Creating an Innovative Attitude at Work
Year: 2012
Editor: Lyndon Buck, Geert Frateur, William Ion, Chris McMahon, Chris Baelus, Guido De Grande, Stijn Verwulgen
Author: Eriksen, Kaare; Tollestrup, Christian
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Aalborg University, Denmark
Section: New Design Education Paradigms
Page(s): 375-380
ISBN: 978-1-904670-36-0
Abstract
This paper focuses on the introduction of creative methods and approaches to the staff in a major public service institution in collaboration with design researchers and design students. The project aim was to enhance creativity and innovation with focus on the future well-being for the staff and the relevant stakeholders as well as to teach the participants how to create new products and solutions for hospital environments in general. Several experiments are made these years to define and integrate the needs of the users or even to involve the users and stakeholders deeper in more stages in the design process. In the MIPS-project (MIPS = Employee-Driven Innovation in the Health Care sector) a multidisciplinary group of employees at Aalborg Hospital were trained in handling the design process themselves. This should make it possible to promote employee-driven innovation based upon the daily observations or tacit knowledge among colleagues in a complex organization. The set-up of the project was organized as a series of workshops also involving design students, and the paper outlines the difficulties and results from the initiative. The project showed that designerly methods can be very effective in creating the participants’ positive innovative approach, but also that it is a challenge to translate such methods and vocabulary, and more trained designerly assistance might need to be applied in the process.
Keywords: Employee-driven innovation, user-driven innovation, systematic ideation, hospital design, design and health care, tacit knowledge