Community, Economic Creativity, and Organization

Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at Durham University and Executive Director of the University's Institute Advanced Study. His current research interests lie in the areas of knowledge practices, the social economy, race and multiculturalism, social and spatial theory, urbanism, and political invention. His most recent books include Cities: Reimagining the Urban, with Nigel Thrift, Polity, 2002; Placing the Social Economy, with Angus Cameron and Ray Hudson, Routledge, 2002; Architectures of Knowledge, with Patrick Cohendet, OUP, 2004; Cultural Economy: A Reader, edited with Nigel Thrift, Blackwell, 2005. He is completing a book with Nigel Thrift on reinventing Left political thought and practice.Joanne Roberts is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Newcastle University Business School where she is a member of the Centre for Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Enterprise (KITE). Her research interests include knowledge intensive services, new information and communication technologies and knowledge transfer, inter and intra organizational knowledge transfer and the internationalisation of business services. She is a participant in the Dynamics of Institutions and Markets in Europe, Network of Excellence and an Honorary Associate Fellow at the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition, University of Manchester. Her recent books include Living with Cyberspace: Technology & Society in the 21st Century, edited with John Armitage, Continuum, 2002; Knowledge and Innovation in the New Service Economy, edited with B. Andersen, J. Howells, I. Miles and R. Hull, Edward Elgar, 2000.

• Prologue Community of Practice Then and Now ; 1. The Resurgence of Community in Economic Thought and Practice ; PART I: COMMUNITY, CREATIVITY AND ECONOMY ; 2. Community and Economics ; 3. "The Art of Knowing": Social and Tacit Dimensions of Knowledge and the Limits of the Community of Practice ; 4. Re-animating the Place of Thought: Transformations of Spatial and Temporal Description in the Twenty-first Century ; PART II: BRIDGING COGNITIVE DISTANCE ; 5. Cognitive Distance in and Between CoP's and Firms: Where do exploitation and exploration Take Place, and How are They Connected? ; 6. Project Work as a Locus of Learning: The Journey Through Practice ; 7. Breakthrough Innovation and the Shaping of New Markets: The Role of Communities of Practice ; PART III: ACHIEVING RELATIONAL PROXIMITY ; 8. Buzz without Being There? Communities of Practice in Context ; 9. Knowledge Intensive Firms, Communities and Creative Cities ; 10. Open, But How Much? Growth, Conflict and Institutional Evolution in Open Source Communities ; Epilogue Situated Learning and Changing Practice

this is a polished and thought-provoking collection that will in time, I am sure, be seen as a crucial intervention in debates surrounding the role of knowledge communities in promoting creativity and economic growth in the contemporary era.