Creating a home for experiential learning – a case study of an interdisciplinary product development course

This paper presents an action research-based study on how a new learning environment was co-created with its users to support an interdisciplinary product development course, and how the new space supported the experiential learning method used in the course. The data consists of field notes collected during a three-month intensive development phase and of nine semi-structured open interviews. The results reveal that the new learning environment became a home base for the students, and illustrate how informal events organized in the space increased the feeling of togetherness and decreased barriers for communication. The new learning environment became a comfortable place where the students were able to combine work and fun, interact with other students, learn from others and relax.Peer reviewe

The central role of exploration in designing business concepts and strategy

Design thinking is described as a combination of thinking and acting that leads to new solution possibilities for design problems. Though traditionally linked to the design of objects and services, it can be applied to organizational processes as well. This paper examines design thinking in developing a new business, focusing on the business concept and strategy formation in the start-up phase of the company. How and what elements of design thinking are manifested in the process of designing a business concept and forming a strategy? What is the importance of these elements in this process? The results reveal the experimental and iterative nature of developing the business concept and strategy. In addition, these organizational processes were strongly influenced by the product offering, stakeholders, and environment that the company operated in. While the results highlighted the importance of emergence, they also illustrated a need for structure and planning, thus reminding of the need of balancing between the two. Overall, the results suggest that many of the fundamental elements of design thinking are found in the development process of a company.Peer reviewe

Self-efficacy in product development student teams - what shapes students’ perceived self-efficacy

This paper aims to provide a perspective of the student ́s perceived self-efficacy in a team based project course where students face open-ended, ill-defined problems. We discuss the development of self-efficacy in the team members and how different situations and events affect their perceived self-efficacy. The data used in this paper was gathered through interviews from students taking a yearlong masters ́ level capstone course. Results of the study show that the students’ overall self-efficacy increased most in team-based moments. We show also how entrepreneurial self-efficacy of students can be enhanced during problem- based New Product Development process. Finally we will conclude the potential of the researched course to provide practical experiences of project work as well as its potential for delivering entrepreneurial skills for the students during their education.Peer reviewe

Framing activities and the co-evolvement of products and operations in new ventures

New ventures need to simultaneously develop both their first offering and the operations of the venture itself. This paper extends the notion of problem-solution co-evolvement from product design to venture design, presenting results from four new Finnish ventures in the midst of creating their first offering market-ready. Based on qualitative analysis of interviews of the entrepreneur teams of these ventures, it is suggested that differences in how the venture idea is initially approached translates into different types of co-evolvement between the offering and the operations of the new ventures. In two of the companies, the product frame had been collaboratively created and remained relatively stable. Development activities within product, business model and working practices did not require large changes in the other arenas. In contrast, the product frame was shifting in the two other ventures, and the co- evolvement of the product problem and solutions had major implications for the business model and operations, and vice versa. The entrepreneurs in these companies would have seemingly benefited from having more structured systematic micro-level working practices to balance the variance in the offering and operations. By conceptually linking venture formation to co-evolvement resulting from the initial frame of development efforts, the study serves to strengthen the link between product development and entrepreneurship research.Peer reviewe

Passion-based co-creation

As our world is getting evermore interconnected and entwined across professional, organizational and national boundaries, challenges rarely fall neatly into the realm of single functions, departments or disciplines any more. While it is uncertain what the world will look like in a few decades, and many of the needed skills and approaches are unknown, we do know we need a way of creating the future together. Counting on a few heroic innovation champions will not suffice in transforming our organizations. Passion-based co-creation describes the approach to tackling these issues that has led to the creation of Aalto Design Factory and the Global Design Factory Network of 20 co-creation platforms around the globe. Our approach, in a nutshell, is a way of creating something new together, sprinkled with a hefty dose of intrinsic motivation. Sound too hype-y? Worry not, we aren’t preaching the adoption of yet another ‘’perfect’ tool, licensed process, or turnkey solution. Rather, we want to share some principles we have found effective, offer a look into the scientific backbone of our approach, and provide tangible examples on how to bring the mindset and ways of working into your organization. Mix, match, and adapt these elements to create your own personalized stack of building blocks for passion-based co-creation in your unique context

Aalto University Design Factory in the eyes of its community

This report concerns Aalto University Design Factory (ADF), one of the spearhead projects and first physical manifestations of Aalto University. ADF aims to be a platform for integrative interdisciplinary education, research and industrial collaboration, as well as a catalyst for a culture of experimental and problem-based education to promote better learning outcomes. Since opening its doors in November 2008, ADF has strived to achieve these by providing a non-hierarchical, constantly developing collaboration environment for students, teachers, researchers and business practitioners across hierarchical, professional, and disciplinary boundaries. At the time of the study reported here, the ADF platform has existed for three years, making the time ripe for reflection on how the key principles and ideas behind ADF have manifested themselves. The report presents the findings from a series of interviews conducted in order to map the experiences and perceptions of the ADF environment held by its community members. Explicating these experiences and how the key principles and ideas behind ADF have manifested themselves benefits the development of the ADF both within Aalto and with international collaboration projects. The report is mainly based on the in-depth interviews of 51 ADF community members representing all of the different major, regular ADF community groups in terms of background and positions, supplemented by 177 interviews (screened for clear explicit references to ADF) conducted previously in other research projects and a week of observation of interaction initiations at the ADF Kafis, the café-office-kitchen of the ADF building. The interviews explored the experiences of the community members with an open-ended story-based format in order to remove any influence of the possible biases or presumptions of the interviewers. The analysis was based on grouping interview segments according to thematic similarity, resulting in descriptions of the experienced typical characteristics of interaction, action, support and personal work at the ADF, as well as in the perceived characteristics of the ADF entity itself. The results do not offer proof of whether these perceptions are accurate in an objective sense, but they reflect what the community members themselves perceive to be true. The results thus offer insight on what the users of the ADF value in the environment, why they have chosen to act on such a platform and what the costs and benefits have been for them. Interaction: ADF was perceived to offer great potential for collaboration, especially due to the physical proximity and diversity of its community members. The tight community was experienced as a home base, and integration to the community was described as crucial. Getting to know the staff members and actively participating in events lowered the threshold for further interaction, as did the warm and open atmosphere. However, finding the initial entrance to the community, as well as keeping up the community spirit and welcoming atmosphere were described as somewhat challenging issues. Action: Shared characteristics found in the actions pursued by ADF community groups were perceived to shape the ADF as a whole with informal activities and interaction perceived as crucial success factors promoting a fast pace of interaction and implementation, and open sharing within the community. The community members had in general been active in initiating development in their own work and in collaboration with others. Support: Nearly all interviews contained experiences of receiving either intangible, or concrete support from the ADF community members, especially members of the staff. Receiving support often taking the form of small acts of help and positive reactions, along with positive examples, had sparked enthusiasm and courage in interaction, development, and experimentation and seemed to be particularly significant for students. Personal work: Many of the experiences reported by the community members described the content and qualities of the interviewees’ individual work. Commonly shared features included perceiving one’s work as motivating, conductive to learning, and possessing a high degree of freedom, and undertaking development activities. For many ADF community members, spending time and working at the ADF had helped them in discovering and clarifying the role and goals they wanted to pursue in their careers through exposure to new situations and application opportunities. ADF entity: The experiences reported by the ADF community members related to the ADF entity itself could be roughly divided into three types: perceptions and effects of the ADF physical manifestation, perceptions and effects of the ADF structures, and the role and effects of the ADF within the Aalto University. ADF facilities were frequently noted to support and enable a wide range of activities, interaction, experimentation, and the work of students. Lack of bureaucracy and a high degree of flexibility were perceived as key ADF characteristics in enabling development, while as a downside, some negative experiences were described related to e.g. unclarities and lack of overall flow of information. The present results illustrate an abundance of pursued development activities and interaction at the ADF platform by its community members, although there clearly also remains untapped potential for creating and seizing such opportunities. Indeed, the results offer a glimpse on what has made the platform successful in the eyes of its utilizing community, as well as some insights into further developing the ADF and similar platforms. Especially three features seem pervasive across the different experiences and perceived aspects of the ADF platform: taking the smalls things into consideration in conveying a development-promoting message, creating a critical mass to sustain promoting development, and actualizing development collaboration potential

Prototyping in practice – Paths and partners for testing novel industrial product and service ideas

Prototyping is a core activity in developing new products, processes, and organisations alike. This paper describes the prototyping activities of 31 engineering design professionals in a high-technology industrial company, examining the distribution of different types of activities across different phases of development based on thematic interviews. Examining 62 prototyping and testing pathways, we found that most prototyping paths started with the practitioners’ own activities, which was also more likely to lead to paths with more prototyping steps than if the first prototyping activity took place with a stakeholder. Overall, the paths were short, indicating a lack of iteration. Both internal and external stakeholders were involved in collaborative prototyping. This collaboration was enabled by personal and unit level relationships, and different stakeholders were involved in different phases of development. Taken together, our results suggest that practitioner attention in prototyping may focus on latter development phases and demonstrate less iteration than what literature might suggest, with opportunities for prototyping highly dependent on personal networks in the high-technology context in the absence of flexible prototyping budgets

Design+ : organizational renewal and innovation through design

The products, services, technologies, ecosystems, and networks of today are much more interconnected and complicated than ever before. As a result, private and public organizations alike are turning to design to find new ways to create value, manage uncertainty and innovate in a sustainable manner. Design can play a variety of roles on different levels in organizations, with different effects. This book offers an overview on how design and design thinking can change our organizations, drawing from academic research and company experiences in different industries. We showcase different perspectives and approaches, and hope to inspire you to explore the opportunities through which design can help to renew your own ways of working

FROM INVENTION DISCLOSURES TO INNOVATION - CHALLENGES IN TRANSFORMING PRACTICE

Adopting design thinking and innovation-oriented approaches in organizations is crucial but not always simple. New practices of collaboration, user-orientedness and exploration require a compatible culture to be successfully integrated into product development. This paper presents a case study based on 12 interviews of employees and managers in a large Finland-based technology company, introducing new ways of working to product development. Silos, focusing on inventions, and a lack of resources for exploration were highlighted as key challenges in transitioning from incremental development to innovations. Perhaps counterintuitively, introducing new ways of working requiring a collaborative culture - the most widely recognized shortcoming in the current practice in the case - were best received, and support and feedback could be found for pilot projects in these arenas. When the gap between the practice and culture was smaller, change efforts could perhaps be more challenging, as there was less of a consensus on a need to change. The results suggest than developers need not automatically shy away from piloting new ways of working even when existing cultures are not compatible.Peer reviewe