This paper provides insight into innovation energy, its five working mechanisms, and innovative work behaviour (IWB). Although human energy is often mentioned as an important factor in theories about motivation, it is still an unexplored theme in literature. The management of organisations often focuses on the innovation content and neglects the process aspects. Strategic and operational HRM involvement is needed to realising the essential conditions for the innovation energy of innovative employees. An abductive case study on innovation energy took place in five educational departments of one academy at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. We interviewed 21 innovating lecturers and their five team leaders individually and organised five focus groups with a total of 17 team members. Innovation energy converts individual innovation properties (creativity, psychological empowerment, and optimism) into IWB. Organisations must pay attention to these properties and four other working mechanisms (autonomy, teamwork, leadership, and external contacts) that influence this conversion process. HRM professionals should be involved with innovation processes to realise the right conditions for innovation energy, together with line management. The construct of innovation energy with five working mechanisms gives more insight into the IWB process from the perspective of the engaged employee with IWB. This research contributes to the body of knowledge on IWB, (human) innovation energy, and engagement in relation to HRM.

This paper discusses the use of workforce ecosystems to manage human intellectual capital. The need for work ecosystems has emerged in the digital age because of the rapid growth in the number of engaged partners and freelancers in the digitalization of enterprises. It is shown that this growth is directly related to the use of agile management systems in design and development: agile, DevOps, microservice architecture, turquoise practices, etc. The information systems needed to manage workforce ecosystems should have competency-based metrics to link business needs, recruitment and training, and finding new partners. At the same time, training should be prioritized over recruitment and the search for new partners in the context of staff shortages. When automating workforce ecosystems, a platform approach should be used to integrate both corporate HR, time and business process management systems, and similar systems from partners.