Acknowledgments

This volume began some years ago as a discussion with Pavel Kuchař about how to extend Bloomington School ideas to business firms and other corporate entities. Simon Deakin had suggested in the context of the corporate governance debate that it was useful to think of the corporation as a commons, and we were drawn to this proposal and wanted to take it forward. We first spelled out a rather tentative position at the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR) Workshop on Polycentricity, Markets, and Firms, which I organized online in December 2021. Given Pavel’s work on Governing Markets as Knowledge Commons – a volume edited with Erwin Dekker that was published in this series roughly at the same time – the conversation naturally shifted toward what the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework had to offer. Shortly after, Pavel approached Brett Frischmann, Mike Madison, and Kathy Strandburg with the idea of putting together a GKC volume on corporations and received an enthusiastic response.

We solicited some contributions and selected the remainder through an open call. A workshop with many of the volume’s current contributors was held at King’s College London in February 2024, thanks to funding from the Centre for the Study of Governance and Society that Pavel arranged. I subsequently organized Governing Corporate Knowledge Commons sessions in June and September 2024, respectively, at the Workshop on the Ostrom Workshop in Bloomington, Indiana, and the WINIR Conference on Institutional Resilience and Recovery at the University of Pittsburgh. Special thanks go to Brett Frischmann for his thoughtful comments and encouragement in Pittsburgh, not to mention the invitation to present the volume at the GKC Convergence Conference held at the University of Villanova in May 2025.

Given his key role in the process, Pavel’s retreat from the project for personal and professional reasons in March 2025, just as outstanding chapters were arriving and the session at the Villanova conference was in the works, was a huge loss. Although, as a result, I am now listed as the volume’s sole editor, this is very much the fruition of a joint project, which owes much to Pavel’s intellectual contributions and dedication. I therefore extend my gratitude to the editors of the Cambridge Studies on Governing Knowledge Commons for supporting this project on Pavel’s behalf as well.

Of course, if this volume breaks new ground, it is thanks to the rich and diverse perspectives its excellent contributors have on the topic of corporate knowledge commons. Their engagement with feedback is greatly appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank the three reviewers of the book proposal for their helpful comments, and, of course, Matt Gallaway and Jadyn Fauconier-Herry at Cambridge University Press for their invaluable help along the way.