Posts tagged enabling spaces

Aca-article: Spaces enabling gamechanging and sustaining innovations - Why space matters for knowledge creation and innovation

This article is about how radical and sustainable innovation can be brought about. It also gives an overview of the concept of Enabling Spaces and of the design process leading to such spaces.

Authors: Markus F. Peschl, University of Vienna, Austria; Thomas Fundneider, tf consulting & theLivingCore, Vienna, Austria

Published in Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social Change.

Full access to article here.

ABSTRACT - Innovation has become one of the key drivers for growth. However, how do we bring about innovation which is both radical and respects the limits of the world? One of our key assumptions is that we have to take into consideration the epistemological and cognitive processes leading to (radically) new knowledge first. We propose an approach that establishes spaces enabling such processes of knowledge creation – we refer to them as Enabling Spaces.

This article is concerned with the question of how innovation, and more specifically, profound, radical and sustainable innovation can be brought about in a more qualitative manner. What are the necessary concepts and attitudes which facilitate the processes of innovation? The notion of enabling as opposed to ‘managing’ or controlling innovation is to be developed. Furthermore the concept of  situated/extended cognition is discussed as a key ingredient for Enabling Spaces.

The second part gives an overview of the concept of Enabling Spaces and of the design process leading to such spaces. Finally the concrete case of a knowledgecreating university is discussed.