In an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world, traditional disciplinary approaches to the framing and resolution of social and economic problems deliver ever-diminishing returns. Discussions abound, therefore, about how best to educate and prepare graduates for the fresh challenges of the 21st century.
Knowledge Alliances between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and enterprises which aim to foster innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity, employability, knowledge exchange and/or multidisciplinary teaching and learning are therefore becoming increasingly necessary and relevant. The challenge is to determine what we should teach in the future and how it should be taught. The changing nature of contemporary society highlights that social issues are often highly complex and multifaceted.
The aim of this Action is to demonstrate, through the adoption of Multi-Disciplinary Innovation (MDI) methods, how we can respond to social problems with a design-led approach which has a problem-oriented ethos, supporting positive social change and the development of international public policy discourse. It will be achieved through the establishment of a Pan-European Public Sector Innovation (ePSI) lab. It will prepare students for roles in employment by integrating education programmes into the lab’s operations and it will support agencies that have a role in responding to and developing public policy.
Project funding:
EU COST Programme
Project results:
Socio-economic impact. The development of design-led problem-orientated research focusing on contemporary social challenges will support the development of the public sector, the private sector and civil society, each in its own way, (re)discovering new opportunities to promote, simultaneously, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and the pursuit of the public good that this COST Action will produce. The Action aims to impact positively strategy and the practice of policy-making in those areas where the social challenges are being addressed. There is currently an existing network between the core team of researchers and policymakers and this network will be accessible to other Action members to further test those approaches. The long-term impact will be in producing a comprehensive evidence base of exemplary multi-disciplinary, design-led co-creative approaches to solving societal challenges which has engaged all quadruple-helix stakeholders and will be of value to the respective academic, policy, business and communities and ultimately citizens.
Academic impact will be evidenced through the production of journal articles in highly ranked peer-reviewed publications and research tools, working groups (WG), academic conferences, Training Schools, and STSM in research centres. An interdisciplinary research network of scientists who are researching social innovations and social enterprise from various discipline fields will be strengthened which will prioritise the support and development of early career scholars and PhD students. Researchers participating in the Action will benefit from the mutual exchange of knowledge and research skills, specifically in research practices of other
disciplines in the field. A long-term benefit of the Action will be an increased number of scientists in different disciplines active in the field of social innovation working in a design-led approach to social problems. Innovative methodologies throughout the action will combine comparative qualitative methods and comparative mixed methods.
Economic and societal impact through working together (across geographical as well as policy and academic boundaries) it aims to develop research and tools that support innovative problem-orientated responses to contemporary social issues. Adopting a multi-disciplinary, international approach it aims to produce outputs that have social and economic benefits to the lives of individuals and the economy, organizations and/or nations. A critical test for this Action is to evaluate the cost savings of the interventions using the available national data sets for cost benefit analysis to calculate the Social Returns.
Researchers from ITC Countries. This COST Action strengthens the COST Inclusiveness Policy by developing sustainable relationships and working practices that foster greater access and integration of researchers from less research-intensive countries. Using this design-led, problem-orientated approach it will also develop relationships which are less traditional and will produce innovative knowledge and methodologies for all COST members, having real value to academic, and policy-orientated communities.
Period of project implementation: 2019-10-03 - 2024-04-02
Project partners: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Suomija, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Malta, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, United Kingdom, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Latvia, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Czech Republic
