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Are human beings best viewed as active or passive in relationship to their environment? Television audience research in recent decades exemplifies this longstanding issue. Polarization on the question may be due to a tendency to compartmentalize qualitative and quantitative data. In this study, a prototypicalfield experiment involving 156 adult residents in a large Australian city generated both types of data to clarify the nature of television audience activity. Viewing frequencies for a group restricted to their least preferred channel decreased significantly when compared to two other comparison groups suggesting that attraction to content does in fact play an important role in influencing viewing behavior. Qualitative comments elicited during the experience of being restricted suggested important differences in respondents' affinity with the medium. Viewers can possibly be distinguished on the basis of whether they orient to content or medium and whether they experience a sense of freedom and control or a lack thereof. The value of field experimentation as a way to generate both convergent quantitative and divergent qualitative data is emphasized.

PurposeThis paper sets out to describe and illustrate an emerging shift in the conceptualisation of value creation in business, namely the emergence of value ecology thinking.Design/methodology/approachThis paper examines shifts in the understanding of value creation in key business, economic and innovation literature and focuses on developments in creative industries at the forefront of technology and innovation – film, TV, computer games, e‐business, mobile phones – to illustrate how business increasingly creates value through ecologies.FindingsThis paper identifies five important shifts in the conceptualization of value creation by highlighting a growing prevalence in the literature of several ecological metaphors used to explain business processes, namely: the shift from thinking about consumers to co‐creators of value; the shift from thinking about value chains to value networks; the shift from thinking about product value to network value; the shift from thinking about simple co‐operation or competition to complex co‐opetition; and the shift from thinking about individual firm strategy to strategy in relation to value ecologies.Originality/valueThis paper synthesizes emerging trends in the literature in relation to value creation and defines the concept of a value‐creating ecology. In the process it sheds light on the structure of next generation business systems.

In this article, we draw together aspects of contemporary theories of knowledge (particularly organisational knowledge) and complexity theory to demonstrate how appropriate conceptual rigor enables both the role of government and the directions of policy development in knowledge‐based economies to be identified. Specifically we ask, what is the role of government in helping shape the knowledge society of the future? We argue that knowledge policy regimes must go beyond the modes of policy analysis currently used in innovation, information and technology policy because they are based in an industrial rather than post‐industrial analytical framework. We also argue that if we are to develop knowledge‐based economies, more encompassing images of the future than currently obtain in policy discourse are required. We therefore seek to stimulate and provoke an array of lines of thought about government and policy for such economies. Our objective is to focus on ideas more than argument and persuasion.

1 Processes of intermediation – a conceptual inventory -- 2 A genealogy of intermediaries: who do they think they are? -- 3 North West Digital Stories: A regional case in the disability sector -- 4 BeefLegends: Connecting food producers and consumers across borders -- 5 Lessons learnt for intermediation praxis -- 6 The role of the intermediary in design -- 7 Intermediaries in the future: collaborations in theory and practice -- 8 Where to from here: charting new opportunities.