The innovation platform Future by Lund aims to create new values by combining and integrating new solutions. That sounds good – but why can we not be satisfied with working the way we always have?  

– Society has changed. We have gone from consuming gadgets to buying behaviours, says Peter Kisch. In the past it was a new television set which was important – whereas now the choice is with subscription of channel content. We pay for a consumer behaviour. Value is created in the process where we cooperate and integrate with others. In the Future by Lund network we want to co-create solutions for tomorrow’s society which offers value by mixing many components. Solutions should of course address the global sustainable development goals.

What challenges would this transformation create for organisations and citizens?

– For example, in the municipality we have traditionally divided work between various administrative units within a hierarchical system. By definition this create boundaries – this is mine and this is yours. In tomorrow’s society new behaviours and needs emerge which lie outside the old boundaries. This creates an organisational void in which we as citizens or customers might run into problems. Division of responsibilities between organisations (with sharp boundaries) might result in the fact that we, for example, are sent between different authorities or organisations without having solved our problems. Thus, we need to find ways to move from focusing on organisations in society (division of responsibilities, units boundaries) to organising society (unite, relations, context) in order to find relevant solutions for tomorrow.

How can actors connect to Future by Lund create new contexts and new results?

– Many of the solutions which will be delivered in the future, when talking about the city and urban development, will be found in the space between organisations. No longer does a single player or entity have sole responsibility, such as when the municipality used to take care of everything e.g. schools, electricity, heating and water. Now everything is more fragmented and it places new demands on how we organise ourselves and how we do it together. This demonstrates the need for an innovation platform – in order to merge and create new context and solutions.

Future by Lund has a working model with a blue, green and yellow zone. How is this useful?

– The model is like a map. We can orient ourselves with what we are doing and who is where. In the blue zone one can decide everything and have full internal control. This leads to concrete results in the short-term and is a clearly role-driven organisation within a traditional management oriented set-up. Beyond this is the green zone, which exists in the space between organisations. This requires collaboration and dialogue with a shared mandate and a timeframe of 1-2 years. Yet even further out in the yellow zone the mandate is often unclear and the deliverables are perhaps 3-5 years into the future. In this zone one needs to stimulate, facilitate, test and monitor global trends in order to produce knowledge and understanding. Many in Future by Lund’s network act in the green and yellow zone.

How does Future by Lund make the job easier in the yellow zone?

– We initiate and run different test beds and test projects where we practice and train our project partners to drive innovation together in order to produce concrete results. We work to facilitate collaboration by finding seed funding and by involving interested technological companies, bringing people together and by initialising, assembling and piecing together a consortium. We want a lot of chat – and a lot of workshop!  

Do you intend to create the solutions of the next generation together with others? Contact Peter Kisch or Katarina Scott.

Translation: Ben Dohrmann