Exploring a Co-Creative Problem Solving Toolbox in the Context of Norwegian High-Tech Industry

Abstract

Norwegian high-tech industries face a rapidly changing market need. Staying ahead of competitors and developing significant innovative solutions are essential for business value. Systems engineering has proven to be an effective approach for developing technical (hard) systems. People, organizations, and technical functionality contribute to an increasing complexity in today's high-tech systems. This makes the traditional systems engineering approach insufficient for innovation in a socio-technical context. This paper looks towards systems architecting, systems oriented design, and participatory design for collaborative and creative ways of working to support systems engineers in developing significant innovations. We explore a rich toolbox and the outline of a new methodology for such co-creative problem solving. Firstly, we identify industry needs for the new methodology and derive success criteria for the toolbox embodied in the new methodology. Through ten industry cases within Norwegian high-tech industries, we analyze and discuss the toolbox composed of methods and tools for early exploration, validation, and knowledge transfer in the concept phase. Finally, we provide examples on how the toolbox supports the industry needs and outline the new methodology.

Gigamaps as enabling tools for envisioning futures

“…-Introduce stakeholders to the Gigamap concept, highlighting its value as a visual tool for comprehending complex systems (Kjørstad et al 2021). -Clearly outline the co-design session's scope and objectives to ensure stakeholder alignment (Kjørstad et al 2021).…”

“…-Introduce stakeholders to the Gigamap concept, highlighting its value as a visual tool for comprehending complex systems (Kjørstad et al 2021). -Clearly outline the co-design session's scope and objectives to ensure stakeholder alignment (Kjørstad et al 2021). -Engage stakeholders in collaboratively mapping the system using the Gigamap, visualising its components and relationships (Davidová 2020).…”

Co-Creative Problem Solving to Support Rapid Learning of Systems Knowledge Towards High-Tech Innovations: A Longitudinal Case Study

“…Figure 2 illustrates the research design. The first rectangle shows our previous work [33], where we identified the industry needs and the success criteria (Table 2). The two following rectangles of Figure 2 show the two stages of research presented in this article.…”

“…The research presented in this article is part of a research collaboration project with four Norwegian high-tech industry partners and two academic partners in systems engineering and systems oriented design, respectively. In our former research, we identified that the industry needs to support rapid learning of systems knowledge through concept exploration, early validation, and knowledge transfer in the concept phase [33]. Furthermore, we explored the use of co-creative methods and tools [21,22,[34][35][36][37][38] to support the Norwegian high-tech industry in achieving their needs.…”

Research on the mechanism of digital economy to enhance the innovation efficiency of high-tech industry in the context of big data

“…The growth of the digital economy fuels innovative and productive national development activities in nations with advanced high-tech businesses. Promoting the balanced growth of high-tech businesses across different locations and increasing their innovation productivity should go without saying if we want to enhance the development of the high-tech sector [8][9][10]. Industrial digitalization can provide a new impetus for improving innovation efficiency in the digital economy era.…”