Co-creation, accelerating innovation and rapid prototyping are today’s buzzwords. As science centres, we have certain natural advantages to position ourselves as innovation platforms, facilitating unexpected interactions. This session aims to present and further develop ways in which science centres can act as mediators for idea generation. After a quick presentation of two real life examples (DIT-Heureka and CERN’s IdeaSquare), participants will consider questions such as: should science centres be in this game? What are the benefits for our institutions? Which audiences to co-operate with? What kind of tools can extend our networks to allow wider collaboration?
Facilitator
Session speakers
Business Strategist
Vantaa
Finland
Science centres are places where people come with open mind, willing to learn, experiment and participate. Science centres can bring together different actors of innovation process. In doing so, they will become more relevant to different audience and stakeholder groups. Tuomas will briefly share the set up process of DIT Heureka project and reasoning behind it.
Researcher
CERN
Switzerland
Sharing experiences from his collaboration from the viewpoint of a research institution - how places like CERN can benefit from this kind of collaboration, and how fun it can be for volunteering researchers. In addition, Joona gives a short introduction to how IdeaSquare@CERN is piloting new ways for collaboration and connecting people with a wide range of backgrounds.
Project Manager
Vantaa, Finland
What the innovation platform means in practise? In our DIT Heureka innovation platform, we’ve worked with altogether 17 companies and around 700 students so far. In my part, I will tell what we‘ve learned. For example, how the participants have benefited from the experience and which challenges we’ve faced?