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Land‐use and cover change threatens remaining urban green areas and the provision of ecosystem services. The purpose of this paper is to address the importance, sufficiency and needs of local recreational ecosystem services in urban areas.

The case study area is the City of Helsinki, Finland. In total, 30 key informants representing 19 neighbourhood associations in the urban‐rural gradient within the city were interviewed.

The results of the Helsinki case show that residents visit the focused nature areas frequently and spend considerable amount of time there. All the mentioned activities during visits were associated with getting recreational experiences. Of these the most frequently mentioned were getting “feel‐good feeling” and physical exercise, which were closely associated with walking and sports‐like activities. The importance of easy accessibility to local nature areas was emphasized. Recreational ecosystem services partly result from specific landscape features in the nature area and from biologically diverse nature.

Planners, managers and decision makers can use the findings from this study in determining the values of similar urban green areas in urban development.

The Helsinki case shows that these local nature areas are appreciated and attractive and that the residents of the focused study areas perceive the numerous benefits that the local nature areas provide as very important. It appears that conserving a considerable amount of remnant nature amongst urban housing has paid off in flourishing recreational ecosystem services in the studied area.

Urban stream ecosystems have often been seen as channels of water flow rather than as the valuable parts of an urban green space system providing ecosystem services. The study seeks to address the importance of urban stream ecosystems from the perspective of urban ecology, human health and social well‐being in the context of urban planning.

The case study area is the Rekolanoja stream ecosystem in the City of Vantaa, southern Finland. The data from the case study area were gathered from existing ecological studies and by conducting semi‐structured interviews, a resident inquiry and a writing contest.

The results from the Rekolanoja case show that intense management of the streamside vegetation and treatment of the stream channel in construction projects have decreased species richness and diminished valuable streamside biotopes. However, the stream corridor can function as an important recreational and educational element within the local green space network and thereby become a symbol of local identity.

Planners, decision‐makers and other interest groups can use the findings from this study in determining the values of small urban stream ecosystems in urban development.

The Rekolanoja case indicates that planners and residents see the value of such an aquatic element as increasingly important for urban biodiversity and ecological corridor functions, as well as for local human health and social well‐being, e.g. recreation and stress relief. Future land‐use decisions will show whether a genuine change in the values and thinking of planners and decision‐makers is taking place.

This study aims at providing exploratory insights into the initiative and capabilities of Chinese SMEs to develop and utilize diverse networks to support internationalization. Such network development and utilization efforts are fundamental to the analysis and explanation of Chinese firms’ internationalization patterns and outcomes. Extending from the existing network studies in the Chinese context that generally put emphasis on strong‐tie and ethnic‐oriented networks, this paper investigates and explains explicitly the use and effects of both strong‐ and weak‐tie networks in the international development of Chinese SMEs. Indepth case studies on four rapidly internationalized Chinese SMEs are conducted. The case findings demonstrate that weak‐tie networks are essential to the firms’ business development in foreign markets; and were proactively developed and utilized in the course of the firms’ development. The cases also provide alternative perspectives to the beliefs and values underpinning strong‐tie networks presumed in existing literature. The findings draw attention to the changing business values and approaches of the Chinese firms aiming at developing internationally. Managerial implications concerning the significant influence of effective networking on internationalization are pinpointed.

The aim is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Organizations are finding that adopting sustainable practices because “it's the right thing to do” can have beneficial effects on profits, competitiveness, and hard‐to‐measure goodwill from customers and employees.

The piece provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how resource-constrained, knowledge-intensive firms capitalise on the knowledge from collaboration with big-science centres. It pays particular attention to what kind of knowledge a firm obtains and how it can be efficiently used in exploring and exploiting opportunities in international markets.

The empirical basis for the study is a longitudinal case study of knowledge-intensive Estonian companies that collaborate with the European Space Agency (ESA). A rich data set was collected over three years.

By studying the inward and outward activities of the two case companies collaborating with the ESA, the authors found that the internationalisation process of these firms had unique characteristics. Their international expansion was not driven by increasing market knowledge and reducing risk or uncertainty, but by resource seeking for research and development efforts. It was a cyclical, non-linear process, which was advanced by co-creation, learning and exploitation of the emergent knowledge, leading to an improved network position and identification of further opportunities.

The focus was on knowledge-intensive, resource-constrained firms and their collaboration with big-science centres. The transfer of the proposed framework to another context may not be straightforward. The authors relied on informants from the firms, thus ignoring the view of their partner, the big-science centre. It may be that because of this perspective, the authors did not capture some aspects of the collaboration. A broader range of cases would have provided more powerful support to the findings. Although the cases were sufficient for theory refinement and building a tentative framework, they also call for further cases that would clarify whether these conclusions would be valid for other companies.

Collaboration with big-science centres provides companies with access to diverse types of knowledge. However, its impact on the future success in internationalisation also depends on other factors, such as the firm’s absorptive capacity and technological competence.

Governments invest substantially on the development of big-science centres with the expectation that they would have significant knowledge spillovers on the technology development. A more qualitative approach to impact assessment opens new ideas how to develop their activities and in particular their collaboration with SMEs.

The study reassesses the theory on the internationalisation process of the firm and gives voice to companies which have been marginalised in earlier research.