Co-creation of knowledge for innovation in multi-stakeholder projects

Abstract

The European Union (EU) promotes innovation through its research funding programmes that offer opportunities for the co-creation of knowledge involv-ing diverse groups of academics, businesses and public organisations in pro-ject consortia. Although participants may have conflicting interests, during a project, the focus is sharing insights and experiences. Accordingly, this thesis aims to gain an understanding of knowledge co-creation for innovation in funded projects from the viewpoint of multi-stakeholder communication, fo-cusing particularly on communication with and the participation of end-users. It does so by studying the topic from four theoretical perspectives: the co-creation of knowledge, innovation networks, knowledge development processes and the resilience of complex social networks. These function as a framework for the six studies and seven published papers of this thesis. The context of the studies delivering case data consists of eight EU-funded projects aimed at research and innovation. The findings show that common development goals serve as the basis for partners to engage in sharing insights and experiences while developing knowledge for innovation. The perspective of the co-creation of knowledge high-lights the intensive interaction among the many diverse actors who engage in building relationships and trust to enable joint work on a common problem. The perspective of innovation networks highlights that comprehensive solutions may require different roles from actors facilitated by structures and communi-cation expertise. The perspective of knowledge development processes points to evolving input, throughput and output communication when engaging various stakeholders, especially end-users, adapting participation strategies over time. The perspective of resilience of complex social networks emphasises agile project communication to address vulnerabilities through interdependencies. Research and innovation projects bring about complex processes that call for close attention to interactions among a diverse group of stakeholders and the ways that end-user participation takes form in various project phases. This thesis adds to the overall body of knowledge on co-creation in innovation net-works and, in particular, collaboration within EU-funded research and innova-tion project consortia.