Thomas Fundneider

Designing and Enabling Spaces for collaborative knowledge creation and innovation

knowledge creation and innovation. We refer to these artifacts as Enabling Spaces, and they comprise architectural, technological (ICT), social, cognitive, organizational, cultural, as well as emotional dimensions. The paper claims that innovation is a highly challenging social and epistemological process which needs to be facilitated and enabled through supporting (infra-)structures. Our starting point is that innovation can no longer be understood as a mechanistic knowledge creation process. The process of enabling is introduced as an alternative to such traditional approaches of innovation. Enabling is the main design principle that underpins Enabling Spaces and ICT plays an important role in it. These concepts will be illustrated by a case study and concrete examples. The paper culminates in the derivation of a set of design principles, ICT based and otherwise, for Enabling Spaces.

Why space matters for collaborative innovation networks: on designing enabling spaces for collaborative knowledge creation

As opposed to managing or controlling innovation processes, this paper proposes the notion of enabling as a more suitable approach to innovation. As a consequence, the concept of Enabling Spaces is introduced as a space that is designed in such a way that it enables and facilitates processes of collaborative knowledge creation and innovation. In that context a rather broad notion of space is applied: It goes far beyond architectural/physical space by integrating social, cognitive, emotional, organizational, and epistemological dimensions in an interdisciplinary manner. Both the theoretical background and the methodological approach and design process will be presented. Furthermore, we will discuss a case for an Enabling Space which functions as a collaborative innovation network. It will turn out that Enabling Spaces and Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs) share a lot of characteristics, attitudes, and values.

Uncertainty and Opportunity as Drivers for Re-Thinking Management: Future-oriented organizations by Going Beyond a Mechanistic Culture in Organizations

The demands on managing an organization have changed dramatically over the last decades. Besides classical tasks, such as planning or controlling, modern management has to cope with a hyper-complex world; both inside an organization and in relation to its systemic environment. We have to re-think management in the light of managing uncertainty and opportunity. As shown in the following, it is not sufficient to just adapt to changes in the market and environment, but it is necessary to engage in actively creating novelty, new knowledge, and innovations as well as in proactively designing and shaping internal (organizational) and external (e.g. market) niches. In other words, our claim is that it is necessary to re-think management with respect to shifting from managing and controlling to enabling innovation and knowledge creation in order to establish a future-oriented organization.

Organizations shaping a thriving future – On future-oriented innovations and personal transformation

We are facing huge changes and challenges in today´s hypercomplex and high-speed world (e. g., in terms of economy, climate change, new technologies, migration, etc.). How can we understand these changes and how should we deal with them in a sustainable and thriving manner? It will be shown that it is not sufficient to just react to these changes in the sense of “solving problems”: rather, we have to actively shape and innovate our environment(s) according to their own potentials in a future-oriented manner and in such a way that a flourishing future might emerge. Such an approach to profound and proactive change and innovation calls for completely new skills, functionalities, and attitudes. In most cases it will not be an individual who can achieve such changes, but organizations in the sense of sustainable social systems, working environments, and Enabling Spaces pursuing the purpose of bringing about thriving futures. We will show that the concept of organization has changed dramatically over time, how today´s (and tomorrow´s) organizations are characterized, and what their needs as future-oriented organizations are. On the basis of these insights, we will develop guiding principles (and their practical implications) for how to implement such organizations and new working environments that are based on the concept of being an Enabling Space for bringing forth future-oriented, sustainable, thriving, and responsible innovations. These principles comprise radical epistemic openness, deep understanding, designing and co-creating meaningful and desired futures, emergence, enabling, identifying and cultivating potentials, and learning from the future as it emerges. Finally, we will develop an important implication of such a perspective of future-oriented organizations: It turns out that creating innovations can no longer be seen as an “abstract” activity, but that the persons involved in such a process must also go through a transformation (of their thinking, perception, and attitudes).

Büro als Treiber von Wissens- und Innovationsprozessen

Um die Zukunftsfahigkeit eines Unternehmens zu sichern, muss der Arbeitsplatz der Zukunft ein Workspace fur Wissens- und Innovationsarbeiter sein. In diesem Beitrag wird gezeigt, wie Innovation, Wissen, Organisation und Raum beziehungsweise Buro zusammenhangen. Ausgehend von einer Darstellung des Konzeptes der Innovation wird deutlich, dass kognitive Prozesse fur alle Formen von Wissens- und Innovationsprozessen verantwortlich sind und dass diese niemals ohne die sie umgebenden Rahmenbedingungen (Raum, Organisation, soziale Strukturen) verstanden werden konnen. Innovation kann demnach nur ermoglicht und nicht „gemacht“ werden. Notwendig ist es, eben diese „Ermoglicher“ zu verstehen und zu einem ganzheitlichen Organisations- und Raumkonzept fur den Arbeitsplatz der Zukunft zu integrieren. Aus der Darstellung der „Ermoglicher“ werden die Konsequenzen fur die Gestaltung von Workspaces abgeleitet und praktische Implikationen, Handlungsempfehlungen sowie konkrete Beispiele vorgestellt.

Branding as Enabling Knowledge Creation: The Role of Space and Cognition in Branding Processes

This paper introduces the concept of enabling, as opposed to managing or controlling, as a key characteristic and attitude for designing spaces which are supposed to have a ‘branding effect’. In our case we will focus on a very specific notion of branding or branded spaces; namely, spaces that are branded for creating (new) knowledge. It can be seen easily that this is a very generic understanding of brand that can be applied to many domains. In other words, we see a brand not primarily as a product, but as a state of knowledge.