Francis D’Silva
CGI Norway and Digital Society Innovation
The megatrends of globalisation, digitalisation, and climate change call policymakers to design interventions that can address the systemic challenges facing society. Even as initiatives like the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals and EU Missions frame the challenges and provide direction, the journey towards implementation is long and arduous. Digital technologies and digital twins are proliferating at a pace that is causing a data and knowledge explosion while presenting solutions and challenges.
This paper speculates how societies might interpret recommendations from public studies and harness technology to engage multiple stakeholders in the design of products (goods and services) that are customised for local socio-ecological contexts. Towards this speculation, this paper explores and conceptualises “verksted” as an action-orientated place-based facility for multi-stakeholder collaboration, e.g., between developers, operators, policymakers, researchers, investors, educators, and concerned citizens (verksted is Norwegian for workshop). The paper makes two contributions towards framing actionable policy: (a) the knowledge loop as a conceptual and methodological construct of the verksted and (b) a capability map to guide the operationalisation of the verksted as a node in a network for continuous co-design, education, and experimentation.
The paper builds on literature in systems thinking, knowledge management, and enterprise architecture. The paper uses the author’s observations and interviews from three main sources: (i) Norwegian authorities’ policies for research-based innovation, cluster-based entrepreneurship, and digitalisation, (ii) activities at HelseInn towards establishing a design-driven network in the Innlandet county of Norway and (iii) research projects at the Centre for Connected Care – a research-driven innovation centre comprising 17 organisations researching the design, procurement, and scaling of innovation in the health sector.
KEYWORDS: innovation ecosystems, digital design spaces, collaboration
