Seppo Poutanen

Skills, Creativity and Innovation in the Digital Platform Era: Analyzing the New Reality of Professions and Entrepreneurship brings together two important areas: the separate research topics of professions, platforms, and entrepreneurship, and the various dimensions of what platformization means to work and to professions in contemporary societies. One of the most noteworthy global aspects in current societies is the intensifying presence of technology, to the extent that we can talk about the omnipotence of technologies, a kind of technological imperative that prevails in societies. This new type of technological imperative emerges in the working lives of practicing professionals from medical doctors to lawyers and from teachers to preachers. Platforms have become a powerful actor as enablers and reorganizers of work, creating new types of inequalities but also expanding the market relations for new professions such as social influencers. How do platforms govern and shape work and lead to new questions concerning organizing of work and professions? These are few of the key questions Poutanen and Kovalainen explore in this profound and insightful book.

Skills, Creativity and Innovation in the Digital Platform Era: Analyzing the New Reality of Professions and Entrepreneurship brings together two important areas: the separate research topics of professions, platforms, and entrepreneurship, and the various dimensions of what platformization means to work and to professions in contemporary societies. One of the most noteworthy global aspects in current societies is the intensifying presence of technology, to the extent that we can talk about the omnipotence of technologies, a kind of technological imperative that prevails in societies. This new type of technological imperative emerges in the working lives of practicing professionals from medical doctors to lawyers and from teachers to preachers. Platforms have become a powerful actor as enablers and reorganizers of work, creating new types of inequalities but also expanding the market relations for new professions such as social influencers. How do platforms govern and shape work and lead to new questions concerning organizing of work and professions? These are few of the key questions Poutanen and Kovalainen explore in this profound and insightful book.

This book provides a thorough and novel examination of the gendered nature of innovations in the new economy. It tracks the contemporary shift from heavy industry to game industry and how this has altered relationships between gender, identity, corporate culture, creative work, and the future of business. Through empirical research and theoretical analysis, the authors present their own carefully contextualized cases and conceptual frameworks relating themes of innovation and gender to recent theories concerning globalization and transnationalism. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary text provides readers with insightful entries on what innovations are and the ways innovation processes become gendered. It explores the business landscape based on creative work and offers a wealth of information for scholars of entrepreneurship, management, sociology, cultural studies, and communication.