Innovative organizations and sustainable societies

Our innovation policy research focuses both on the conceptual development of innovation policy as well as on the implementation of the new concepts. We investigate different kinds of innovation policy practices and processes that contribute to the birth and development of innovation and business ecosystems, regional renewal, and wider societal transformation.

Research on management and leadership aims to explore the potential of innovation activities to support individuals in organizations to meet different operating environments. Innovation management identifies situations and ways in which the whole organization and cooperation with other stakeholders can be developed. Innovation management is first and foremost about managing people and thus does not focus solely on product development or technology.

Focus and the desire to improve innovation activities, both at individual and organizational levels, will be the main assets of the organization, also in the future. Enabling interaction and the integration of information flow through different processes is important in order to achieve new levels of activity or innovation in the activities of organizations and various forms of cooperation.

Sociotechnical transitions are complex, multi-level, systemic changes taking place for instance in certain industry or a societal function. Transitions are understood as multi-level changes from one socio-technical system to another, involving co-evolution of technological and societal factors. Our research on sociotechnical transitions focuses, e.g., on the dynamics of digitalisation processes in social and health care services, such as elder care services, and the related societal changes. For instance, technology implementation and diffusion and embedding of innovations are studied.

Practice-based innovation can be defined as innovation processes that are triggered by problem-setting in a practical context, and where the experts of different backgrounds co-create the solution. Research on practice-based innovation focuses on identifying the innovation potential of organizations, networks and ecosystems and developing their innovation capability through various methods (e.g., art-based methods, gamification) or roles (brokerage). Research may focus, for example, on developing an innovation culture that supports creativity and innovativeness, or on how a wide range of expertise, such as user knowledge, can be utilized in multi-actor innovation processes.

Digital services are a vast entity that touches all people and industries. They are an integral part of human life, knowledge, services, and community. At the heart of the research is a user-driven, customer-oriented service experience design and implementation. We have extensively studied user experiences and impact using multidisciplinary methods, e.g., social and health services, educational services as well as development of urban centres and residential areas.

The research on welfare technology focuses on the relationship between human-centred care and technology, at micro, meso and macro levels. Research topics include sociotechnical transition, well-being in digitalizing care work, human impact assessment of technology use (care workers/clients), multi-sectoral service networks and their management, and user-driven innovation processes. Research environments have mainly comprised elderly care, for example care homes and home care.

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Research of meaningful work (MW) and meaningless work (MLW) focuses on the employee experiences of meaningfulness and meaninglessness, the contexts that construct them, and how organisations may support MW. Experiences of MW and MLW are subjective, but at the same time they are constructed by the environment, and relational interaction. Thus, meaningfulness has systemic social and societal dimensions that have relations on, for example, more sustainable working life.

Research of meaningful work extends to eudaimonic wellbeing and questions of good life. As the research focuses on both subjective experiences and their connections, it is interdisciplinary in e.g., theories and methods.