Collaborative thinking for innovative solutions: “Open Innovation” workshop

On March 21, 2024, an inspiring workshop on the topic of “Open Innovation” took place at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences (HSRW). Over 20 committed employees from all four faculties and the library came together to develop creative solutions.

Open innovation: a creative approach to tackling social challenges

The workshop offered participants the opportunity to get to know the open innovation approach based on specific questions and to apply it using creative methods. The focus was on designing an open innovation process from the outset and involving relevant interested parties and participants (known as stakeholders) and their different perspectives. This approach makes it possible to design the process in a needs- and application-oriented way in order to work effectively and collaboratively on solutions to social problems.

Tackling challenges from your own day-to-day work and research

In order to familiarize themselves with the approach, the participants worked on specific challenges from their own everyday work and research in four work phases. Under the motto “One Mission”, the first group dealt with the future of university faculties, while the second group focused on the development of action-oriented, school-based educational programs on the topic of sustainability. The third group was dedicated to the question: How can virtual reality be used to create immersive experiences for people with disabilities – such as Parkinson’s patients?

Creativity and visualization

A highlight of the workshop was the role play, in which the participants put themselves in the shoes of the various stakeholders. To illustrate abstract ideas, processes were then visualized and prototypes created using Lego building blocks. This creative approach enabled the participants to make their ideas tangible and visualize potential solutions.

The workshop took place as part of the SciCultureD project and was moderated by City2Science.