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Openness, broad involvement and inclusion of different perspectives are considered a useful strategy for successful innovation. We suggest this is valid also for foresight practice as a part of an innovation process. In this paper, collaborative signal scanning regarding sustainability, act as the foundation for an intervention in an interactive research study discussing how to distribute and improve foresight practice, based on broad involvement for sustainable innovation? This research was performed as a university industry collaboration. The intervention consisted of two parts: moderated networking meetings with the purpose of sharing and reflecting on weak signals about sustainability and access to a learning module consisting of practical and theoretical material on corporate foresight, accessible via a digital learning platform. Participants express new insights, changed habits both in private and professional situations, and a strong incentive to pursue this work. The lack of time is a hinder for the individuals.

Knowledge in foresight and environmental scanning is needed among teachers because of rapidly changing scenarios. Professional development of teachers is also supporting sustainability in lifelong learning. Higher education needs to match the changeable needs of the labour market. Pucciarelli and Kaplan (2016) present three core future challenges for higher education to address: competition and market share, mindset changes towards entrepreneurship and involvement of stakeholders in co‐creation. The trend toward continuing, distance and flexible learning put added pressure on teachers but also offer opportunities for innovation. Bonfield et al. (2020) discuss, by using scenario-planning methodology, digitalization and key affordances of Education 4.0, how pedagogies and teaching need to evolve. The transformation affects the professional role of the teachers. In this paper, we present results from a study on teachers’ view on future challenges in their profession and how to respond to these challenges by peer-learning and foresight. We present a qualitative empirical study involving teachers and adult educators from both Sweden and Finland exploring their future professional role. Empirical data comes from semi-structured qualitative interviews and teacher workshops. Among the themes discussed were challenges in the future, lifelong learning, the context of learning in the future, different ways to update skills and familiarity with futures thinking methods. Two workshops have been completed, with mixed groups (cross-border and inter-disciplinary) discussing sustainable futures. The participants in the study emphasized hybrid models for learning, formative teaching and coaching work styles. Among identified challenges: how to create added value for students, digital competence, greater requirements for substantive knowledge and a need for increased IT support. The empirical data also included future dilemmas: versatile and varied versus fragmented, autonomy and independence versus increased need for support, informal versus formal role and, learning management versus learning communities. The participants also suggested necessary future skills in the labour markets, to be considered. Data also resulted in a visualization of relevant trends to consider in the transformation of the teachers’ role as an educator in lifelong learning. Teachers are knowledgeable about trends and tendencies in their own professional environment. Teachers also have strategies for own professional development in their domains. There are less focus on scanning for changes in the external environment. We suggest foresight, tools and methods, as a new competence to overcome this gap.

The aims of this research are to enhance industry-university collaboration and to design learning experiences connecting the research front to practitioners. We present an empirical study with a qualitative approach involving teachers who gathered data from newly developed advanced level courses in artificial intelligence, energy, environmental, and systems engineering. The study is part of FutureE, an academic development project over 3 years involving 12 courses. The project, as well as this study, is part of a cross-disciplinary collaboration effort. Empirical data comes from course evaluations, course analysis, teacher workshops, and semi-structured interviews with selected students, who are also professionals. This paper will discuss course design and course implementation by presenting dilemmas and paradoxes. Flexibility is key for the completion of studies while working. Academia needs to develop new ways to offer flexible education for students from a professional context, but still fulfil high quality standards and regulations as an academic institution. Student-to-student interactions are often suggested as necessary for qualified learning, and students support this idea but will often not commit to it during courses. Other dilemmas are micro-sized learning versus vast knowledge, flexibility versus deadlines as motivating factors, and feedback hunger versus hesitation to share work. Furthermore, we present the challenges of providing equivalent online experience to practical in-person labs. On a structural level, dilemmas appear in the communication between university management and teachers. These dilemmas are often the result of a culture designed for traditional campus education. We suggest a user-oriented approach to solve these dilemmas, which involves changes in teacher roles, culture, and processes. The findings will be relevant for teachers designing and running courses aiming to attract professionals. They will also be relevant for university management, building a strategy for lifelong e-learning based on co-creation with industry.

The presented research aims to explore future context of e-learning, needs of professionals, and how higher education can respond to those needs. This is an empirical study with a qualitative approach. We interviewed teachers and students about their perceptions of e-learning. The interviews were semi-structured and allowed for reflections. All students interviewed were currently employed in industry and active e-learners. A web-based horizon scanning was made to identify trends in order to understand future context. The study is part of an academic development project with the intention of strengthening academic capacity and company knowledge to stay competitive in an international setting. In this paper, we present several cornerstones for creating courses that are suitable for professionals. Administrative routines and procedures need to be adjusted in order to meet challenges from other actors and the needs of stakeholders.  A seamless experience would be preferred from a consumer-oriented perspective, where flexibility is a key factor. This flexibility is manifested by the need to control their own workload to adjust the work-education balance. Locus of learning needs to be problematized. Students do not identify themselves as co-creators. This is a challenge to overcome in order to design for the work-study situation. Previous studies on distance learning have mostly focused on full time students in today’s context. This study involves foresight and the situation for students in employment. The findings will be relevant for teachers in the design phase of a course intended for any type of student who is not a traditional full-time student, and for university management building a strategy for the future of e-learning.

The involvement of customers and other stakeholders in the innovation process is proposed to be a key success factor and something that makes companies more competitive. As a consequence, more and more organizations alter their innovation strategy accordingly. In order for a company to open up innovation processes, it is vital to foster a practice where there is openness for external ideas and knowledge. However, when external ideas meet internal innovation practices complex organizational situations appear. Creativity, for example, involves co-dependence of other persons’ strategies and actions. New roles for those involved affect hierarchies and knowledge sharing opportunities.

This thesis involves three different perspectives of the same process provides an opportunity to study both individual and structural challenges. This research aims to identify on-going challenges for an organization during the transformational processes that adjustment from a traditional product innovation structure to an open service innovation culture implies. This qualitative case study involves two main cases and three supporting cases and aims to understand how users and other external parties, top management and middle managers experience open innovation processes. The results describe interactions between organizations and users or external stakeholders as well as internal interactions within the organization. Top management were dedicated to the idea of increased openness, but detected structural issues to deal with in order to implement user involved innovation. Among middle management, some individual aspects such as attitudes and relational issues matter, as well as organizational structures and practices. Users had mixed opinions about their participation in the process. Favorable experiences, such as benevolence and deepened relationships, were balanced by un-favorable experiences such as incapability and intrusion. Different dimensions of openness regarding open innovation practice are discussed. In this work a relational focus is emphasized. The findings assist managers in their work to create conditions for open innovation. Managers can benefit from this research by getting a better understanding of how different stakeholders’ experience co-creation of value. This is relevant for innovation managers in the process of redesigning innovation processes to understand different aspects of the interactions involved.

There are boundless upcoming factors that influence future of material waste in production. This broad range of factors needs to be scanned, categorized and analyzed in a structured way. This paper by a foresight study, aims to give an insight and increase awareness about external macro-level future trends concerning raw material consumption and waste generation in production. A limited pilot study indicated that technological forecasting and some reaction upon obvious trends are being taken, although in an ad hoc manner and without structured tools. However, political influences, economic visions and social-cultural shifts were seldom or never discussed. External macro trends and tendencies were examined through PEST analysis to identify potentials and opportunities influencing strategic decisions and innovation initiatives. It is vital to understand the whole picture of possible changes and not only considering the technological trends, but also other relevant development areas that might affect production in different ways.

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this article is to present the outcome of a co-creation service innovation project, both to understand the possible outcome when using a process model and to achieve a better understanding of how customers experience participation in co-creation in an open service innovation project. The article also discusses the outcome of co-creation in terms of new knowledge concerning customers’ needs, both expressed and latent needs compared to the knowledge gained through a regular guest survey. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on 29 in-depth interviews that were conducted subsequent to participation as visitors in a service innovation project which involved testing a model for user involved service innovation. In the process model users were asked to be attentive and produce real time documentations. The co-creation in this case thus occurred when obtaining input for service innovation ideation. Findings – Participants (visitors to a Swedish zoo), had mixed opinions about their participation in the project. Favourable experiences, such as benevolence and deepened relationships, were balanced by unfavourable experiences such as incapability and intrusion. Also a user involved service innovation approach as the one studied provides valuable knowledge about customers suggested to be useful for service innovation. Users presented a wide range of real time documentations; from brief comments about certain aspects of their experience to more detailed suggestions for future services. Originality/value – The study provides empirical evidence regarding the importance of adopting a user’s perspective towards service innovation. This is unlike previous research,which has been limited to the study of how companies perceive and can manage co-creation in a manner that is beneficial for them. The study also connects to this perspective by suggesting that co-creation both enhances opportunities for successful service innovation and provides a deeper understanding of customers’ needs. Keywords Innovation, Customer services quality, Product innovation, Sweden Paper type Case study

This article discusses an organization with a traditional new product development setting and the on-going challenges for this organization to evolve into an open service innovation culture involving customers. Complexity theory is used as a framework for understanding the transition. The research reported in this paper is part of a three year (2008 – 2010) explorative study. The objective was to develop and test a method for user involved innovation and study how this innovation method was experienced by involved parties. Several challenges were identified on the organizational level. Among them were tensions regarding the communication structure and organizational boundaries and paradox situations. Other challenges to be addressed by management concern stability, hierarchies and knowledge sharing and that creativity involves a co-dependence.

This paper is dealing with a way to temporarily change the patterns of thinking and acting of a team. Or more specific; to move a team through a phase transition from an ordered phase to a complex phase. The aim is to make it possible for production personnel to contribute and be integrated in idea development processes. Innovation and improvement are important to ensure long term competitiveness for most companies. Since patterns of thinking and acting in idea development is different from the ones needed in production it is often recommended to perform this work in a department not connected to production. The division between production and idea development may lead to several problems; e.g. impoverishment of the work of production personnel, no input from common days experience in idea development, and harder for production personnel to understand and take responsibility for the production of new products resulting from the idea development, and thus e.g. hamper future work with improvements of it. The ideal for team creativity is to be able to make use of all members' different ideas, experiences and different ways to understand things, in a common creative process. This is possible if each team member at the same time is both autonomous, independently using its competence in action, and integrated, relating each action to an emerging idea shared by all team members. When independent agents interact, and an organization which controls the actions of the agents emerges in this interaction, then we have a complex system, by definition. The agents are at the same time autonomous, following their individual organization, and integrated to the system, following the organization of the system. Most of the work tasks for normal teams in work life demands predictability, not creativity. Such teams develop patterns of thinking and acting that is good for repeatedly producing with high efficiency and quality. This is possible for an ordered system with low autonomy, not a complex system. The question of this paper is: Is it possible to find a strategy that may be used to support a team to reach a complex phase, were it is creative sooner than predictable? An important inspiration writing this paper has been an article Movie making as a mediator in dialogue (Palus & Drath). The thoughts presented in the article were similar to our understanding of how to support creativity of teams and we have decided to use this technique in our creativity lab. In our paper we describe how to understand this technique from a complexity perspective, and start a discussion about how to measure the complexity of a team's social interaction.