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Special issues
R&D Management
The Role of Academia, Corporate Research, and Intermediaries in Producing Knowledge to Address Grand Challenges
Submission deadline: 1 May 2026
Addressing today’s Grand Challenges—such as climate change, inequality, and biodiversity loss—requires new forms of scientific knowledge production that cut across disciplines, sectors, and organizational boundaries. This Special Issue explores how academia, corporate research, and intermediaries can collaboratively generate impactful knowledge to tackle these complex problems. It invites research that examines emerging models of coordination, new incentive structures, evolving academic and corporate research practices, and novel forms of open innovation that enable scientific advances to translate into meaningful societal outcomes.
Guest editors: Quentin Plantec, Marianne Steinmo, Anna Yström, and Ferran Giones
R&D Management
Open Innovation in Action: People, Processes and Performance of R&D Management
Submission deadline: 15 September 2026
Open innovation continues to reshape how organizations design, manage, and execute their R&D activities. This Special Issue explores the practical realities of putting open innovation into action—examining how people, processes, and performance measurement evolve as firms increasingly rely on distributed knowledge flows and collaboration across organizational boundaries. Building on decades of foundational research in open innovation, the issue invites contributions that shed light on the concrete strategies, tools, and managerial approaches that enable organizations to implement openness effectively in R&D. By focusing on real-world practices and emerging challenges, the Special Issue aims to deepen our understanding of how open innovation transforms R&D management and creates new opportunities for scientific, technological, and organizational advancement.
Guest editors: Alberto Di Minin, Federico Frattini, Agnieszka Radziwon, Krithika Randhawa, and Joel West
Industry and Innovation
Open Innovation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Reshaping Knowledge Search, Collaboration, and Governance
Submission deadline: 30 September 2026
This Special Issue explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) reshapes knowledge search, collaboration, and governance in open innovation. As AI shifts the boundary between human and machine-led knowledge production, it transforms how organizations identify partners, navigate complex technological landscapes, identify complementarities and manage distributed knowledge flows. This Special Issue seeks to advance theory based on empirical research on the role of AI in enabling, shaping, and governing open innovation processes across firms, industries, and innovation systems. It calls for works which support and understand the role of AI technologies in creating new opportunities to innovate, to redesign industry boundaries, and generate new value systems and partnership networks.
Guest editors: Saverio Barabuffi, Giulio Ferrigno, Letizia Mortara, Yogesh K. Dwivedi
Regional Studies
Innovation intermediaries and capability-building: institutional, economic and social change in regional innovation systems
Submission deadline: 31 December 2026
Innovation intermediaries play a pivotal role in strengthening regional innovation systems by connecting firms, universities, policymakers, and other ecosystem actors. These organisations help mobilise resources, broker knowledge, and coordinate collaborations that underpin structural transformation and capability development. This Special Issue examines how innovation intermediaries contribute to institutional, economic, and social change—particularly as regions navigate shifts driven by technological transitions, industrial upgrading, and evolving policy frameworks. It invites research that offers new insights into the functions, roles, and impacts of intermediaries, and how they shape the trajectory of regional development and innovation capacity building.
Guest editors: Guendalina Anzolin, Simon Collinson, Federica Rossi, Elvira Uyarra
Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Large Language Models as Methodological Innovators: Advancing Theory and Practice in Technology Management
Submission deadline: 01 January 2027
This Special Issue explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) are reshaping technology management research. Moving beyond conventional applications, we seek studies that employ LLMs as methodological innovators to advance theory and practice. The issue invites contributions using LLMs for theory development, analytical insight, interactive foresight, and critical reflection on efficacy and ethics. By integrating LLMs with established methods like tech mining and scientometrics, we aim to establish rigorous frameworks for AI-mediated knowledge production. This initiative addresses the urgent need to consolidate fragmented LLM applications, ensuring they become rigorously grounded instruments for understanding technological change and informing strategic decision-making.
Guest editors: Ying Guo, Mengjia Wu, Arash Hajikhani, Cristian Mejia, Daniele Rotolo
Technovation
Text as Knowledge for Innovation Management: Ensuring Research Relevance and Rigor with NLP and LLMs
Submission deadline: 31 March 2027
This Special Issue explores how Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs) can analyse and generate knowledge across the innovation process. From idea generation to commercialisation, these tools are transforming how organisations discover insights, evaluate ideas, and develop new products. The Special Issue aims to advance both theory and practice in innovation management by examining how textual data can be leveraged as a source of knowledge. We invite contributions that critically examine how NLP and LLMs analyse existing knowledge codified in documents, generate new knowledge, and measure theoretical constructs from text. We welcome empirical, methodological, and conceptual papers that address the implications of NLP and LLMs for innovation processes, theory-building, and management practice across different sectors and contexts.
Guest editors: Vito Giordano, Filippo Chiarello, Ivan Zupic, Catherine Beaudry, Julian Just, and Wim Vanhaverbeke
Sponsors
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