Branding as enabling knowledge creation: The role of space and cognition in branding processes

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of enabling, as opposed to managing or controlling, as a key characteristic and attitude for designing spaces which are supposed to have a ‘branding effect’. In our case we will focus on a very specific notion of branding or branded spaces; namely, spaces that are branded for creating (new) knowledge. It can be seen easily that this is a very generic understanding of brand that can be applied to many domains. In other words, we see a brand not primarily as a product, but as a state of knowledge.