43 research outputs found
Four dimensions in learning design thinking: Capabilities, constraints, collaboration, and the diffusion of ideas
Over the last few years, design thinking has been indicated to be an approach for making sense of complexity by focusing on collaborative work and interdisciplinary approaches. That being said, the concept itself and its applications still remain fluid and emerging today, posing an immediate question for education: How to educate design thinkers and what is the foundation of thought that this learning
should be based on? This paper examines four foundational dimensions of design thinking in terms of the needed capabilities, the world of constraints that restricts the application of capabilities, the nature
of collaboration, and the diffusion of ideas. The foundational work of Sen in the area of capabilities
and constraints is linked to Deleuzian thinking about concepts, collision, and affect in the area of collaboration and the rhizomic diffusion of ideas in order to form a wide framework of thought that serves as a foundational base for design thinking
Design, collaboration and evolvability: a conversation about the future
This paper is an exploratory conversation on collaboration, shared value, ecosystems, platforms, silent designers, the unexpected and ambiguity. It is held together by the idea of evolvability and a continuous loop of creation and design. It aims to report a journey that has no real starting point and no end in sight, and while it refers to a number of thinkers, it does not subscribe to any single school of thought. It has deep foundations in various disciplines, but remains aloof of single perspectives. It has been written as an experiment, in respite from conventional formats of producing academic text. It does, however, maintain an engagement with the serious matter of creating the future of design innovation, suggesting that we need to engage deeply with evolvability to benefit from ambiguity and the unexpected. This means moving from trying to see the future into creating it, a fine task for design
Collaborating for collective value: a mentoring perspective
Innovation today is seen to be driven by the cooperation between individuals in innovation
ecosystems, but significant inertia, sub-optimal structures and understanding of how and why
collaboration is practiced in many cases blocks innovation. In this conceptual and exploratory
paper we argue that achieving high value added innovation requires mentored transitions through
which low value market pricing relational models are replaced by communal sharing ones that
enable high joint value creation. Through relational models and stakeholder theory and three
illustrative case studies, we propose that design thinking methods can support these mentored
transitions through the development of individual and social capabilities, enabling integrating,
translating and expanding roles in the mentoring process. The paper contributes to the
knowledge and application of relational models in innovation ecosystems through the mentoring
perspective and the application of design thinking in developing high value added innovations
Impact in networks and ecosystems: building case studies that make a difference
open accessThis toolkit aims to support the building up of case studies that
show the impact of project activities aiming to promote innovation
and entrepreneurship. The case studies respond to the challenge
of understanding what kinds of interventions work in the Southern
African region, where, and why. The toolkit has a specific focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems and proposes a method of mapping out the actors and their relationships over time. The aim is to understand the changes that take place in the ecosystems. These changes are seen to be indicators of impact as
increased connectivity and activity in ecosystems are key enablers of innovation. Innovations usually happen together with matching social and institutional adjustments, facilitating the translation of inventions into new or improved products and services. Similarly, the processes supporting entrepreneurship are guided by policies implemented in the common framework provided by innovation systems. Overall, policies related to systems of innovation are by nature networking policies applied throughout the socioeconomic framework of society to pool scarce resources and make
various sectors work in coordination with each other. Most participating SAIS countries already have some kinds of identifiable systems of innovation in place both on national and regional levels, but the lack of appropriate institutions, policies, financial instruments, human resources, and support systems, together with underdeveloped markets, create inefficiencies and gaps in systemic cooperation and collaboration. In other words, we do not always know what works and what does not. On another level, engaging users and intermediaries at the local level and driving the development of local innovation
ecosystems within which local culture, especially in urban settings, has evident impact on how collaboration and competition is both seen and done. In this complex environment, organisations supporting entrepreneurship and innovation often find it difficult to create or apply relevant knowledge and appropriate networking tools, approaches, and methods needed to put their processes to work for broader developmental goals. To further enable these organisations’ work, it is necessary to understand what works and why in a given environment. Enhanced local and regional cooperation promoted by SAIS Innovation Fund projects can generate new data on this little-explored area in Southern Africa. Data-driven knowledge on entrepreneurship and innovation support best practices as well as effective and efficient management of entrepreneurial ecosystems can support replication and inform policymaking, leading thus to a wider impact than just that of the immediate reported projects and initiatives
Using design thinking to improve strategic decisions during collaborative sensemaking
Human cognitive limitations affect strategic decision-making. One of such
effects is emergence of cognitive biases, deviations from rationality in
judgment. These biases can negatively influence an organisation's capability to capture and utilize new ideas, thus inhibiting innovation. Researchers have documented different strategies for mitigating cognitive biases – and many of them overlap with the ones emphasised in design thinking. However, research so far does not offer any specific “recipes” for mitigation of cognitive biases. This paper links together research on challenges of strategic decision-making, cognitive biases and design thinking. The paper investigates the effects of applying design-thinking tool in collaborative sense-making stage, within a small business team, aiming to mitigate confirmation bias. The study indicated that newly introduced design-thinking tools did not have the expected positive influence on decision-making. The research contributes to the field by developing a new framework on how to identify and mitigate confirmation bias in strategic decision-making
The IDBM book 20/5
This book is designed to give an insider’s view of the programme
that bonds together people with very different backgrounds and
knowledge, forms strong connections between industry and academia,
and provides opportunities for future innovators to grow and find their
own way to professional excellence.
We look at the structural features of the program, explain how design,
business and technology fit together to create extraordinary value,
how students work together and gain new knowledge and hands-on
experience, what it means to be a team player, and how to operate in a
multicultural and interdisciplinary environment.
International and local Finnish companies work with IDBM to explore
and solve open-ended challenges to create new opportunities and
rethink design and technology-driven business. Through the case
projects, we show how collaboration works within the community
that gathers together industry, students, alumni, professors, and the
university as a whole.
The book outlines the key IDBM course offering in design, business and
technology and lists the industry projects and thesis work done in the
last five years. We have also added a selection of research papers to
illustrate the type of on-going knowledge creation that the community
engages in across a wide range of topics, the common denominator
being the use of design to create value
FrontEnd Toolkit: a toolkit to transform IDEAs into intelligent action
This FrontEnd Toolkit is about applying
Design Thinking to transform new ideas into innovative
products, services andbusinesses with an impact. The front
end development of new user and customer-oriented solutions
is a key opportunity aswell as a significant challenge for
organizations and success is built on collaborative
approaches. The overall objective is to help policy- makers,
project owners, and managers as well as their stakeholders
to design and implement projects with real impact. The
Toolkit helps to establish an idea’s key value to
stakeholders, and supports planning for the creation of high
impact projects. It assists in defining complexity, cost,
delivery, functionality,and future upgrade potential of a
concept and creates new opportunities for partnerships. The
Front End innovation is all about purposefully combining
different skills, disciplines, and resources with knowledge
related to the local innovation ecosystem to gain insights
that inspire and help shape a new, valuable offering. The
process of creating this constellation of elements involves
understanding emerging opportunities,client and user
mindsets, needs and expectations. It also involves making
sense of the competitive environment, the social and
individual constraints and enablers that drive the
acceptance and up take of new products, services and
business models
Intermediary roles in regulatory programs: Toward a role-based framework
This paper develops a role-based framework of intermediaries in regulatory programs. In examining the types of roles that organizations adopt in regulation and governance, we argue that roles have important implications for understanding organizational and
program level dynamism and outcomes. We utilize the Regulator-Intermediary-rule Taker framework (Abbott, Levi-Faur, & Snidal, 2017a; 2017b) to describe how organizational roles can be adopted through assignment, appropriation, or promotion. We then go deeper into how intermediaries adopt a variety of different roles in key regulatory programs. We examine generic intermediary roles across programs that involve four main groups of activities: Creating and/or organizing, coordinating between programs, supporting implementation, and voicing an opinion. All in all, our role-based framework allows for a novel relational way to understand interorganizational and institutional dynamism in complex, interactive, and ever-changing regulatory regimes
An innovation intermediary for Nairobi, Kenya: Designing student-centric services for university- industry collaboration
Engaging students as partners in university-industry collaboration (UIC) through challenge-based and real-life projects creates significant value for all participants through novel educational approaches, talent recruitment, user-driven innovation, new resources, and research-related opportunities. However, as these practices have developed iteratively over time in industrialized countries and are highly context dependent, it is unclear how they can be best transferred to emerging economy contexts. In this paper, we present a research and design process of creating an innovation intermediary to foster student-centric UIC in Nairobi, Kenya. Seen as a set of services that reside on a multilevel platform, the intermediary aims to add value to the existing ecosystem through open access knowledge sharing, promoting partnerships, and mentoring for impact in an integrative, complementary way. Through a four-step qualitative research process involving interviews and co-creation workshops with local stakeholders, we examine the ecosystem, define value creation, design the services of the intermediary, and propose a step-wise model for further diffusion. We note the importance of establishing a solid rationale for collaboration, understanding the expected value to be created, creating a neutral space for the collaboration, and planning the implementation in detail. We contribute to transferring student-centric UIC practices into emerging economy contexts.ITESO, A.C