of working from home is under‐complex.

ABSTRACTOver the past few years, with the advent of ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has been at the centre of numerous discussions regarding generative and creative power, especially with the hope that it will enhance human creativity and, consequently, transformative power. Creativity, especially human creativity, has long been studied, particularly by psychologists and design scientists, who have revealed the difficulty of overcoming the fixation effect. This effect can hinder creativity and has not yet been explored in relation to GenAI, even though it is of major importance for understanding creative issues. In this work, we propose leveraging the rich body of literature on design creativity and creativity management to shed light on the fixation effect related to GenAI tools, which are considered partners in the design process, and possible defixation techniques. To study this issue, we propose a twofold methodology: a first, in‐depth qualitative step with design theory experts, leading to the formulation of hypotheses, and a second, experimental step based on the well‐documented egg task in creativity to test the hypotheses. Ultimately, we show that the use of GenAI tools in creative endeavours results in a greater number of generated ideas and that it does not prevent the fixation effect but can foster idea exploration and thus help with second‐order defixation. These results consequently show the importance of considering a cocreativity regime involving both humans and GenAI, and they extend knowledge on the fixation effect in this context. They also indicate the capacity of GenAI in creative processes, thus suggesting some relevant use cases to leverage these tools.