Forskningsmøde og minikonference med Roberto Verganti

Program for fredag den 24. Marts:

• 9:00 – 9:50: Forskningsmøde med Verganti (Nordkraft, 10. Etage I Play Labs-lokale) - kun for særligt inviterede forskere).
• 10.00 – 12.00: Minikonference om Vergantis nye bog og om Meaning-driven Innovation (åbent for inviterede
• studerende, undervisere og innovationskonsulenter i forelæsningslolalet på 10.etage, Nordkraft)
• 10.00 - 10:45: Professor Roberto Verganti: Overcrowded - Nurturing Meaningful Visions in a World Awash with Ideas (se manchet nedenfor).
• 10.50 - 11.15: Professor Finn Thorbjørn Hansen, Centre for Dialogue and Organization, Aalborg University: Reflections on the link between Interpreters Lab and Wonder Lab – or how the relation between love and wonder might be. (I Open Access bogen: Arkitektur- og designpædagogik i et praksisnært og fænomenologisk perspektiv (2016) diskuterer Finn Thorbjørn Hansen Vergantis begreb om Meaning-driven Innovation og sætter det I relation til Wonder-driven Innovation).
• 11:15-12.00: Dialogue between the two and with audience.

Overcrowded - Nurturing Meaningful Visions in a World Awash with Ideas
Roberto Verganti (MIT Press, 2017)

We live in a world awash with ideas. Thanks to the web and to powerful ideation approaches such as open innovation, design thinking, or crowdsourcing, organizations have today easy access to an unprecedented amount of novel concepts. In this context, what organizations lack is not “one more idea”, but the capability to make sense of an overabundance of opportunities. They need a new meaningful vision, i.e. a new lens and a new map that indicates which direction to go. Without a meaningful vision, organizations tend to select those ideas that better address existing problems, and disregard solutions with higher potential, regardless to the number of ideas generated.

How to create a new meaningful vision that customers love, and that our organization is passionate for? Visions have long been considered as a result of an invisible process occurring in the mind of individuals, mainly top executives. However, Verganti’s research shows that visions can also spur from an organizational process that can be planned and executed. In particular, leveraging on examples from projects conducted by organizations such as Nest Labs, Apple, Yankee Candle, and Philips Healthcare, Verganti will show that this process is significantly different than classic ideation approaches. First, instead of moving from the outside-in, it moves from the inside out: it does not solicit early input form users and other outsiders, but it starts by engaging the internal organization. Second, instead of practicing the art of ideation, it requires to practice the art of criticism: the art that enables us to explicitly question existing assumptions and turn them into new bold interpretation. Taking a critical stance does not imply being negative, but going deeper, searching for contrasts between different perspectives, creating tensions, looking from a new vantage point, reshuffling things to find a new order. The speech describes how to practice the art of criticism through cases and methods, such as working with a sparring partner, or clashing visions within radical circles and with new interpreters.

Ultimately, the speech discusses how to build value in a scenario where ideas are abundant, but novel visions are rare. It’s the next step in the innovation journey: now that organizations have improved their creative capabilities, it’s time to make sense of this wealth of ideas to really capture their potential. www.verganti.it