This chapter presents an overall framework for all of the book’s contributions with examples from events of different sizes, scope and in various contexts. Initially, and as a backdrop for your reading, there are in particular three main areas of event management we want to highlight: 1) complexity, project management and stakeholders; 2) knowledge, learning and experience; and 3) event politics, collaboration and experiences. The various book chapters show that the expectations for organizers and organizational committees are increasing, following from the growing number of activities and requirements to be dealt with in order to deliver a successful event.

This chapter presents a theoretical perspective on events, and offers insights regarding what kind of organizations events are and the challenges they create for organizers. It is suggested to conceive of events as dynamic and complex coalitions of activity systems. These systems are workgroups coordinated by way of a matrix organization. The increased complexity of this organization is necessary to deal with a complex, dynamic environment, but does represent additional challenges for event organizers.

In this chapter we explore the professionalization of project management and its significance to events. By drawing on a study of a large-scale public project, we illustrate how increasingly standardized models for «correct» project management paradoxically can work against its purpose. This especially applies to projects where stakeholders have diverse professional affiliations, as is often the case for events.

Sport events are short and hectic, and the demands of a successful event have made organizing committees increasing complex. Furthermore, extremely good planning and leadership has become a necessity. This chapter is about how two sporting events in Norway (the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in 2011 and the Youth Olympic Winter Games in 2016) emphasized values as part of the leadership. The chapter’s research question is: How to implement value based leadership at major sporting events? The CEO of the championships in 2011 invested considerable effort in anchoring values that contributed to awareness among individuals and working groups at all levels in the organization. The CEO of the Youth Olympics needed more time to realize the importance of values. Both of them managed to create an identity based on the values of the organizing committees, and these values were actively followed up.

With today’s media coverage of sports events, the athletes have been reduced to be one of many stakeholders at an event. Research found at two events, one game at national team level in football and the World Championship in Cycling, shows the need for strict routines and planning from the organizer so that athletes can focus on «doing their job» and compete. Media can be a negative impact stressor for the athletes’ results.

This chapter analyses the challenges of hosting major one-off events. The empirical data are from the 2014 Chess Olympiad in Tromsø and the World Road Cycling Championship in Bergen, 2017. It focuses on the consequences of lack of experiences, but also on conflicting interests between the stakeholders involved, which includes ethical and moral dimensions. The chapter describes situations that challenged the ethical framework and moral practices, and also the strategic and financial choices of all the stakeholders.

The case «Omkampen» between Norway and Brazil shows why events are interesting for sponsors as well as events’ dependency on sponsors. «Omkampen» illustrates how events are planned, marketed and implemented at an arena, which is transformed into an experience and marketplace where sponsors can activate their sponsorships. This chapter also highlights that the event experience itself is a source of «storytelling» in both traditional and social media. An event requires design strategies to influence the senses, emotions, attitudes, and behaviour of participants, audiences, and viewers. A physical office space together with event design can transform an area into an experience with challenging and fun activities, which are carried out to achieve organizational goals. Based on the cases and relevant theory this chapter addresses the question «what is the connection between sponsorship and events in an organization and in the market»?

This chapter deals with how to engage people to be an audience at football matches or active participants in running events. With two cases from a football club and a running event, this chapter shows the effects of using different techniques from the literature in sales and marketing.

In this chapter we study how various motives influence event participation among participants with different roles – audience only, voluntary only, performer only, and combinations of these roles. The main study (n=534), based on results from a pre-study and existing literature, illustrates that the effect of various motives on participation depends on the participant’s role (and combinations of roles). Implications of the results are discussed.

Norwegian music festivals are entirely dependent on the help of a large group of volunteer workers in order to create good concert experiences for the public. Many volunteers work for the festival year after year and accumulate knowledge through experience. In the debate on lifelong learning and volunteering, the importance of learning and development is emphasised through the voluntary work. The organizational literature points to informal learning as the main source of voluntary organizations’ overall capacity. This chapter therefore deals with conditions for learning in the volunteer festival work. The empirical basis is interviews of leaders of selected music festivals in Norway and this material is illuminated using situated learning theory.

In this chapter, we look at the importance of senses in experience design. The literature shows that stimulation of the senses enhances the experiences we make ourselves, and has a bearing on the way we value events and experiences. Such knowledge can be important in the development of events and experiences. The study’s starting point is a cultural summer event along the Oslo harbor promenade, the one-day event Old Hvam Day at Old Hvam Museum, and visits to the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology. The results show that sensory stimulation is an important part of an experience, perhaps more on the unconscious level than a conscious one. Further, we discuss challenges in measuring sensory experiences in field settings. The hunt for the good sensory experience became the hunt for the right research context.

Events create community, solidarity and identity within target groups for the event. They can be celebrations of personal milestones or of a larger context such as nation building, but also serve global political agendas such as the emancipation of women, class struggle and environmental conservation. Such political goals address social sustainability and the concept of social innovation is a useful umbrella term for diverse movements for social reform. Events play an important role in the public discourse and engage people in bringing about the desired social reform.

Events are venues for entertainment and fun. The key to an event success is to facilitate for visitors and other stakeholders so they can participate in creating value for themselves and for others. Events can thus be seen as infrastructure for participation and co-creation of different types of values. Based on recent marketing perspectives and network theory, this chapter deals with how value creation takes place by interaction between customer, stakeholders and the event itself. The interaction takes place through the customers’ presence, but also via other communication channels such as social media. With background and examples from an annual event in Norway, the Finnmarksløpet, the present chapter contributes to clarifying value creation in an interaction perspective.

It appears challenging for firms to develop events which contain innovative and attractive content that the audience find accomplishing, and thus, well-suitable methods for planning and execution are demanded. This book chapter shows how an event may be co-created by stakeholders in a service ecosystem by applying service design as an effectuation tool, and with a market event in retailing as an illustrative case example. The chapter provide insight and document experiences from service design workshops, the event itself, and from re-established service ecosystem practice resulting from co-creation. The book chapter concludes by giving advice to firms and event organizers that show interest in applying service design methods for event development.