This research derives design principles for sustainable facility management through a case study in the craft sector, leveraging data ecosystems and the Internet of Things. With the building sector accounting for 36% of Germany’s energy consumption, the study focuses on retrofitting an energy system in a multi-purpose building and implementing a cooperative data space for transparent monitoring and management. The Action Design Research approach was used to derive ten design principles, including modular growth, data access openness, and the role of data trustees. The findings highlight the importance of heterogenic capabilities among ecosystem partners, creating actionable insights from data, and clearly defining added value for the partners. The research contributes to the intersection of digitalization and sustainability by offering design principles for innovative solutions. Future work will focus on scaling these principles to different building types and exploring data trusteeship models.

Collaboration networks underpin open and collaborative innovation. However, collaborations derived from publications and patents are often treated as a single network even though they reflect different research orientations. This paper compares a basic-research collaboration network constructed from co-authored publications and an applied-research collaboration network constructed from jointly filed patents in China’s wind power industry. Using Web of Science and Derwent Innovation Index records, we build two five-year rolling, undirected inter-organizational networks among domestic organizations.

We report three main findings. First, the basic-research network is more broadly connected and university-centered, whereas the applied-research network is more firm-centered and more selectively connected. Second, negative binomial models with a quadratic term show an inverted U-shaped relationship between a focal organization’s direct ties and technological innovation output in both networks: direct ties are beneficial at low to moderate levels but exhibit diminishing returns as coordination burdens rise. Third, a Fisher permutation test indicates that the marginal association is stronger in the applied-research network than in the basic-research network. Together, these findings offer a comparative network perspective linking distinct collaboration orientations to innovation outcomes and inform partner-portfolio design across basic and applied research contexts.

Societies are currently experiencing demographic and technological transitions that redefine the relationship between work, leisure, and value creation. This study investigates the mechanisms of social value creation within a local community ecosystem in Pälkäne, Finland, where retired residents, active citizens and self-organized networks play a primary role in sustaining social infrastructure and local regional vitality. Drawing on a qualitative case study, we identify a dual-reward mechanism that sustains community participation: instant rewards, characterized by immediate psychological well-being and social belonging, and delayed structural rewards, which manifest as long-term community resilience and infrastructure maintenance. We argue that physical and digital platforms serve as critical coordinating vehicles that translate individual discretionary time into collective agency. By conceptualizing leisure time as a productive ecosystem resource, the study suggests that local volunteer-based innovation ecosystems offer early examples of emerging post-work forms of civic participation. These findings contribute to social innovation research by detailing how socio-technical infrastructures can recognize and coordinate human agency outside traditional labor markets. We show that the social value creation of local volunteer-based innovation ecosystems is driven by dual-reward system coupling instant rewards with long-term collective outcomes.

Building a circular economy is not only a technical problem. It is a collaboration problem. Transforming linear value chains into circular systems requires manufacturers, logistics providers, recyclers, and retailers to coordinate in ways that linear production never demanded, yet the structural conditions of circularity make this uniquely difficult. Despite growing recognition of collaboration as a critical success factor, existing research treats challenges as discrete management problems rather than structurally interrelated tensions. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how collaboration challenges in networks enabling the circular economy are structurally embedded and interrelated. Based on a qualitative interview study with experts from nine organizations across seven circular value networks, thirteen recurring challenges are identified, including coopetition dilemmas, power asymmetries, funding constraints, and goal misalignment. These are conceptualized through paradox theory as structural tensions organized around three interdependent poles: Trust, Collectivity, and Commitment. The resulting tension triangle shows that circular economy conditions intensify familiar interorganizational dynamics through information sensitivity, delayed economic returns, and material interdependence. Because strengthening one pole places pressure on the others, collaboration requires continuous balancing rather than resolution. The tension triangle provides practitioners with a diagnostic framework for anticipating and managing structural frictions when initiating or sustaining circular value networks.

Development Engineering as a discipline within engineering addresses the development of technology-based products or services from which vulnerable communities may benefit. The benefit to the communities of such products are mainly for economic development. This links to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which highlight many areas where development can be fostered; in return these Goals highlight markets for products and services. This paper explores existing frameworks on Development Engineering, which link economics, business, engineering, social entrepreneurship as well as higher education. Through desktop-research an expanded view of Development Engineering is given. This view is developed to shape a concept for an educational programme, allowing university graduates to specialize in Development Engineering in future. It is set to give a wide perspective for higher education as to how training of students in this multi-disciplinary field may be designed and calls for collaboration to offer such training for innovations which may benefit the Bottom of the Pyramid.