Session Information
SES D 04, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
In large research organizations there is a tendency for new research projects to originate in knowledge silos. Applied research faces the specific challenges of how to consider the needs of the customers, scientific knowledge and societally relevant questions in research projects.
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has traditionally focused on the development and application of technology. With its personnel of 2700 people, VTT provides high-end technology solutions and innovation services for a global market. However, VTT’s interests have recently extended to technology-based services, service business and service innovation research.
Services, both as a business and as a science, are a rapidly growing sector, and they have a remarkable influence on processes and operations in companies and public organizations. Service science is an emerging research interface, in which actors from different disciplines, such as design, business management, social sciences and ICT solutions meet.
In a new line of research, each discipline offers its frameworks, methods and tools, until it becomes like a scientific bandwagon, a new kind of theory-method package, which can be marketed as a solution for users of research and its funders (Fujimura 1988). Research on knowledge creation has referred to “ba” as a shared physical, virtual or mental space for emerging relationships (Nonaka & al. 2006). Spaces or states for sharing ideas, co-mingling and interacting between scientists, market and politics have also been called such as transepistemic arenas (Knorr-Cetina 1982), trading zones (Galison 1997) and agoras (Nowotny & al. 2001).
The importance of more functional and innovative service systems is in the core of service science (Maglio and Spohrer, 2008). Service-dominant logic offers a synthesis and new conceptualization where knowledge and skills constitute the core of service and where service is approached as the outcome of co-creation between the stakeholders involved, most obvious the suppliers and customers (Vargo and Lusch, 2008). Furthermore, everything happens in a context and therefore network activities need developing both in service research and practice (Gummesson, 2008; Barile and Polese, 2010).
We claim that collaboration across the silos, hierarchical levels, disciplines and different actors does not emerge without specific efforts. Cross-disciplinary research networks require processes for initiating learning, synergy and collaboration. We present such a method aiming at co-creation in a multidisciplinary research network. We piloted the process to establish Service Science and Business (SSB) network at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland during 2009. We focus especially on how this interactive and co-creative process promoted the crossing of borders of knowledge silos.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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