In today’s intricate business landscape, characterised by volatility and uncertainty, organisations encounter numerous external challenges. In this context, the concept of liminality offers a unique perspective on organisational transition, fostering environments conducive to reflection and exploration. Liminal spaces, which often correspond to strategy workshops, provide environments for experimentation and innovation, facilitating the co-creation of solutions. While theoretical exploration of liminality is extensive, practical insights on facilitating liminal workshops are lacking. Human-Centred Design (HCD) has proven effective in facilitating organisational change through co-creation practices. Therefore, in this study we propose the hybridisation of HCD co-creation practices and liminal spaces for facilitating organisational change. © 2024 The Authors

Companies sometimes apply circular strategies envisioning an ideal scenario (Bocken et al., 2023; Dembek et al., 2023). While reality is out of control, context dependent, evolutionary (Ostuzzi, 2017). This creates a gap between what has been designed (ideal) and what really happens (reality). This study aims to find blind spots in specific companies’ cases concerning the real product “dynamics”, “after gate”. What information is out of sight, leading to overlooked sustainability impacts? Three companies, designing and/or producing physical products in Flanders have been involved in a two-day design workshop. Researchers observed and analyzed the resulting outcomes of the observative stage of one of these companies to uncover missing information. The method is inspired by the annotated portfolio technique (Sauerwein, Bakker and Balkenende, 2018). This study confirms that companies lack awareness of what happens “after gate”. In this study, we observed a blind spot that product “dynamics” (products gradual change, contextual changes, and changes in user behavior) are not mapped out, while it is in the nature of products to be changing (Ostuzzi, 2017). Not observing the change consequently means overlooking the sustainability impact of these “dynamics”. Future studies should aim at further discovering the blind spots companies might have on the “after gate” and real lives of their products, and therefore of the impacts created. Furter research could investigate how designers can anticipate the change in product, context, and stakeholder within the circular economy, by for example designing open-ended (Ostuzzi, 2017). © 2024 The Authors

In contemporary society, digital competence has become increasingly important for people in everyday life as well as in working life. Hence, it is vital that today’s higher education contain an appropriate degree of digitization both in terms of content and approaches, something which is particularly important in higher education, where there is a pronounced expectation of what one should be able to handle in terms of digitization when one enters the workplace. Drawing on insights from previous research, this study seeks to explore the integration of digital elements in higher education pedagogy via students’ perceptions of digital integration in their education and evaluate their assessments of teachers’ digital competence. Special attention is given to collaborative learning practices facilitated by digital technologies. The research questions posed to guide the aim are: How do university students perceive the integration of digital elements within their education, and what are their assessments of their teachers’ digital competence in utilizing these technologies? The results show that teachers’ digital competence varies across disciplines which might influence their utilization of digital pedagogical methods and tools. Moreover, both engineering and non-engineering students reported varying levels of usage of digital collaborative learning methods which might reflect discipline-specific preferences and practices in collaborative learning. Also, despite high confidence levels in using digital tools, students exhibited limited awareness of existing digital functionalities. These results seek to inform pedagogical practices, institutional policies, and professional development initiatives to cultivate a digitally proficient educator workforce and have relevance globally for all involved in teaching and learning in higher education.

This article explores the potential of narratives and creative writing as tools for imagining possible futures within the pedagogical framework of futures literacy. We share our experiences of a transdisciplinary pre-study on future mobility situated at the intersection of business model innovation, narrative theory and pedagogy. The pre-study results show that it is difficult not to repeat present and past patterns when anticipating the future. A great challenge is therefore to decolonize the mind when imagining possible futures scenarios. Based on the insights from the pre-study, we propose a futures literacy (FL) workshop as a structured learning process that combines an open-minded imagining of possible futures with the creation of strategic scenarios. Designed for students and practitioners within a transformative learning environment, the proposed FL workshop is process-oriented and has a focus on anticipation and exploration of limitless futures. Furthermore, it is argued that the workshop has the potential for facilitating agency in the process of business model innovation towards innovative organizational value logics. This paper provides hands-on details for a particular way of improving the capacity of students and practitioners for imagining the future differently and pluralistically. A key argument in the paper is that competence in narrative technique is required in designing, performing and analyzing the workshop activities. © 2023, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

Industry 4.0 provides increasing opportunities for manufacturing companies in servitization, which has led to the emergence of digital servitization. Several single case studies have suggested service design as a means to advanced services value proposition design in digital servitization. However, these case studies are context-constrained, while multicase studies investigating the impact of service design on digital servitization remain sparse. In the present study, we examined, over two and a half years, the application of service design for advanced services value proposition design in a multicase study of 10 manufacturers engaged in digital servitization. By applying a research through design method, we studied the impact of service design on the digital servitization process and identified the types of events that shape the advanced services value proposition design. As a result, this research provides further insights into the impact of service design on digital servitization in the manufacturing context and offers new avenues for further research in the field. © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the need to rethink the traditional approach to education in the university engineering curriculum. The paper examines two engineering projects led by university students in Sweden: the design and construction of a solar-powered car taking part in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge and the creation of a business model for the ownership phase of an electric car together with Polestar.  

Design/method – An extensive literature review was conducted. Students were interviewed and surveyed on their impressions of their learning experience in the two projects and student logbooks reviewed. Problem-based learning, the CDIO approach, and the ABCD-procedure are used. Results are compared to theories from the literature.

Results – Project-based learning in real-world settings can increase engineering students’ technical knowledge and improve their technical skills as they solve complex problems or propose solutions to such problems. Such projects also strengthen students’ commitment, self-confidence, and self-esteem as well as promote co-operation and creativity. These are soft skills largely absent from traditional engineering education.  

Originality/value – This research offers a timely perspective on an issue of current interest in engineering education: student-led learning vs. teacher-led learning. The paper also provides two illustrative student-led projects that focus on sustainability and mobility. 

Practical implications – Innovative, student-led learning in the applied engineering curriculum can foster students’ soft skills in ways that teacher-led, lecture-style learning does not.

© 2022, Joakim Tell and Maya Hoveskog.