Practice-based and user-driven innovation in small communities
Finnish designer Ulla-Maaria Mutanen (aka The HobbyPrincess) argues that small communities will have to radically change their innovation policy in the near future. This will include the moving from strictly institutional, business-oriented idea of innovation and competence development towards an idea of innovation as practice-based, interactive, and often times semi-professional learning activity.
This was the topic of her talk yesterday during a seminar organized by the Finnish Foundation of Municipal Development and attended by the Finnish President.
Mutanen first discussed this argument in the light of the recent innovation studies, which suggest that an increasing number of innovations emerge currently within the communities of users and semi-professional developers. Second, she introduced learning theories that emphasize the collective, situated, and object-oriented nature of new knowledge creation and capability development. Finally, she discussed the MIT FabLab concept as a concrete example of an organizational arrangement that builds on the idea of a cooperative, practice-based, municipal innovation activity.
(via The Innovation Insider)
