Success for CTF at Horizon 2020

Seven out of twenty, or 35 percent. That is the number of research projects at Karlstad University that have been approved and receive funding from the Horizon 2020 EU framework program. The average in EU is 11 percent. One of the projects funded by Horizon 2020 will be led by researchers Bo Edvardsson and Bård Tronvoll at CTF.

The Horizon 2020 EU framework program was launched in January 2014. With nearly 80 billion Euro funding the program is the world’s largest program for research and innovation. In the first call, researchers and research teams at Karlstad University contributed a total of 20 research applications to the program. Seven of these have been granted and decisions on further is remaining.

Service Design for Innovation
Researchers at CTF are running one of the granted research projects, Service Design for Innovation, SDIN, with the aim to develop an educational network to promote service design innovation. This will be achieved with two objectives. The first is to develop relations between service design-, and innovation researchers at leading universities in Europe through joint Ph. D projects and educational programs. The second objective is to develop and disseminate theory and method of service design for innovation through applications and case studies in collaboration with companies, as well as workshops and education in the field of design and service innovation.
- With the growing importance of services in the world economy, service innovation is becoming key to achieve future growth and competitiveness. Service design is a growing field that is crucial for service innovation, but not yet a well-established research field or a widespread phenomenon in companies and other organizations, says Professor Bo Edvardsson at CTF.

Along with CTF, the participants in the projects are, the University of Porto, Maastricht University, Lancaster University and Linköping University, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, the company EDP Comercial and Experio Lab at the County Council in Värmland, Sweden.

Learn more about Horizon 2020 at Vinnova’s website.