Catalysing Nordic climate action
EIT Climate-KIC’s biannual Nordic Ideation Day brings together and strengthens the Nordic climate action community. Cities, universities, start-ups, students and companies combine their knowledge and experience to find solutions to climate change problems. Hosted by our partner the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) with support from local collaborators, the Ideation Day will split into three parallel tracks. Participants are encouraged to share their ideas beforehand.
EIT Climate-KIC’s Nordic Ideation Day is a biannual event where partners and others are invited to come together and co-create project ideas. This time, with support from NTNU’s Engage Centre for Engaged Education through Entrepreneurship and TrollLabs, EIT Climate-KIC Nordic have refreshed the structure of Ideation Day, moving towards a more open-ended event where ideas are allowed to emerge and develop throughout the day in a truly collaborative fashion. Read more about the structure further below.
Pitching and Awards
The ambition is that we will have a number of good project proposal ideas at the end of the day, which can be pitched before a jury. The very best ones will be awarded from a pot of €150,000 to work further on their project.
The Ideation Day in August will be focused on EIT Climate-KIC’s 12 Impact Goals. Two separate ‘tracks’ will be dedicated to Alternative Protein and Mobility, respectively. The third, ‘general’ track will be dedicated to project ideas responding to the other impact goals. EIT Climate-KIC Nordic is keen to hear from you as soon as possible if there are specific topics or questions you would like to work on, so please submit your ideas when signing up! If something should come to mind at a later stage, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Who is the Nordic Ideation Day for?
The Ideation Day is open to all employees of EIT Climate-KIC partners as well as current and future collaborators. The event is equally geared towards universities, cities and companies, and collaborative projects between these three types of entities are strongly favoured.
We would like to encourage Norwegian parties in particular to participate, in order to get to know EIT Climate-KIC and what it means to be part of this climate action community.
Lastly, this event presents a great opportunity for students and start-ups to get to know the community and explore how their knowledge might be applied in a climate innovation setting.
Why participate?
Participating in the Ideation Day provides an excellent opportunity to get to know the EIT Climate-KIC Nordic community, to get feedback on project ideas, and co-create with other experts and professionals. Last but not least, the prizes awarded at the end of the day enable the winners to work further on their ideas towards implementation and real climate impact.
Organising Partners
Background
Since 2016 EIT Climate-KIC Nordic has hosted biannual Ideation Days, inviting its community to get together and work on innovative project ideas. The track record is impressive, with 70 per cent of awarded projects proceeding to enter our innovation pipeline or receive funding from other sources, accelerating their way towards real climate impact.
We hope that by getting to know each other, we will learn how to work better together, and maximise our climate impact as a community.
The Wayfaring Method
The structure of the Nordic Ideation Day will be aligned with the Wayfarer methodology developed by NTNU’s TrollLabs.
The wayfaring model is based on work by Ingold (2007) and Steinert and Leifer (2012) and is described as an exploratory approach to innovation ideas, as opposed to a planning-based approach. It has since been refined to a methodology for the early concept creation stage of product development projects. The model’s main premise is that the optimal solution to a problem can never be preconceived and targeted, as we do not at this stage have the required empirical evidence to do so. Consequently, the method establishes the need for pragmatic exploration and solution space – a bias towards an action based approach to discover the unknown. The method encompasses four characteristics:
- Probing ideas – exploring opportunities, sometimes simultaneously by means of low-resolution prototypes, in order to fail early and to enable abductive learning.
- Merging multidisciplinarity – including all knowledge domains from the beginning, in order to uncover interdependencies and build interlaced knowledge.
- Speed – planning based on short iteration timeframes, in order to maximize the number of iterations possible.
- Agility – opportunistically choosing the next step and letting the development process shape the outcome, in order to make room for serendipity findings and innovative outcomes.
If you are interested in learning more about this methodology, NTNU and TrollLabs are inviting to a workshop on the topic on 28 August, in relation to Trondheim Playground. Get in touch with Lars Gjølme if you are interested in participating. Read more about the method here.
TrollLabs is a multi-disciplinary research group whose aim is to investigate and improve the process of the early fuzzy front end in innovation projects. With a curious and rapid testing mindset they deal with topics from prototyping tools and user-involvement to hard-core engineering projects.
Funding Eligibility of Resulting Project Ideas
All projects must receive a minimum of 25 per cent co-funding by an EIT Climate-KIC partner.
To unlock the funding awarded to the winning projects, it is necessary that the consortium behind submit a formal proposal to EIT Climate-KIC within two weeks after the Ideation Day. This does not mean that the idea will be re-evaluated, it is rather a formal issue of submitting the correct information to the EIT. For this reason, we will provide a hands-on workshop with guidance as to how this is done the morning after Ideation Day (30 August).