Dear colleagues,
Industry and Innovation is welcoming submissions for a Special Issue on "Repurposing for Innovation: Navigating Technology, Uncertainty, and Sustainability in the Modern Business Landscape."
We are seeking original research articles that investigate the antecedents and outcomes of innovations that result from repurposing ideas, knowledge, and technologies, offering a more immediate and feasible path to addressing societal needs. Specifically, the special issue aims to deepen our understanding of the sources, processes, conditions, and outcomes of reusing and recombining ideas, knowledge, and technologies.
The guest editors Isabel-Maria Bodas-Freitas (Grenoble Business School), Marvin Hanisch (University of Groningen), Yansong Hu (Warwick Business School), Dorota Piaskowska (University College of Dublin) and Bastian Rake (Maynooth University) invite quantitative and qualitative empirical submissions studying the topic of "Repurposing for Innovation" in a variety of contexts and from diverse theoretical perspectives, including to organizational-, team-, individual-, and product-level analyses. Suggested topics of this special issue include, but are not limited to:
1. Repurposing and Serendipity
This theme explores the role of serendipity and accidents in the innovation process, emphasizing how groundbreaking solutions and advancements can be identified and developed reusing existing technologies and knowledge.
2. Repurposing with Artificial Intelligence (AI)
This theme focuses on the role that generative AI may play in facilitating repurposing of existing knowledge and technologies. AI provides tools to facilitate technological recombination, virtual testing, and deployment. For instance, organizations can use advanced computational algorithms, simulation technologies, and virtual environments to explore different combinations of ideas and components, accelerating the experimentation phase.
3. Repurposing in High Uncertainty Contexts
This theme focuses on innovation during times of high uncertainty, such as pandemics or economic downturns, on innovation processes. It aims to uncover whether and how strategies organizations employ to innovate in times of crisis differ from those used in times of lower uncertainty.
4. Repurposing for Sustainability
This theme focuses on the potential of upcycling and recycling in the innovation process, in particular how recycling and reusing contribute to the development of innovations that reduce the environmental impact of business activities.
Submissions to the Special Issue are now open and will close on September 30, 2025.
Contact details and full call: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/repurposing-for-innovation-knowledge-reuse-and-adaption-in-times-of-uncertainty-and-transformation/?_ga=2.259829897.2078053722.1743243350-1702048419.1743243350
Best regards,
Alessandra Perri and Vera Rocha
Co-Editors-In-Chief
Industry and Innovation
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Vera Rocha
Copenhagen Business School
Kilevej
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