As you might have noticed, we haven’t been posting too much in the last days – mostly due to the fact that there are several exciting news that we focused on: We will move to Zurich, Switzerland! And: I will be Editor-in-Chief for new products at the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and am very much looking forward to the new challenge. Klaus has some neat innovation projects planned, too – so we will both be able to make good use of our Innovation Roadtrip insights.

Talking about insights, we will give a first short talk about those at SXSW German House soon. We will then blog about those, and there are several other blogposts coming up soon about our meetings in Northern Europe and the US, for example on new leadership, media innovation and innovation hubs.

After a month of travel, patterns start to show, and we work on answers to questions like:

How might we drive innovation inside an organization?

How important is a culture of collaboration and cocreation?

What can innovation culture in Europe learn from the US, and the other way round?

The post Changes Coming up: New City! New Job! More Innovation Meetings! appeared first on Innovation Roadtrips.

People who Drive Change in the Industry

So when we heard about the Food Innovation Network Skane, we thought: This might be interesting. And it was. We met Fredrik and Therese, who have a job that is an innovation in itself: They are “Innovation Trainees” at the network. Imagine them as kind of free radicals circulating in the system, helping the industry members of the network to challenge assumptions, drive change, redesign processes and develop new products. The program, Therese explains, wants to create people that can make a change in the industry, stir things up. They trainees dive into a new project every other month or so, by invitation of industry players who see they have a need to innovate. Their challenges range from packaging redesign to organic reinventions of products – depending on what tasks they get assigned.

Innovationstrainees Therese and Fredrik

What you need to become an Innovation Trainee? “You need to be curious, and you need to love food. And you have to have an urge to ask ‘why’?”, explains Therese. While the companies inviting them in are making them feel very welcome, the two know that it sometimes means a cultural change for them, too. The biggest obstacle they encounter in their innovation work: Secrecy. “If someone says things like, this is my secret plan, I don’t want to share it – that’s very hard to build on with a collaborative culture and open innovation.”

Listening to the Customer

Companies, Frederik says, need to be and act mature to let someone in to question everything in the excisting system. “But that’s just the way innovation works: You need to be able to break the system, to go out and listen to the customer,  to develop new ideas and strategies. And the system is sometimes reluctant to let you”. How you can overcome reluctant systems? “Ask why? Why? Why? And then again: Why? At a certain point, people are likely to answer: Why not?”

What the Network Does

Of all things the Food Innovation Network Skane organizes, the trainee program is just a small part. It actually consists of several networks, each dedicated to a task in the food industry. (You can read more about them here). They operate in five main areas:

Joyful meals
The goal: Improving the mealtimes served in the public sector, for example schools, hospitals, elderly care and prisons.
Taste Skåne  
Taste of Skåne supports small food enterprises in their product development. They operate through projects and networks to develop a catering industry.
Job & Career
With an active presence at universities and colleges, student networks and of course the rainee programme, the network tries to meet the industry’s needs to attract young well-educated people.
Innovation & Entrepreneurs
The program supports entrepreneurs by providing networks, projects, advice and coaching. It aims to be the obvious meeting place for researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs.
Food Packaging
Together with the packaging cluster Packbridge, the Innovation Network has developed an open innovation platform called OpenUp to innovate the packaging industry.

And, last but not least: They organize a food festival, which takes places May 22nd till 24th 2015.

The post Let There be Food Innovation: The Skane Region Invents New Ways appeared first on Innovation Roadtrips.

Foto by Sebastian Borg/Media Evolution City.

But the real secret is collaboration. Knowledge exchange is key here, says Sara. “In Malmö, you just have a need for collaboration and a sharing spirit”. Part of the reason is that Malmö hasn’t been an innovation hotspot by birth. It’s the smaller sibling to Swedish capital Stockholm and Danish capital Copenhagen, which is just a 30 minute drive away by car – and it still has to fight for it’s seat on the table. A fact that creates a feeling of unity in the city’s creative scene. It also helps that Media Evolution does a mean bi-weekly afterwork party that connects the scene, modestly called “The World’s Best Afterwork”. (We have been there, and they might really have a point with that claim). Also, they organise roundtables called “Open Agency”, as well as workshops and events.

Listen, Learn, Iterate

At Media Evolution City, about 400 member organizations work, design, collaborate and communicate each day, many of them residing in the large building situated in Malmö’s new and industrial Western Harbor district. They all are somehow working on digital change, but with a very wide range from tech to architecture and food to film. It started as a research project that Magnus Thure Nilsson, now the CEO, conducted in 2004, to figure out what the creative scene in Malmö needed to grow and innovate. “We started by asking the market: What do you need? Might that be helpful?”, Magnus explains. “We listened, we learned and we iterated.” They still continue to develop the hub further, always with a strong community engagement and focus on the needs of the community. “We learned to focus on the right things. When we were really good, it was always when we listened best”, says Magnus. When they moved into the new building in 2012, they actually built a model of the house and let members have a say in how they wanted it to be set up and furnished. “It’s a crowdsourced house”, he laughs.

The building prototype. Foto by Media Evolution City.

The Conference That’s Not Like a Conference

And there is something else. In recent years, people in media started to whisper about this insider’s tip – a cool conference happening in August in Malmö each year, called – modest again – “The Conference”. A colleague who went there described it as “the one conference that I really love to go to because it’s not like a conference at all”. Martin Thörnkvist, the mastermind behind The Conference, would probably like that description. He was bored by the conferences he had gone to in his life, and felt the need to create something more meaningful, more engaging. “We help our audience to explore complexity in the digital world, help them answer the question: How does this here relate to their world, their life?”, he describes his aim. “We want you to be at The Conference and hear about things you didn’t know you wanted to hear.” It’s one day of keynotes and breakout sessions, and they follow a storytelling scheme that guides you through the day and creates an immersive experience, including approaches like “How to make things happen”.

The Conference 2014. Foto by Media Evolution City.

The whole operation, Media Evolution City as well as The Conference, feels surprisingly big for the small city of Malmö. You can feel that at some point, the city might become too small for the big aims. So will there be a similar operation anywhere else soon? There might, and it could even be in Germany, says Magnus. “But all this here is built on Malmö, on it’s networks and people. We would need to figure out the identity of another city if we want to create something similar there”.

The post Media Evolution City and The Conference: A Collaborative Future appeared first on Innovation Roadtrips.

Rockstart.
Is an intensive programme that helps start-ups from all over the world to evolve their companies from idea to the market in just 100o days.
http://www.rockstart.com/

Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek
The Netherlands Journalism Fund is a government funded and independent organization aimed at financing projects from news organizations and new journalistic initiatives in order to sustain journalism, which is a necessary element in a democratic society.
http://www.persinnovatie.nl/

Assembl3d
Looks to increase the enthusiasm about the amazing possibilities of Additive Manufacturing, also called 3D-printing. Assembl3d and her sub divisions are aiming to further the 3D-printing phenomenon in The Netherlands in order to help build the competitiveness of the Dutch knowledge economy.
http://www.assembl3d.com/

THNK – School of Creative Leadership
Through their leadership programs they accelerate the development of next generation creative leaders at the intersection of business, public and social worlds, and catalyze breakthrough solutions to the world’s societal challenges.
http://www.thnk.org/

The Next Web
The Next Web is a technology focused media company founded in 2006. It manages several initiatives focused on international technology news, business and culture.
http://thenextweb.com
http://thenextweb.com/conference

Event at Impact Hub Amsterdam
What the VONK? Co-creation, sustainable innovation, art and inspiration – An evening of co-creation around sustainable innovation, art and inspiration where the audience thinks along with an entrepreneur’s case.
http://amsterdam.impacthub.net/

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• In Copenhagen, people bike when it’s hot or cold, snowy or rainy, early or late, day- or nighttime. They use the bike for short trips or for hourly commutes. It’s students and CEOs, poeple going to work or to a party, elderly people and kids that bike. You do not need to be a hipster tor feel comfortable in the crowd – everyone does it.
• The bikes you see parked on the streets are mostly older, not-so-fancy ones. Which makes perfect sense: Riding a bike in Copenhagen is no lifestyle statement, it’s a mere commodity. And you would not want your “commodity” get stolen, just because your bike looks fancier then anyone elses.
• The bike lanes are massive, and they are everywhere. And by massive, we mean: Often allowing three people to bike next to each other to enable so called “conversational cycling”. They are seperated from the moving car traffic and the sidewalks, minimizing the conflict potential.
• Whole bridges are being built right now that will be acessible only to cyclists. And there are the so-called cycle highways that build routes from the surrounding regions directly into Copenhagen, where the far distance commuters’ needs have been given the highest priority: You can bike up to 20 km without interruptions.
• “Green waves” are something that helps to minimize interruptions where cyclists have to stop and wait for the green light. It’s actually simple: Coordinate the traffic lights for cyclists so that if they ride at a speed of 20 km/h, they will hit green lights going into the city center in the morning rush hour. The wave is reversed in the afternoon when people drive back home.
• A newer project is the Green Wave detection system. It will detect bicycle users approaching an intersection. If there are more than five of them approaching, the light will stay green up ahead until they passed
• And the newest approach in a pilot project: Little LED lights on the side of the street showing you to slow down or speed up in order to make it to the green light to make your irde even smoother.
• In general, cyclists in Copenhagen feel that the city loves them. When you enter the old part of the city center over a bridge via bike, a sign greets you and tells you how many cyclists have passed it before. Waiting before traffic lights, you can use little footrests that say “Hi, cyclist! Rest your foot here – and thank you for cycling in the city.”
• Taxis have to have bike rests, metro trains have cycle cars.
• In general, the city gives cyclists the feeling that they are their favorite traffic participants. They get green lights faster than car drivers, they have more space and freedom where to go, in winter, the bike path cleaning is prioritized over street cleaning. Which makes biking smooth and comfortable, and driving a car, well – not really advisable.
• Copenhagen has a cycling strategy up to 2025, called “Good, Better, Best” with even more ambitious goals concerning travel time, sense of security, comfort and lifestyle. You can download it here.

Next week: How did Copenhagen become the traffic innovation mekka it is today? We talked to Mikael Colville-Andersen, CEO of Copenhagenize Design Company.

Meanwhile, this is a video about bikng in Copenhagen really worth watching:

The post Cycling City Copenhagen, Part One: What’s different here? appeared first on Innovation Roadtrips.

University of Copenhagen – Department of Media, Cognition and Communication
The department comprises four sections: Education, Film and Media Studies, Philosophy, and Rhetoric, each of which conducts research and offers study programmes at all academic levels. A common characteristic of the four sections is the investigation into the basic conditions for human cognition and communication as they find expression in different institutions and media during changing historical and societal circumstances.
http://mcc.ku.dk/

Copenhagenize Design Company
The fast track to Bicycle Culture 2.0.
They are a multi-disciplinary “go-to team” for cities in all matters relating to bicycle culture, planning, traffic and communications. They approach every job from the human perspective – using design, anthropology, sociology and common sense as their points of departure.
http://copenhagenize.eu/

REPUBLIKKEN
Is a coworking space for creators and entrepreneurs, which offers small creative entrepreneurs, or anyone with a good idea to make it real, the opportunity to meet with clients, create new concepts and develop ideas in comfortable environments.
http://republikken.net/

Copenhagen Capacity
Is the Danish capital city region’s official organisation for investment promotion, business development and cluster growth has the mission to grow business capacity in the Copenhagen region.
http://www.copcap.com/

Copenhagen Food Fair 2015
Is a trade show where visitors can experience a concept that gives them the opportunity for networking and professional inspiration. The concept is based around the five basic tastes as well as seven food-relevant theme areas, among them organic food, tech or innovation.
http://www.copenhagenfoodfair.dk/

Danish Broadcasting Corporation
DR is Denmark ’s oldest and largest electronic media enterprise. The corporation was founded in 1925 as a public service organisation. DR is an independent, licence financed public institution.
http://www.dr.dk/

Copenhagen Institute of Neurocreativity
CINC was founded in 2013, based on two PhD projects investigating the neuroscience of creativity. The mission of the institute is to perform further investigations on the neuroscience of creativity – NeuroCreativity – and to use this knowledge in real world creative processes.
http://www.neurocreativity.dk/

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Our Approach to “Our Jobs” is Changing

First, to clarify: I am not a real fan of the whole “Generation X/Y/Z”- clustering, because I feel that the year you were born in is not really the distinguishing factor when it comes to adapting a new work-life-balance. Setting aside the age issue, I certainly do feel that our approach to “our jobs” is changing. When you look at highly educated, well-situated individuals, flexibility, meaning and passion seem to gain importance over continuity, money and security.

It is, of course, a very specific segment of society, and I would find it rather cynical to expect that someone working at a supermarket cash register or in an industrial plant working on minimum wage should care more about meaning than money. But in this young-ish, well trained, urban group, it is rather striking how many people I talked to about life and innovation in the last months who somehow put passion and meaning over traditional hierarchical careers: Journalists starting organic farms, students travelling the world, startup founders not looking for an exit, professors leaving academia to mentor people with an immigration background, PR-experts following their passion rather then the only money, teachers who work on creating urban spaces, employees deliberately switching to part time jobs because they want to have enough time to follow their other passions, highly respected professionals taking sabbaticals, people in leadership positions leaving legacy companies to start something much smaller from scratch.

The Berlin Momentum

In short: Doing all those things that would lead our caring relatives to ask us: Why do you already leave your job again? Are you really giving up X and Y already? Isn’t that going to be damaging to your career? Will you be able to make a living with this new thing? There is an undeniable generational gap when it comes to the duration of our stays at companies or assignments – I hardly know anyone in their Thirties who thinks that his employer or startup will be the same one he retires with.

And there is another phenomenon aside from people really deciding to change pace or switch careers: Having multiple professional identities and interests at the same time. It’s something I like to call the Berlin momentum, because there, it’s hard to meet anyone who isn’t trying to turn his or her passion into some kind of “project”. Everyone who talks to is doing A, but “really I am working to reinvent B, C and D”. Job and passion and life become one, forming a diverse professional identity that can hardly be distinguished from the “private” person.

The Effect on Creativity and Innovation

So what does this have to do with creativity and innovation? It seems to me that environments that foster this kind of diverse project-based life and work are much more likely to provide a fertile ground for innovation. Some examples: Cities that allow citizens to prototype smart city solutions even though their official “job” is something completely different will benefit form the out-of-the-ordinary input that creates. Innovation hubs that put interdisciplinary collaboration at the core of their work will see that unexpected teams and projects form due to cross pollination. Companies that empower their employees to have a diverse and project-oriented career and give them the freedom to have side projects will do better in terms of change and innovation because they will have engaged and enthusiastic people. Universities that adapt the classic curriculum to make it more diverse and surprising will run little risk of becoming ivory towers .

All of those places make it easier for employees, students, citizens or participants to stay excited and engaged about their work there. And, therefor, they have a better chance to attract highly skilled people who are simply not willing to devote 40 hours a week to a confined environment that will force them to leave their passions at home before they leave for work.

The post The Life-Passion-Project we Used to Call “Work” appeared first on Innovation Roadtrips.

What started out as a little selfmade container next to a skate park now serves as a center for all things hands-on innovation – part of it being a big maker space with laser cutters, 3D-printers, materials and other machines. An old building that had been unused since the Seventies was refurbished in 2007 to create a space that allowed for experimentation and interaction with the community. “We did not come with a fixed plan, we really tried to find out what people wanted us to be”, Oyuki explains. When she is asked to explain their place in the innovation scene, she likes to call it “the human part of innovation” – to help people develop creative confidence and have fun making art and creating projects themselves.

Material in the makespace and the Bike Kitchen. By Innovation Roadtrips

Now, STPLN is a lot of things, and iterating never stops – depending on the interests and wishes from the community. Different physical spaces, courses, events, art happenings and even a coworking space are part of the project. The latter is entirely free to use, and young designers, students and entrepreneurs from the creative community of Malmö gather here to work on projetcs. STPLNs budget comes from the citys culture fund, which allows it to make many of the offerings available for free. There are fees for courses and also for the use of the high maintainance machines, with subscriptions starting around 75 Euros or the option of a clipping card. Some of the major offerings include:

Fabriken – The makerspace with machines and tools for digital production, carpentry and electronics.

The Bike Kitchen – A non-profit community bike shop, where you can fix your own bike or build a new one from recycled frames. The old bikes come from donations, and are used to reassemble or repair broken ones. Everyone is welcome to grab a bike and make it his or her “project”.

The Textildepartementet – A workshop space with screen-printing possibilities, sewing machines and a knitting machine. Here, courses are offered to learn how to work with the machines.

Industrial waste is being reused for creative projects. By Innovation Roadtrips

ÅterSkapa – a creative re-use and “upcycling” arts- and education center for kids. Companies donate their industrial waste that would otherwise be thrown away, and everything is collected to be then used as material for creative work: From socks to IKEA screws  and plastik strings. Schools are using the space for workshops, and once a month, it’s “Drop In Art”-day, when families are invited to come with their kids and create things.

The post STPLN: A Makerspace to Develop Your Creative Confidence appeared first on Innovation Roadtrips.

Some of the university’s focus areas are migration, sustainability, urban studies, new media and technology, making the Högskola an important player in the development of the city. We met with Bo Reimer, Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the School of Arts and Communication, to learn more about the connections between the academic innovation sphere and the world outside of the university. Bo also is the founding director of the MEDEA Collaborative Media Initiative – a center conducting collaborative design and innovation studies in the fields of interaction design, media and communication.

Bo Reimer

One of the main principles behind MEDEA as well as the communication department in general: It does not want to be hidden in a scientific ivory tower, but rather have an impact by collaborating with actors outside academia. An important distinction from other international academic design centers: Neither MEDEA nor the department are funded by the external actors they engage with. Students work together with companies and organizations as well as public institutions to solve problems in the community by social innovation, help develop smart solutions for the public sphere or improve services and products.

“We have learned that interventions in public allow us to have more impact and also make for a much better learning experience for the students”, Bo explains. Researchers at the university often work with the so-called Living Lab approach, where everyday people take part in the design process. Students helped, for example, to enhance the quality of public transportation in the Skane region; explored how personal mobile devices can be used as user interfaces for energy efficiency in existing buildings; or worked with open data to target community needs.

Michael Svedemar, Director of studies & Project Manager at Malmö University in the field of interaction design, explains their approach: “We focus on problem based learning”. Students in their first semester conduct interviews with alumni to learn more about the needs and challenges in the interaction design area. They then create a map with companies and agencies in the area and think about how this map should look like in the future. During the first year, students learn the skills necessary to create prototypes and toolkits, in their second year, companies are involved.

One of the rooms of Medea where students do physical prototyping

The physical space at the department reflects the hands-on approach: A large studio with flexible seating and moveable tables can be used for talks, events and as a maker space. “It took a while to convince the university that we need an ‘unconventional’ space for our research an testing”, Bo remembers.

Industry feedback on the collaborative projects is good, as is Malmö University’s standing as one of the most advanced programs in interaction design. Still, when it comes to the media business, legacy media and publishers are rarely interested in teaming up. “Most projects are not with the big news dinosaurs, but rather with new players”, says Bo.

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An Incubator With a Vibrant Community

Minc has different offerings for people at different stages: Their core element is their competitive and successful incubator program, geared towards startups and entrepreneurs based in the region. In a two-year-program (they are thinking about changing it to one year soon), the selected startups are mentored, supported, monitored and guided to success. They get office space in Minc, too. Quality is key, and the startups in the incubator need to show constant progress and willingness to work on their product or company. If they fail to do so over several months, they are put on hold.

Up to 12 Startups participate in Mincs Incubator programm

If you are not a startup looking for an incubator, but need an office for your project while wanting to be connected to the entrepreneurial community of Malmö, and you are a good fit for the Minc community, you might rent workspace.

Probably the most interesting experiment: If you are working on an idea or a project that is not a startup (yet), you can still be part of the community by joining StartupLabs. You get a spot at one of the communal desks, free WIFI, free coffee, for 6 months. The price: Zero Kronas, zero Euros. That’s how Minc explains this part of their offering: “Sometimes fast wifi, coffee, a network of other entrepreneurs around and a place to sit for a shorter period of time is just what you need to test if your business idea will work. You’ll have the possibility to stay for up to 6 months free of charge to test your business idea at Mincs StartupLabs. At the end of these 6 months you’ll hopefully know if you want to go 100% with your business idea!”

It’s All About Meetings

Why on earth would you do that without earning money with it? We ask Kajsa Bengtsson, one of Mincs co-founders and responsible for all things outreach. “It doesn’t cost that much, and it adds so much to the community”, she explains. Community, and the mingling of creative minds, is key here, and it became even more important throughout the years. Minc and its incubator program exist since 2002. “First, it was all about methods. Now, it’s all about meetings, about being THE hub where innovators meet and connect.”

Kajsa & Maisa have their office right in the middle of the open work space.

At Minc, there have been a lot of learnings over the years. There is, for example, only one coffee machine, located in the communal space. If you want to grab a coffee, you need to mingle and meet other community members. Learning from and supporting each other is one of the success factors here. Every week, on Thursday mornings, new members introduce themselves and their projects in a communal meeting. “Culture and Community are incredibly important to us”, explains Kajsa. “We want to support a sharing culture, and we created the space in a way that enforces meeting and communication. You need to work on that by making use of structure and architecture, it never happens by itself.”

The Importance of Space

Maisa Dabus, responsible for events and meetings, shows us around and explains where meetups, talks and hackathons take place. The rooms are flexible, furniture can be moved around to create bigger spaces if necessary. There are benefits to creating a space from scratch.
The architecture at Minc is open and airy, with many transparent doors and communal spaces, but also smaller office units. It was created to be flexible, not perfect – partly to generate a constant flow of people. “You don’t want it to be too nice here, because you don’t want the startups to get too comfortable here. You want them to move on at some point”, says Kajsa. (It is pretty nice here, though, compared to other coworking spaces.)

Workspaces and communal tables at Minc.

Minc, and Malmö in general, attract more entrepreneurs than ever. Last year, 120 teams applied for the incubator, ten to twelve get chosen each period. Minc is a non profit and financed by the municipality. It wasn’t always easy. In the 80ies and 90ies, Malmö was not really the place to be. When the shipping industry died, it was a sad place with extremely high unemployment rates, no university, no startups, no future. Smart political and entrepreneurial decisions created what is known today as one of the most diverse and fruitful new business hubs in Europe.

Kajsa explains how that influenced Mincs identity: “Our history is our success today. There is only one way from the bottom, and that’s up. When you don’t have a tradition, you can invent new ways of doing things.”

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