Duygu Keskin

CONTEXT Strip cropping is increasingly promoted as a strategy to enhance biodiversity, reduce external inputs, and improve resilience in arable farming while remaining compatible with conventional production systems. Despite growing policy support in the Netherlands, adoption remains limited and is frequently attributed to technological barriers.OBJECTIVE This study examined how technological constraints and requirements evolve across the growing season by analysing how frontrunning farmers operationalise strip cropping systems under varying strip widths and management practices.METHODS Based on semi‑structured interviews and participant observation with 24 Dutch farmers, the study mapped which technological requirements the different stages of the crop growth cycles impose in strip cropping systems, how solutions are developed by farmers over time, and which gaps remain.RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Technology is not a uniform barrier across the growing season. In the early growing season, key constraints relate to planning complexity, navigation accuracy, and coordinating spatially heterogeneous operations rather than to missing machinery; these are typically addressed during the initial transition phase. During the main growing period, constraints shift to knowledge gaps and system complexity, particularly regarding crop interactions, nutrient dynamics, and weed and pest management. Clear mechanisation gaps emerge mainly in late‑season operations, especially irrigation and harvesting, where existing solutions struggle to meet strip‑specific requirements for precision, containment, and logistics. By specifying when and where technological constraints become binding, this study concludes that the framing of technology as a general barrier is misleading, and that phase‑specific innovation priorities offer a more productive lens.SIGNIFICANCE The findings provide actionable insights for research, policy, and technology development to support the transition toward diversified farming systems by directing attention to the stages of the season where innovation is most needed.

This study explores how actors within mission‐oriented innovation ecosystems (MIEs) experience and manage paradoxical tensions while pursuing systemic change. MIEs are increasingly leveraged to address complex societal challenges through cross‐sector collaboration and coordinated innovation efforts, particularly in sustainability transition contexts such as the European Union's climate‐neutral cities mission and energy transition ecosystems. Using paradox theory as an alaytical lens, we examine learning, organizing, performing, and belonging tensions in a mission‐oriented ecosystem within the Dutch protein transition from animal to plant‐based protein food sources to understand how collaboration unfolds across diverse organizational types. Although MIEs are often expected to provide relatively protected environments for sustainable innovation and collaboration, our findings show that actors within these ecosystems continue to experience significant tensions related to governance, power asymmetries, and competing interests. Our findings show that tensions are persistent and emerge from the heterogeneity of ecosystem actors, who differ in goals, resources, and collaborative practices. We identify eight tensions related to learning (dyadic vs. multi‐partner collaboration; sharing vs. appropriating knowledge), organizing (relational trust vs. formal control), performing (collaboration vs. competition; adapting vs. shaping institutional structures; short‐ vs. long‐term vision), belonging (selective vs. full engagement; inclusive access vs. exclusive control of knowledge), and interdependencies across these categories. We identify phased collaboration, selective openness, hybrid governance, temporal alignment, mission‐based legitimization, inclusive orchestration, differentiated engagement, and widening access to information as strategies that actors employ to cope with these tensions, noting that responses vary across organizational types. This study advances paradox theory by extending it to interorganizational, mission‐oriented ecosystem contexts, showing how interdependent tensions are dynamically reconfigured and governed across actors, while offering practical insights for orchestrating collaboration under conditions of persistent and uneven tensions.

The multidimensional nature of urban challenges requires firms to develop smart solutions with interdependent actors, often referred to as innovation ecosystems. However, firms might find it challenging to define a viable value proposition for a smart city offering at the outset, as value propositions depend on other actors' complementary technologies, an uncertain yet emerging demand, and the multifaceted nature of urban challenges. This article deploys effectuation theory from entrepreneurship research to enable focal firms to create value by managing uncertainties and available means at multiple levels of emerging ecosystems. We performed a case study within a large, incumbent corporation operating as the focal firm within a smart city context to gain insight into the value creation efforts and the challenges inherent in this process. We iteratively synthesized the case study insights with extant research on effectuation into a multilevel value creation framework in smart city ecosystems. The framework highlights how awareness of the range of alternative futures based on (potential) ecosystem-level means can enable a focal firm to develop actionable value propositions and identify relevant stakeholders within the emerging network of the focal firm. Our findings show that a holistic overview of dynamics in ecosystems can support firms in creating value in nascent ecosystems.

In the past decades, industrial design practice and research have focused extensively on how to optimize production and consumption, as a way to prevent negative environmental impacts, such as resource depletion, pollution, and excessive waste. Recently, the “circular economy” concept is increasingly used to achieve environmental benefits and economic growth simultaneously. Industrial design can contribute to a circular economy by fostering systems changes to achieve durability, optimal reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling of products and materials. Indeed, researchers have examined both the theoretical and practical aspects of how design knowledge can support the transition to a circular economy. However, this body of knowledge has not been systematically analyzed yet. To address this critical gap, this paper poses the following question: How has industrial design research so far contributed to advancing the circular economy knowledge? Accordingly, we survey relevant design literature focusing on the circular economy, through a review of contributions published in 42 scientific journals. Based on our results, we discuss how industrial design practices can potentially contribute to a circular economy across four thematic areas: (1) design for circular production processes, (2) design for circular consumption, (3) design to support policy towards the circular economy, and (4) design education for the circular economy.

The methodology of design science (DS) has been emerging as a new form of engaged scholarship in which key managerial and organizational challenges are addressed and solved. These developments have major implications for management education, which has been repeatedly criticized for its lack of relevance to practitioners. However, design science methodology and its implications for management education are still unclear and disputed. Teaching and learning DS thus often suffers from the lack of a consistent methodology. In this respect, teaching DS is very much like mixing oil with water. The purpose of this paper is to compare various taxonomies for DS methodology proposed in the management literature and then develop a consistent taxonomy and integrative framework that may appeal to management students at undergraduate and graduate levels. The proposed framework for DS involves an iterative cycle of exploration, synthesis, creation and evaluation. Design principles arise from, but also connect and inform, these four steps in DS.