The EU-funded project Service Design for Innovation, SDIN, aims to build a research platform in service design and innovation through a Europeean training network for early stage reseachers. The project started in January 2015 and is now at the half-way point.
During the first two years the project has achieved the expected results, and the network is well integrated and communicates regularly. The successful collaboration between SDIN beneficiaries is also reflected by several combined research efforts that have flourished between them, and several joint conference presentations and working papers are a visible result of these combined research efforts. The project has also established a website and is visible in social networks.
– Focus for the next two years will be on publications in international journals. Right now we are planning for secondments for the Ph. D students, ways to enable them to work in new environments, companies or universities, to gain new experiences and make new contacts, says Maria Åkesson, Ph. D at CTF and new project leader.
Nine Ph. D students around Europe are active in the project. Sebastian Dehling is placed at CTF. Josina Vink is placed at Experio Lab at the County Council of Värmland but works closely with CTF.
Sebastian Dehling´s research is focused on exploring and assessing the usefulness of different stakeholder engagement different practices. Starting this spring semester he will undertake a secondment at County Council Värmland to learn from their in-house service designers of Experio Lab what practices they apply to facilitate multi-stakeholder projects.
Spring meeting in Cologne
In early January, researchers and Ph. D students gathered in Cologne for a spring meeting. The meeting lasted five days and included a graduate course, internal network meetings and an open seminar where current research was presented. One of the days was also devoted to the project’s mid-term evaluation in which external inspectors from the EU participated.
– The next network meeting takes place in connection to the QUIS symposium held in Porto in June. In January 2018 we will arrange a network meeting here in Karlstad, and we are planning to organize a conference in connection to it, says Maria Åkesson.
About SDIN
In the spring of 2015, Karlstad University was granted funding from the EU research program Horizon 2020. One of the approved projects was SDIN, Service Design for Innovation, which aims to develop relationships between service design and innovation researchers at leading European Universities. SDIN is a collaboration between CTF, the University of Porto, Maastricht University, and Linköping University, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, and the company EDP Comercial and Experio Lab at the County Council of Värmland. For more information, please visit servicedesignforinnovation.eu.
