White Spaces Innovation in Sweden - Innovation policy for ... - Vinnova

WHITE SPACES INNOVATION IN SWEDENwe have also interviewed three regional development agencies namely, Region Skåne,Ostsam and Västragötlandsregionen.The notion of a design discourse is picked up from Roberto Verganti´s book Design-Driven Innovation. In this, „design‟ is a collective process of „creative reasoning‟ toexplore the unknown, or what complexity theory calls the „adjacent possible‟.The “DesignDirection Workshop” plays a central role in this discourse. We arranged two suchworkshops to test the idea of applying design thinking in making Grand Challengesactionable. The purpose of the first workshop, planned to early March 2011, was to letthose people we met during our interviews discuss together our initial framing of thetopics of common interest. The second workshop was a two-day event in Malmö, April13-14 where the first day had presentations by Roberto Verganti on Grand Challengesas Sources of Innovation of Meaning, and by Phil Cooke presenting our analytical„complexity‟ framework and results from the interviews. These analytically orientedpresentations were contrasted with short interventions from cluster managers tellingtheir stories with relevance to Grand Challenges and Cross Cluster collaboration. Thesecond day was a series of practical design workshops involving application of Designthinking and moderated by professor Tom Inns of Dundee University, UK. He has alsodocumented the workshop and this documentation is available by contact with ArneEriksson, arne@aek.nu.The project started in November 2010 ended in June 2011.ResearchersThe research in question was led by Phil Cooke and Arne Eriksson who were both responsiblefor preparing research instruments and schedules. Interviews were conductedby Phil Cooke and Arne Eriksson based on a jointly-designed semi-structured interviewsupport instrument.1.4 Outline of the reportThe core of the report is in chapters 3 and 4 where the interviews we have done are setinto an evolutionary analytical framework (chapter 3) followed by an analysis of transversalinnovation and regional change as enabled by variety and constrained by pathdependencies and emergent path-interdependencies. Chapter 2 gives an overview ofcomplexity thinking and policy conclusions are presented in chapter 5.20