Christopher TUCCI, EPFL, Switzerland
Sebastian PFOTENHAUER, Technical University Munich, 
Brice LAURENT, Centre de sociologie de l’innovation, Mines ParisTech
Gianluigi VISCUSI, EPFL, Switzerland

Track's Contacts :

christopher.tucci[at]epfl.ch
sebastian.pfotenhauer[at]tum.de
brice.laurent[at]mines-paristech.fr
gianluigi.viscusi[at]epfl.ch

Local social, cultural and institutional differences are critical for innovation and co-creation is the practice aiming to gather diverse actors in a joint innovation activity to have mutual benefits. Furthermore, mainstreaming co-creation means scaling-up co-creation to other places. Consequently, when a diversity of stakeholders innovates together, it is essential to address questions, such as:

•    How is the innovation process organized?
•    Do specific agencies have to be involved for the technical approval process?
•    Which product design is acceptable for the producers and potential users?

Although these questions are highly context-dependent, innovators and companies count on scaling up to wider markets and are willing to learn from successful co-creation practices. As to this issue, test beds and living labs (TB/LL) have emerged as a prominent approach to foster innovation across geographical regions and technical domains, including, for example, energy, transportation, smart cities, and robotics. TB/LL represent a co-creative, experimental approach to innovation policy that aims at once to test, demonstrate, and advance new sociotechnical arrangements in a model environment under real-world conditions.

Taking these issues into account the track aims to collect contributions from scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds (e.g. management, economics, anthropology, law, sociology, information science, organization studies, political science) interested in the role of co-creation in innovation. Thus, special attention will be dedicated but not limited to the following areas :

•    Co-creation instruments for research and innovation
•    Co-creation in specific domains, such as robotics, urban energy, and autonomous cars
•    Co-creation and innovation systems
•    Co-creation and responsible innovation
•    Governance systems for co-creation
•    Open innovation and co-creation
•    Organizational impacts of co-creation processes
•    Situated co-creation and socially robust scaling
•    Translational research and co-creation
•    Valuation and co-creation

The Track dissemination and organization will be supported by the SCALINGS project, which has received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 788359.