Corporate museum in agri food sector: implementing Ba for knowledge creation

The agri-food context represents a very complex and dynamic sector, which influenced by the current competitive ecosystem, is experimenting with new way to enhance and implement knowledge. The characteristics of the agri-food organizations impose the need to rethink the “traditional” knowledge management practices (Bresciani, 2017; et al., 2018; Vesperi and Coppolino, 2023). Indeed, even in the agri-food sector, corporate museums are proliferating, with the aim to collect, archive and enhance knowledge, currently considered obsolete and not used within the agri-food organization. In this way, the corporate museum represents a “container” of knowledge (or organizational memory); that is, a space shared between various actors that through interaction, observation and experience between them, collaborate to start a process of co-creation of new knowledge (Durst and Zieba, 2019; Baima, et al, 2020, Vesperi and Ingrassia, 2021). The strategic role of the corporate museum emerges for the agri-food organization as Ba, in other words an ideal shared place for the creation of new individual or organizational knowledge (Nonaka 1994; and Konno, 1998; Del Giudice, et al., 2013). The aim of this study is to analyze the strategic role of the corporate museum, in the agri-food sector, in facilitating the creation of new knowledge. In particular, the corporate museum is considered as a place shared by various actors to implement a process of co-creation of knowledge. This study is based on a qualitative methodology of an exploratory nature. The complexity of the phenomenon has imposed the need to use a multi-step methodology (Bowen, 2009; Yin, 2009). The first step of the analysis, using the Museimprese database (museimpresa.com), made it possible to develop descriptive indicators in order to understand the diffusion and characteristics of corporate museums in Italy and the connection with the agri-food sector. A case study was analyzed in order to better understand the main aspects related to the creation of knowledge and the corporate museum. The results suggest the growing importance of the strategic role that the corporate museum plays in the agri-food sector; in fact, it allows to valorise "obsolete" knowledge and through a process of co-creation to generate new knowledge. In fact, the main innovative element of this study consists in the theoretical perspective used to analyze corporate museums in the agri-food sector. The practical implications of this study can suggest entrepreneurs and the management of agri-food organizations to implement new solutions for the creation of knowledge, through the corporate museum.