Patrick Cohendet, HEC Montréal

Bastian Lange, Université Humboldt de Berlin

Elke Schüßler, Université Leuphana de Lüneburg

Laurent Simon, HEC Montréal

Timeline

• October 31, 2026: Deadline for paper submission

Masatoshi Kato, Kwansei Gakuin University

David Audretsch, Indiana University

Roy Thurik, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Maksim Belitski, University of Reading

Alex Coad, Waseda Business School

Eric Liguori, Florida State University

Rapid technological change, globalization of supply chains and demand, increasing physical and digital connectivity, and inter-dependencies between actors in innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems are forcing entrepreneurs and managers to rethink how they organize beyond the manufacturing of products and services, how they innovate, what technologies they adopt, and what markets they enter. The forms and models of organization affect a firm's ability to become exceptional. At the core of firm organization, the factors that distinguish them from their counterparts in the industry and region are firm size, firm age, stage of entrepreneurial continuum, institutional context, and technology-savviness. Firms that have been able to optimize their organization will outperform their regional competitors, markets, and industry; create new forms of growth at a different pace; and approach the innovation and production frontier. Through organizations in different forms, entrepreneurs and mature firms create product and process innovation and coordinate people, external ecosystem actors, government, suppliers, and capital to achieve frontier outcomes.

This collection is especially interested in organizational forms enabling rapid growth without compromising productivity, efficiency, and societal impact, and facilitating innovation and market entry, firm resilience, and survival within both firm shocks and exogenous shocks. Moreover, the collection is interested in understanding how firms' high growth, scaling, and exceptional performance are driven by novel organizational forms. This focus is timely for the Journal of Small Business Management as an intellectual platform that studies why and how the most novel forms and models of organization in performance, growth, efficiency, and innovation are emerging in large tech firms and in exceptional performers among micro-, small-, and micro-firms, in social entrepreneurial firms, and even non-profit organizations. The special focus includes the novel forms of organization that allow for persistent steady growth, high value added, and other exceptional performers—such as niche innovators, scaleups, accelerators, blitzscalers, hidden champions, and Mittelstand-type firms and hyperspecialized firms—that repeatedly outperform their counterparts in the industry.

By combining specific forms of organization, these firms often operate nearby or at the innovation and production frontier despite constrained resources and through global or localized resource orchestration. Hidden champions or niche innovators—for example, hyperspecialized digital and non-digital firms that focus on a small set of activities and scale through digital technologies or localized networks and interdependencies with complements and partners often plugging into collaborators' value chains—are highly successful small firms that hold top global market positions in niche segments.

Global outreach is an important locus to understand novel forms of organization. Global firms, such as micro-multinationals or born-global firms, are young and small firms that internationalize early, working with a lean core and extensive external partners for production, distribution, or customer acquisition, and often relying on global value-chain orchestrators. While prior work has examined financial performance, resource management, scaling, and innovation in such firms, most evidence comes from European contexts, with little evidence from other regions of the world. For example, niche leaders in parts of Asia may begin with an imitation strategy and then move up the value ladder. These firms may be more likely to pursue listing and brand recognition, may expand into adjacent domains beyond niche focus, and may balance domestic and global knowledge via investment in training, R&D, and engagement with ecosystem actors regionally and globally. Little is known about how organizational forms differ across regions, industries, countries, and clusters, or which specific characteristics enable them to experiment, adopt, and develop certain forms of organization that ensure their exceptional performance.

This online collection invites work that theorizes and empirically examines novel forms and models of organization, including structures, processes, architectures, institutions, and governance, that enable firms of different ages, sizes, and niche focus to approach or redefine the productivity and innovation frontier. The collection welcomes research that opens the black box of novel forms and models of organization, enabling firms to outperform their close and distant competitors, recombine a variety of knowledge, and adopt new modes of working, hiring, and innovating to achieve exceptional performance. Additionally, the collection welcomes research that explains when, how, and why particular organizational forms and models outperform others across regions, industries, clusters, and ecosystems in diverse contexts of high-cost developed economies, high-cost emerging economies, and other developing economies.

This collection is expected to investigate how novel forms of organization can appear beyond the OECD and WEIRD countries representing Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies (primarily North America, Western Europe, Australia, and parts of East Asia like Japan/South Korea). Interestingly, most developed Asian economies have actively identified and cultivated niche leaders and innovators through national programs, such as Japan's Global Niche Top Companies Selection 100 and South Korea's World-Class 300 & Global Specialized Enterprise Cultivation. In China, two policy-driven categories—niche champions and specialized, advanced, differentiated, and innovative firms—aim to move small businesses up global value chains, emphasizing market performance, strategic uniqueness through innovation, competitive advantage, internationalization, and sustainable growth. Understanding new forms and models of organization for innovation and firm growth will create a rich empirical setting and extend existing growth and innovation theories.

Potential topics

• How do firms adopting novel forms of organization differ in leadership, governance, and decision-making, and how do these differences shape innovation and productivity at the frontier?
• What internal microstructures (e.g., boards, design, cross-functional teams, routines) enable firms to combine and recombine internal capabilities with external knowledge and ecosystem actors to achieve exceptional performance?
• How do novel organizational forms affect authority, accountability, and coordination across functions, and what are the effects on innovation speed, product and managerial innovation, value creation, talent retention, growth, and scaling?
• Which combinations of internal investment (make), external acquisition (buy), and alliance orchestration (ally) constitute novel organizational models that sustain frontier performance across firm types (hidden champions, niche leaders, sustained innovators, blitzscalers, scalers, etc.)?
• How does the diversity (institutional and geographic) of external knowledge and innovation partners translate into firms adopting novel forms of organization, and what internal routines convert diverse inputs into outcomes?
• Under what conditions do international vs regional knowledge collaboration and spillovers generate non-redundant knowledge that improves innovation and performance, and how do firms with different organizational forms apply, filter, and integrate this knowledge?
• How does digitalization (AI and robotics, data systems, cloud, prominent role of intangibles, etc.) reshape internal process architectures, and which organizational forms best convert digital investments into productivity and innovation gains?
• Which governance models (data rights, intellectual property, cybersecurity, partner contracts) enable novel organizational forms to adopt and scale complex technologies while maintaining trust and control in technology and partners?
• How do digitally savvy firms pivot and reconfigure organizational forms to build resilience to supply, demand, and geopolitical shocks, and what design features predict faster recovery and sustained innovation?
• How do firms implement novel forms of organization while embedded in industry and entrepreneurial ecosystems, and how does ecosystem position shape organizational models for innovation and scaling?
• How do niche leaders and other exceptional performers orchestrate global supply chains as an organizational capability, not only a sourcing choice, across regional and international contexts?
• What partner portfolio mixes (universities, suppliers, customers, competitors, government, research labs, conferences, competitions, trade and industrial associations, scientific communities) are associated with frontier outcomes, and what form of organization do firms need to adopt to efficiently govern such collaborations, knowledge spillovers, and firm strategies?
• How do relationships with government shape novel organizational models through procurement, standards, subsidies, and cluster governance, and when do these relationships enhance versus constrain innovation and productivity?
• How do organizational models vary between emerging and traditional industries and across industrial clusters of novel and emerging industries where traditional forms of organization are no longer working?
• How do deglobalization pressures and techno-nationalism reshape firms' organizational choices?
• What distinctive business model configurations characterize exceptional performers across countries, regions, industries, and stages of growth, age, and size, and how are these configurations enabled by organizational form?
• How do European, Asian, American, and African leaders in WEIRD and non-WEIRD countries differ in adopting and experimenting with novel forms of organization?
• What contextual factors explain these cross-country differences?
• Do niche leaders exhibit distinctive innovation patterns (radical vs incremental, product vs process, ecosystem vs standalone), and which organizational designs best explain variation in these patterns and their performance effects?

Timeline

• November 1, 2026: Manuscript submission opens
• November 15, 2026: Submission deadline for extended abstracts and full papers
• January 31, 2027: Manuscript deadline

Maksim Belitski, Loyola University New Orleans

James Cunningham, Newcastle University

Riccardo Fini, University of Bologna

Simon Mosey, University of Nottingham

Phillip Phan, Johns Hopkins University

The Journal of Technology Transfer is pleased to introduce a new Special Collection on Technology Transfer through Collaboration: Bridging Academia, Policy, and Practice. The collection invites submissions that examine technology transfer, entrepreneurship, and innovation through collaborations between academic researchers and non-academic actors in policy and practice.

Timely and high-quality research on technology transfer often emerges from close interaction between academics, practitioners, and policymakers. Such collaborations can provide access to emerging phenomena, reveal underexplored mechanisms, and generate insights that may not be visible through conventional data sources or established theoretical lenses alone. The aim of this Special Collection is to support rigorous research that draws on boundary-spanning collaborations to advance scholarship on technology transfer while also generating meaningful implications for policy and practice.

The Special Collection particularly welcomes papers co-authored by academics and non-academic actors, including but not limited to technology transfer professionals, policymakers, entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, industry experts, platform managers, R&D managers, and innovation intermediaries. Such collaborations provide unique insights to policy and practice environments, enhance access to data, expand the contextual reach of empirical work, and address fundamental questions through a diversity of collaborative perspectives. Submissions should use collaborative engagement to develop new theory, enrich empirical analysis, access distinctive data, and address important questions in technology transfer, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Contributions should combine methodological rigor with practical and policy-relevant insight and demonstrate novel, impactful contributions to technology transfer scholarship.

The Special Collection is intended to create a lasting foundation for cumulative scholarly development rather than a one-off set of papers. The Journal of Technology Transfer remains firmly committed to its identity as a double-blind, rigorously peer-reviewed academic journal. Submissions must meet the journal's standards for theoretical contribution, methodological rigor, empirical credibility, and clarity of argument. The goal of this Special Collection is not to relax scholarly standards, but to broaden the range of relevant questions, data sources, contexts, and perspectives that inform high-quality research in technology transfer.

Potential topics

• Papers co-authored by academics and non-academic actors, including technology transfer professionals, policymakers, entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, industry experts, platform managers, R&D managers, and innovation intermediaries
• Technology transfer, entrepreneurship, and innovation through boundary-spanning collaborations
• Development of new theory through collaborative engagement
• Enrichment of empirical analysis using collaborative perspectives
• Access to distinctive data through academic-non-academic partnerships
• Addressing important questions in technology transfer, entrepreneurship, and innovation from multiple collaborative perspectives

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Submission deadline

Diego Matricano, University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli"

This Multi-Journal Collection is a cross-disciplinary resource for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers interested in entrepreneurship as a way to address paramount global issues. The collection emphasizes the expected and realized changes as well as the implications related to entrepreneurship phenomena.

Papers featured in this collection investigate the impact of entrepreneurship with an eye toward how it can shape the future, utilizing micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis. The collection welcomes contributions that explore entrepreneurship across diverse contexts and dimensions, including international dimensions, sustainability concerns, demographic characteristics, educational aspects, and ecosystem dynamics.

Potential topics

• Entrepreneurship as a way to address global issues
• Impact of entrepreneurship on shaping the future
• Micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis of entrepreneurship
• Expected and realized changes in entrepreneurship phenomena
• Implications of entrepreneurship phenomena
• International entrepreneurship and globalization
• Sustainable and green entrepreneurship
• Female and women entrepreneurship
• Social entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurship education
• Digital entrepreneurship and digitalization
• Startup ecosystems and entrepreneurial ecosystems
• Entrepreneurial motivation and behavior
• Innovation and entrepreneurship
• Risk-taking and resilience in entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurial networks and ecosystems
• SMEs and entrepreneurship
• Circular economy and entrepreneurship

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Submission deadline

Contributions present research on how health innovations are developed, evaluated, adopted, and scaled across settings and globally - including pharmaceuticals/biotech, medical devices, diagnostics, digital health and AI, and organizational/service innovations - using economic and behavioral approaches.

Topics include innovation incentives and market design; regulation, pricing/reimbursement and procurement; IP, competition and entry; evidence generation and clinical trials; and economic evaluation/HTA, particularly where it informs innovation, value, adoption, and real-world implementation.

Contributions also present research on behavioral drivers and barriers to diffusion (e.g., provider prescribing and practice patterns, patient uptake and adherence, trust and information environments, and organizational decision-making) and on data- and platform-driven innovation (algorithms, digital therapeutics, AI-enabled diagnostics, and learning health systems), including work on access, affordability, and public-good innovation models (e.g., open science, platform public goods, and innovations for underserved populations).

Potential topics

• Innovation incentives and market design
• Regulation, pricing/reimbursement and procurement
• IP, competition and entry
• Evidence generation and clinical trials
• Economic evaluation and HTA
• Behavioral drivers and barriers to diffusion including provider prescribing patterns, patient uptake and adherence, trust and information environments
• Organizational decision-making
• Data- and platform-driven innovation including algorithms, digital therapeutics, AI-enabled diagnostics, and learning health systems
• Access and affordability
• Public-good innovation models including open science, platform public goods, and innovations for underserved populations

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Submission deadline

Rainer Alt, Leipzig University

Rob Gleasure, Copenhagen Business School

Ke-Wei Huang, National University of Singapore

Mingfeng Lin, Georgia Institute of Technology

De Liu, University of Minnesota

Liudmila Zavolokina, University of Lausanne

FinTech emerged as a disruptive force in the financial industry around 2010, introducing innovative applications and business models. Now an established sector, FinTech has revolutionized payment, financing, lending, and insurance through platform-based, customer-oriented, and crowd-based processes. On the one hand, FinTech solutions have reached a maturity, which is characterized by well-adopted solutions that have reached a critical mass as well as by a growing degree of regulation. In practice, investments in FinTech start-up ventures have decreased and much research has also been published with four special issues in the Electronic Markets journal alone. On the other hand, ongoing technological advancements like agentic and generative artificial intelligence, blockchain/distributed ledger technologies, and quantum computing are driving further innovations.

Digital finance services are becoming more integrated with business processes and the interoperability between financial services has increased. Among the examples are innovative concepts like embedded banking where financial services are closely coupled with real economy processes, contextual banking where financial services adapt to where consumers are, silent banking where financial services are seamlessly integrated in business processes as well as open banking processes where banks offer their services via standardized interfaces on digital platforms. A variety of new services and business models (e.g., InsurTech, RegTech, and PropTech) has surfaced and enriched as well as transformed the landscape of the financial industry.

This special issue focuses on these developments from various perspectives (e.g., strategic, organizational, technological issues) and welcomes diverse methodologies, including theory development, qualitative studies, economic research, experiments, surveys, simulations, and design science.

Submissions should contribute novel insights to FinTech literature and practice while connecting to information systems research. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are welcome, provided the research exhibits strong methodological rigor. Contributions can take the form of conceptual and theoretical development papers, empirical hypothesis testing, position papers, case-based studies, and more. All papers will undergo a double-blind peer-review process.

Potential topics

• Interaction and integration between FinTech and traditional financial institutions (e.g., traditional banks, central banks, and central bank digital currencies)
• Study of segments of FinTech (InsurTech, PropTech, RegTech, Green FinTech and sustainable finance)
• Research on innovation processes in FinTech and analysis of (new) business models (e.g., crowd-based, digital platforms, decentralized business models)
• Upcoming concepts in Fintech (e.g., embedded, contextual, silent, open and ubiquitous finance and banking)
• Use of centralized (e.g., core banking/insurance systems) and decentralized digital platforms (e.g., blockchain and distributed ledger technology) for financial services
• Research on cryptocurrencies, crypto exchanges, and digital assets (e.g., tokenization, Initial Coin and Securitized Token Offerings (ICO/STO))
• Emerging standards in the financial industry (e.g., data/process standards and application programming interfaces) and regulations like PSD in Europe
• Adoption and business value of FinTech models and applications (e.g., financial inclusion and literacy, regulation and governance, diffusion and network effects)
• Emerging FinTech topics and applications (e.g., quantum computing, metaverse, Internet of Things, Agentic and Generative AI)
• Studies of innovative applications in FinTech (e.g., robo-advising, algorithmic trading, portfolio management, market making, and social trading)
• Innovative payment models and systems (e.g., payment networks, micropayments, mobile payments)

Timeline

• August 31, 2026: Submission deadline

Timeline

• April 30, 2027: Submission deadline

Timeline

• December 31, 2029: Submission deadline

Timeline

• November 30, 2026: Submission deadline

This special issue seeks to explore how Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming methodological approaches in technology management research. We invite submissions that demonstrate innovative applications of LLMs as research tools, methodological enhancers, and theoretical instruments for advancing our understanding of technology management, innovation, and organizational change.

Contributions should address both the opportunities and challenges of incorporating LLMs into research practice, including questions of validity, reliability, ethical considerations, and the development of new theoretical frameworks that account for LLM capabilities and limitations in research contexts.

Potential topics

• Applications of LLMs in technology management research
• LLMs for data analysis and pattern recognition in technology studies
• Novel methodological approaches enabled by LLMs
• Theoretical frameworks for understanding LLM capabilities and limitations in research contexts
• LLMs for literature review and synthesis
• LLM-assisted qualitative and quantitative research methods
• Validation and reliability of LLM-based research findings
• Ethical considerations in using LLMs for academic research
• LLMs for forecasting technological trends
• Integration of LLMs with traditional research methodologies

Timeline

• January 1, 2027: Submission deadline

Timeline

• November 30, 2026: Full paper submission deadline

Timeline

• December 31, 2026: Full paper submission deadline

Timeline

• October 15, 2026: Submission deadline

Timeline

• July 15, 2026: Full paper submission deadline

Timeline

• July 31, 2026: Submission deadline

This special issue calls for papers examining the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship in high-cost economies. High-cost economies face unique challenges in maintaining competitiveness while managing elevated operational expenses, regulatory burdens, and labor costs. The issue seeks to understand how entrepreneurs and innovators navigate these constraints and leverage them as opportunities for creating sustainable business models and competitive advantages.

Timeline

• January 31, 2025: Submission deadline

Guillermo Antonio Dávila, Universidad de Lima

Susanne Durst, Bangkok University

A growing number of organizations are facing political uncertainty, a knowledge-based economy with heterogeneous development, and technological upheavals that not only pose ethical and social challenges but also demand new business models and ways to maintain competitiveness. Many of these organisations operate in underdeveloped regions, geographically isolated areas, rural communities, conflict zones, post-disaster environments, or informal settlements. Others, like NGOs, operate in sectors with a lack of financial resources. These entrepreneurial contexts share characteristics such as financial constraints, difficulties in accessing and applying technologies, and a shortage of skilled workers. Organisations operating in these contexts must learn to innovate and remain globally competitive despite challenging conditions.

Given limited resources, institutional frameworks, and other uncertainties in today's world, companies should strive to make better use of their knowledge. Targeted and strategic KM enables organizations to maximize the value of their relevant knowledge. Research has shown that KM can mitigate the disadvantages associated with financial and technological constraints. In this sense, it might represent a strategic organisational capability that supports innovation, strengthens resilience, and fosters organisational learning.

Empirical evidence from different contexts supports the critical role of KM in this regard. Regarding innovation, KM practices have been associated with higher innovation performance in firms from Brazil and China. In terms of resilience, studies suggest that organisational resilience can be reinforced through knowledge-based resources and capabilities, including dynamic capabilities in Indonesian firms, the joint action of intellectual capital and generative AI in Turkish organisations, and knowledge transfer, integration, and sharing mechanisms in emergency management systems in China. Likewise, organisational learning has been linked to intellectual capital and knowledge process capability in Taiwanese firms. KM has also proven to be very beneficial for small and medium-sized enterprises and their development. When operating under constraints, it is crucial to understand the qualities of available resources, including knowledge, as it is not automatically an intrinsic asset. Against this backdrop, discussing risks related to knowledge is relevant, allowing the organisation to examine knowledge from both a positive and a negative perspective, which can lead to new ways of thinking and novel solutions for leveraging knowledge.

Although KM has become an established field in recent years, the focus of studies remains on relatively stable and well-institutionalized environments, i.e., developed economies and mature organizational environments. Contexts characterized by institutional weaknesses or resource constraints are comparatively under-researched, although emerging findings suggest that KM could play a crucial role in overcoming such constraints through mechanisms such as tinkering, socialization, and knowledge-sharing routines. Since SMEs constitute the majority of businesses in all economies, and approximately 61 percent of SMEs are from emerging economies, there is a significant need for more context-sensitive KM research that examines the roles KM can play in contexts characterized by resource and institutional scarcity.

This special issue aims to deepen the understanding of KM in contexts with limited resources and institutional frameworks. It seeks to identify mechanisms, capabilities, and theoretical perspectives through which KM enables organisational development and resilience despite such conditions. It welcomes the application or proposal of novel methodological approaches for investigating KM phenomena in such environments. By promoting context-sensitive research from underrepresented areas, this special issue aims to generate both theoretical and practical contributions that help to reduce the existing gap between established and underrepresented contexts.

This Special Issue welcomes a wide range of contributions, including conceptual papers, literature reviews, empirical studies, comparative and cross-country studies, theory-building research, practice-oriented studies, and methodological contributions, that advance understanding of KM in contexts characterised by resource and institutional constraints.

Potential topics

• KM as an enabler of organizational performance under conditions of resource scarcity
• Knowledge risk management as crucial function in environments characterized by internal and external constraints
• KM in underrepresented organisational settings, including SMEs, family businesses, informal organisations, low-technology firms, social organisations or geographically isolated regions
• Organisational learning processes in contexts characterised by institutional and resource constraints
• The role of KM in strengthening organisational resilience during internal and external crises and disruptions
• Necessary conditions and bottlenecks for organizational development empowered by KM
• The interplay between artificial intelligence and KM in overcoming organisational and institutional constraints
• The role of institutional ecosystems and inter-organisational networks in enhancing the effectiveness of KM
• Novel methodological approaches for studying KM in constrained and underrepresented contexts

Timeline

• March 15, 2027: Manuscript deadline

Maciel Queiroz, FGV EAESP

Morgane Fritz, Excelia Business School

Britta Gammelgaard, University of Southern Denmark

Logistics and supply chain management (L/SCM) have advanced through analytical rigor and empirical refinement. However, the contemporary landscape, shaped by geopolitical shifts, digital transformation, climate pressures, and evolving societal expectations, requires more than incremental extensions of existing models. It calls for a reconsideration of the assumptions, values, and conceptual boundaries that underpin the field. Many of the most pressing challenges in L/SCM today are not only empirical, but also normative, philosophical, and inherently interdisciplinary.

This special issue seeks essays that move beyond established paradigms and offer reflective, provocative, and conceptually grounded perspectives that offer new lenses and open new directions for research and practice. The objective is to complement empirical work by fostering ideas that challenge, reframe, and extend our understanding of L/SCM.

Essays should articulate a coherent argument, engage with relevant scholarly conversations, and demonstrate originality, while remaining open to alternative forms of reasoning and expression. Contributions may draw on theory, practice, or lived experience, but should aim to question dominant assumptions, surface overlooked tensions, or propose new ways of thinking.

L/SCM intersects with organization studies, strategy, international business, human resource management, and entrepreneurship, among other fields. Engaging with these perspectives enables richer understandings of issues such as power, governance, labor, innovation, and institutional complexity in L/SCM.

This is an invitation to think differently. Essays should be rigorous, reflective, and bold, capable of not only interpreting the field's evolution but also actively shaping its future.

Potential topics

• Algorithmic management and the reconfiguration of work in logistics
• Supply chains as political and strategic infrastructures
• Entrepreneurial supply chains in contexts of institutional fragility
• Efficiency versus dignity: ethical boundaries of automation
• Decolonizing supply chain theory and practice
• Beyond resilience: strategic adaptation, transformation, and fragility
• Platformization and ecosystem competition in logistics
• Invisible labor and precarity in digitally mediated supply chains
• Sustainability, legitimacy, and organizational narratives
• The role of human resources in supply chain management
• Temporal trade-offs: speed, flexibility, and human well-being
• Culture, identity, and coordination in global supply networks
• Human–AI collaboration and decision authority in SCM
• Moral responsibility and accountability in complex supply networks
• Business model innovation in circular and regenerative supply chains
• Reimagining SCM theory: integration, borrowing, or paradigm shift?

Timeline

• May 21, 2026: Opening date for abstract submissions
• September 30, 2026: Closing date for abstract submissions
• November 30, 2026: Opening date for manuscript submissions
• April 30, 2027: Closing date for manuscript submissions

William Y. Degbey, University of Vaasa

Maria Pajuoja, University of Vaasa

Matti Pihlajamaa, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Baniyelme D. Zoogah, McMaster University

Waymond Rodgers, University of Texas

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is defined as the frontier of computational advancements that references human intelligence in addressing ever more complex decision-making problems. A key development is Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, which can process and generate human-like language, extract insights, and produce creative outputs. Gen AI has enormous potential to significantly boost national economies. Its widespread adoption could increase GDP in the EU region by +8% (EUR 1.2–1.4 trillion) over the next ten years, provided innovators are equipped with the necessary skills and capabilities.

Yet, adoption remains uneven. For instance, European countries average a 54 percent adoption rate, below the global average of 61 percent. This uneven adoption is compounded by the global competition for skilled talent and persistent workforce shortages, particularly in digital and AI-related fields. McKinsey estimates that up to 12 million job transitions may be required due to AI, underscoring the urgent need for reskilling and entrepreneurial innovation.

This Special Issue aims to advance empirical understanding of how, when, and why humans engage with Gen AI in innovation. The focus is on Gen AI as an innovation enabler, inviting submissions to explore innovation processes, human capital resources, and organizational capabilities. The call welcomes single- and multi-level studies that examine Gen AI's role in shaping innovation within and across organizations and encourages contributions that take an interdisciplinary perspective. Submissions should address managers' pressing challenges in finding new ways to support and improve innovation by investigating how managers can effectively enhance how employees and executives use Gen AI.

Technological advancements have made Gen AI more accessible and affordable across industries. Gen AI's impacts are not limited to what organizations innovate but also change how they innovate. Gen AI can be used to replace existing innovation processes, reinforce them, or reveal unforeseen ways of developing new products and services. It may assist in the identification of opportunities, idea generation, and evaluation of innovation potential, reshaping the front-end of innovation processes, and enable more rapid experimentation and improved customer understanding. Yet, experiences and use cases remain evolving and fragmented, creating uncertainty for managers.

Furthermore, Gen AI transforms innovation processes at multiple interrelated levels, whereas existing research has mostly examined them in isolation. Consequently, this Special Issue encourages a multi-level perspective, including individual, team, and organizational level processes.

Microfoundations research shows that innovation is fundamentally driven by people, not organizations, since it is individuals who identify opportunities, generate solutions, and implement them. To understand how Gen AI enhances innovation outcomes, such as faster development of better-quality products, services, and processes, it is necessary to examine how individual innovators use Gen AI, what influences its use, and what results emerge from these AI-augmented efforts. Team-level dynamics are equally important, as teams have become the core unit of modern organizations. Gen AI can support team innovation by sparking dynamic discussions and promoting diverse thinking in design processes, supporting ethical decision-making, and by helping overcome challenges in group decision-making. Finally, scholars have called for more research on how leadership can support AI adoption and digital transformation. Leaders must build new capabilities as AI implementation is often challenging, human-AI interaction may involve complications, and a new range of ethical concerns must be considered.

The rapid evolution of Gen AI demands not only technical adaptation but also new approaches to manage the associated processes, tensions, and frustrations. As Gen AI profoundly alters work design, skill requirements, and professional identities, employees face both new opportunities and psychological challenges. To ensure they can develop the AI-related skills needed for the evolving roles, organizational and managerial support mechanisms have to be developed. Yet, there is limited understanding of the organizational capabilities required to implement this change successfully. Effective support may involve building Gen AI literacy, fostering experimentation, and promoting continuous learning.

At its best, AI is strategically deployed to generate business value and competitive advantage, but without targeted support, organizations risk de-skilling, employee resistance, and ineffective adoption that undermines innovation goals. Organizational practices for managing innovation are also being challenged by Gen AI, especially in terms of ethical governance. While the benefits of Gen AI in innovation are promising, ethical concerns remain underexplored. Key principles include respect for intellectual property, truthfulness, robustness, recognition of malicious uses, sociocultural responsibility, and human-centric design.

Overall, the Special Issue seeks papers that provide empirical contributions on the evolving role of Gen AI in innovation to deepen psychological and social insights into management practices to support, improve, and offer practical guidance to help managers navigate Gen AI adoption and integration. The listed themes are neither exhaustive nor exclusive; authors are encouraged to explore other themes aligned with the aims of the Special Issue. The journal welcomes contributions from scholars of innovation, organizational behavior, management, HR, strategy, technology, and practitioners.

Potential topics

• How is Gen AI being used in innovation processes at different levels?
• How do organizations apply Gen AI to replace, reinforce, or reveal innovation activities, and what are the resulting effects on, for example, process efficiency, novelty, and responsiveness to market needs?
• How do varied patterns of Gen AI use across process phases and organizational levels influence the dynamics and management of innovation processes?
• How do individual innovators use Gen AI in their work, what influences this usage, and what are the measurable outcomes of AI-augmented innovation efforts in terms of product, service, or process quality and speed?
• In what ways does Gen AI influence innovation team dynamics, including collaboration, resilience, and decision-making, particularly in virtual or hybrid team environments?
• What psychological and behavioral effects emerge from using Gen AI in innovation settings, such as changes in employee engagement, collaboration dynamics, or perceptions of autonomy?
• How do managerial competencies influence the successful implementation of Gen AI in organizational innovation efforts?
• What organizational capabilities need to be developed to successfully implement, integrate, and support the use of Gen AI in innovation efforts?
• How are organizations supporting continuous learning and skill development for employees working with Gen AI, and what mechanisms are most effective in enabling the strategic use of Gen AI?
• What ethical challenges do organizations face when deploying Gen AI in innovation activities, and how are they addressing issues such as intellectual property, transparency, and sociocultural responsibility?

Timeline

• January 15, 2026: Opening date for manuscripts submissions
• August 31, 2026: Closing date for manuscripts submission