As the co-creation perspective along with the prosumer perspective (Toffler, 1980) has gained wide

acceptance both among researchers and among industrial actors, the awareness of the central role of
the customers and other stakeholders in the experience innovation processes has gradually been
revealed. This is reflected in the article “Tourism experience innovation through design” where
Jernsand, Kraff and Mossberg develop a model for experience innovation and design where there is an
active involvement between actors as partners and participants in collaborative activities with guides,
residents and tourists. Experience innovation is described as collaborative and integrated in day-to-day
work. The authors develop a process model for experience innovation and design and visual
representations are used for communication and idea generation between active involved partners and
participants in collaborative activities with guides, residents and tourists. The authors conclude that
experience innovation can be viewed as a spiral process within the experience area or experiencescape
(Mossberg, 2007) and suggest that the insight into and from such processes increases the understanding
of how specific characteristics of the experience could be considered and developed for new or
improved experiences.

Small entrepreneurial companies constitute a major part of the businesses involved in tourism,
especially in remote tourism areas. Entrepreneurship and innovation are already an establish area of
research, however, within tourism research literature, there are quite limited publications on these
important areas. In their article, “Tourism entrepreneurship – Review and future directions”, Solvoll,
Alsos and Bulanova conduct a comprehensive review of publications of entrepreneurship in tourism
journals where emerging topics and important research questions, theoretical perspectives and applied
methods are identified and summarized. The authors state that so far, little congruent knowledge has
been developed from the dispersed literature on tourism entrepreneurship. In their analysis, they
differentiate between a convergent approach, where studies build on mainstream entrepreneurship
theorizing to examine the context of tourism, and a divergent approach, where studies see tourism
entrepreneurship as something particular and different from other types of entrepreneurship needing
specific theoretical insights (Hjalager, 2010). As for future directions for research on tourism
entrepreneurship, they conclusively recommend to follow a combination of convergent and divergent
approaches.

Tourism destinations occur as a complex structure of heterogeneous actors offering single elements of
the amalgam constituting a destination experience offerings (Buhalis, 2000). As the destination
organizations have been studied from the aspect of marketing and destination branding, surprisingly
limited research has been directed at strategic destination management, including the role of
destination boards, for example, related to innovation. In the article “Boards roles and innovative
climates in tourist organisations boards”, Garnes and Mathisen investigate destination board members
with particular emphasis on the role of innovative climates and direct the attention to the influence of
legal structure on the perception of board roles and innovation. They state that tourist organizations are
in a constant need for development and innovation and the ultimate organizational decision-makers,
boards of directors, have strong influence on organizational success. Among the findings are that the
directors perceived the control and strategic tasks as the most relevant for tourist organization boards;
however, the data generally report high scores on climate for innovation, still with a relatively stronger
emphasis on performance-related climate factors than on social relationship factors. Generally, the
study contributes to a better understanding of the board dynamics and mechanisms of boards within
the tourism sector.