This book offers fresh insights into how companies can engage with, and make use of, the modern metropolis. Based on actor-network theory and the resource-based view of the firm, it demonstrates how the contemporary city can be seen - and used - as a resource for corporate innovation. The main argument is that companies have to build what the author calls "urban innovation networks." After a theory-based outline of such networks, the author demonstrates the extent to which different institutional players - companies such as Audi, Ikea and Siemens, but also arts institutions like the Haus der Kunst in Munich - are already working to create them. The book combines management thinking with urban theory and the sociology of networks to create a unique blend of different views of capitalism and space, offering a new perspective on both the modern metropolis and globally operating companies active within our distinctly urban culture.

This book scrutinizes the relationship between contemporary TV shows and space, focusing on the ways in which these shows use and narrate specific spatial structures, namely, spaces far away from traditional metropolises. Beginning with the observation that many shows are set in specific spatial settings, referred to in the book as “nonplace territories” – North Jersey, New Mexico, or rural and suburban Western Germany – the author argues that the link between such nonplace territories and shows such as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, or Dark is so intense because the narrative structure functions similarly to these territories: flat, decentralized, without any sense of structure or stable hierarchy. The book takes three different perspectives: First, it looks at the rationale for combining TV show and nonplace territory from the viewpoint of narrative strategy. It then thinks through what these strategies mean for practicing architects. Finally, it approaches the arguments made before from a “user” perspective: What does this narrative mirroring of social-spatial reality in places such as Albuquerque or Jersey City mean for people living in these places? This new approach to architecture and space on screen will interest scholars and students of television studies, screen architecture, media and architectural theory, and popular culture.

This book offers fresh insights into how companies can engage with, and make use of, the modern metropolis. Based on actor-network theory and the resource-based view of the firm, it demonstrates how the contemporary city can be seen - and used - as a resource for corporate innovation. The main argument is that companies have to build what the author calls "urban innovation networks." After a theory-based outline of such networks, the author demonstrates the extent to which different institutional players - companies such as Audi, Ikea and Siemens, but also arts institutions like the Haus der Kunst in Munich - are already working to create them. The book combines management thinking with urban theory and the sociology of networks to create a unique blend of different views of capitalism and space, offering a new perspective on both the modern metropolis and globally operating companies active within our distinctly urban culture.