User-driven innovation for Nordic businesses
Ludinno, a hands-on user-driven innovation-project, has provided new concepts, ideas and knowledge for businesses, and a platform for a Nordic research cooperation in the field of merging design and user-driven innovation (UDI) processes. In the project students supported by academics and trained professionals cooperated with businesses to carry out real and user driven business projects.
The project’s main objective was to allow participating companies and consultants, to test, experiment with, and then implement methods for UDI in their business operations. These playful laboratories were called Learning Labs, and used multidisciplinary teams consisting of users, company employees and students.
Five Learning Labs have been conducted, in Karlstad (Sweden), Oslo (Norway), Helsinki (Finland), Linkoping (Sweden) and Aalborg (Denmark). All together, projects in the five learning-labs have engaged 30 companies as primary stakeholders, over 100 students, and innumerable number of users.
The project report describes the setup and results from each of the five Learning-Labs. It also provides practical ideas about how design can be used in UDI-projects, and recommendations for which way public policy in the Nordic countries can support innovation capacities.
