YABBA DABBA DOO: Boosting Multidisciplinary Innovation through Design-driven Approach.

Abstract

The current hype that design is central to various kinds of development projects tends to gloss over how demanding collaboration and new knowledge-building is in a multidisciplinary setting. Therefore more empirical studies are needed to investigate in detail projects where a design-driven approach has been used in innovation projects, to evaluate its impact and outcomes. This paper presents a case study on a project where a design-driven method is pushing multidisciplinary innovation. The study is based on participant observation. The data consists of field notes on project workshops, project participants’ feedback and interviews. The findings show that the design-driven approach has enabled a different process flow: it has fostered traditional multidisciplinary knowledge-building towards a more uncertain path. The experimental way of working has caused inconvenience, but it also pushed forward participants’ ways of thinking and working and even created ‘co-design innovation spaces’. Furthermore the processhas fostered participants even towards transdisciplinary knowledge-building.