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Supporting entrepreneurship and innovation is a goal for many college campuses. How can your library support those goals? Should you add a makerspace to your library? Or make other costly changes? Library spaces help students think at a higher level, to be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial. It is rare to have a dedicated spot on campus for thinking. Our libraries are those spaces. Spaces that strongly foster entrepreneurial thinking range from quiet reflective spaces to noisy collaborative spaces. You do not need to do an elaborate study to understand your library spaces. To assess your library spaces as they relate to innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, first take an inventory of your existing library spaces. By examining your existing spaces and the activities in them, you see which of the six essential types of spaces you have and which ones you lack. Once you have done a space assessment, you can see how you can readily add any of the six spaces you lack. A case study of an academic library’s space inventory, assessment, and recommendations helps illustrate the process. You use your space inventory for present and future space planning and to communicate your worth to your stakeholders. Libraries can market unique spaces to students (e.g. “Here are spaces to help you think creatively”), support Creative Campus initiatives, and promote library spaces which foster entrepreneurial thinking.

The purpose of this paper is to argue the case that libraries should use the lean startup method for developing, managing and launching radically innovative services or products.

Libraries need to innovate but do not have the management structure to handle the extreme uncertainty in implementing radical innovations. This paper examines the lean startup method for managing innovation, explores how it differs from traditional management tools, outlines the reasons for and barriers to innovation in libraries and highlights the new tools required to manage innovation. This paper also discusses the culture of innovation in libraries and how libraries innovate. The lean startup method is examined through the lens of a variety of innovation models.

The lean startup method for managing radical innovations is shown to be a sound alternative to traditional library management methods.

This paper is one of the few to examine a practical method for librarians to manage radical innovations in academic libraries.

This chapter describes how a strategic change in the mission of the library led to the collaborative development of library services to meet the needs for innovation and creative spaces in a large urban public university. Several years ago, the Oviatt Library at California State University, Northridge, adopted a new vision that included supporting and encouraging creativity and innovation on campus. In this chapter, the authors will describe three ways in which this new strategic perspective has changed the nature of our library (and libraries in general). First, the authors will share the results of a survey of business librarians, which reveals the changing attitudes of librarians toward entrepreneurship and innovation in libraries. Second, the authors will describe the Creative Media Studio, housed in the Oviatt Library’s Learning Commons, which was created in 2014 as a space to create music, use high-end video editing tools, and fabricate three-dimensional objects with 3D printers. Third, the authors will discuss a recent campus-wide task force, chaired by the Library Dean, which recommends the construction of a large makerspace in the heart of the Oviatt Library, collaborating not only with the College of Business but also with the College of Engineering, the College of Arts, Media and Communication, and the new University Incubator. This chapter will outline how library personnel have partnered with faculty, staff, and administration to bridge gaps in curriculum and provide instruction in multimedia creation, including licensing and copyright, for students involved in innovative activities and entrepreneurial ventures. The chapter will also describe the library’s role in the evolution of the Creative Media Studio, the development of the new campus makerspace, and the ways in which librarians are evolving from traditional roles to more entrepreneurial responsibilities. Finally, the authors will discuss best practices in developing partnerships for new innovative and creative spaces and services by illustrating the challenges and successes in sustaining partnerships with internal and external stakeholders.

Increasingly, a firm’s innovation capability has become one of the key frontiers of competitive advantage. The Lean philosophy has a well-proven reputation for its focus on process efficiency and effectiveness, and therefore, is often applied in various areas of innovation. Such wide and ever-increasing applicability also has resulted in an incoherent corpus of literature on Lean innovation. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize an integrative view on Lean innovation management.

Based on a systematic literature review, the key Lean principles and practices useful in the context of innovation management are identified and synthesized into an all-inclusive framework. By means of three illustrative cases (i.e. public hospital, electronics company and avionics manufacturer), this paper elaborates on how the proposed framework can be applied.

A total of 88 publications are analyzed, leading to 34 Lean principles and practices relevant to innovation management, which are further integrated into a comprehensive model, dubbed the “Leanovation” framework.

This study is the first attempt to advance the understanding of various interrelated and interdependent components of Lean innovation management in a holistic way.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the efforts to set up a creativity, innovation, and design (CID) studio within an academic library. This paper will describe the reasons for creating a CID studio, assessment of the pilot study, and next steps.

The assessment used surveys, interviews, focus groups and observations of students and faculty to determine how well the CID fits into the library.

Initial findings indicate that the CID studio is a good fit within the library space as learning activities in it support collaboration, discovery, and integration of library services. However, noise issues, equipment needs, and expansion of space are key future needs.

As libraries move from simple repositories of information to places of learning and collaboration, a CID studio space provides an opportunity to integrate learning opportunities with library services.

Through the first iteration, the CID has a unique and purposeful place within an academic library. It provides the opportunity for greater integration of library services. However, future iterations need to address key issues of space, equipment, and noise.

With the technological innovation dominating higher education, the university libraries, as physical spaces, continue to play a crucial role in connecting students with knowledge. The emergence of the “Learning Commons” serves as a catalyst in the design of library spaces, renewing libraries’ roles and missions and making them popular to Millennials for new reasons. This study aims to record Greek librarians' views on the current situation in Greek academic libraries regarding physical space design, services provided and the existence of the “Learning Commons” model characteristics.

This study was conducted through an online survey structured questionnaire (closed-ended, five-point Likert scale, multiple-choice and statements questions). This study population comprised librarians working in 37 academic institutions and colleges. The collected data were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis. The research questions were answered using variables creation and the tests, t-test, ANOVA and Kruskal–Wallis. The groups of questions were tested for their reliability using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

In total, 186 librarians responded to this study. The responses revealed that participants were willing and ready to accept and support a different approach to academic library physical spaces use, according to the shared learning spaces model. However, this requires changes in the organization's vision, further growth and evolution. Although recently most Greek academic libraries have made significant progress in developing their services to function as information and digital hubs, they do not function as learning collaborative hubs, since the “Learning Commons” model is not reflected in their buildings.

The creation of new academic libraries according to the “common” model is a rapidly evolving issue that affects Greek libraries. This paper highlights the characteristics of libraries that should be adopted in the modern era, the new roles of academic librarians and the importance of an appropriate design of the physical space to achieve optimal learning outcomes. At the same time, this paper is one of the few that illustrates librarians', and not users', perceptions of these changes. This paper is a good research example, and the methodology for measuring this type of context could be used by other future research approaches in other countries.