Anders Brøndum Klein
Co-creation Processes Have Yet to Prove They Work
Collective meaning formation among heterogeneous stakeholders in experimental co-creation processes.
Danish Architecture Center and Copenhagen Business School
2019-2022
In a nutshell, what was the topic of your PhD project?
I investigated how the city’s stakeholders cooperate when solving shared challenges in their city. To do so, I conducted a field experiment in which municipal officials, citizens and stakeholders from the private sector had to work together to solve a problem. My objective was to gain in-depth insight into the dynamics at play when the city’s stakeholders have to work together.
What surprised you most about the process?
I was surprised by how overwhelming it is to dive deep into a subject and trawl through vast amounts of scientific articles. A research topic is an inexhaustible source of information that you never really get to the bottom of. It sounds like a cliché that the more information I read, the less I realized I actually knew. Nonetheless, that was my experience.
What is the most important thing you have learned from writing an Industrial PhD?
I have learned to value criticism. In academia, critiquing others and receiving criticism is a point of honor. Criticism can punch holes in a scientific theory, forcing you to rethink and improve it. It took a little while, but I eventually got used to the jargon and appreciated just how valuable that type of criticism is. By the end, I had even learned to feel genuinely thankful for the criticism.
What impact has your PhD project had on you, personally?
It has been an eye-opening experience to be back in academia. My Industrial PhD project provided an opportunity to slow things down and immerse myself in a relevant issue. I hoped, perhaps naively, that my research could shed light on the issue and make the world a bit easier to understand. But I quickly found that the world opened up and became more complex as my studies progressed. It has been an educational journey that will continue after my project is complete.
What key learnings resulted from your project?
Through my research, I identified three underlying mechanisms at play in co-creation processes that limit the chances of city stakeholders achieving consensus. I call them: Alternative shared sense-making, Strategic polarized sense-making, and Pragmatic separated sense-making. They limit, each in their own way, the stakeholders’ ability to integrate, adapt or combine their ideas with those of others – and ultimately the chances of achieving innovative solutions.
What makes your research relevant?
The world’s cities are facing a pressing challenge: How to promote economic prosperity and social cohesion while at the same achieving environmental sustainability. In response to this complex challenge, a diverse range of new, experimental co-creation processes has cropped up in cities around the world. The aim is for stakeholders from the public, private and civil sectors to work together on the sustainable urban solutions of the future. But in reality, these cross-sectoral co-creation processes have yet to prove that they work. The professional and cultural backgrounds of stakeholders can make it difficult for them to cooperate and form meaning across the sectors. It is therefore relevant for all city stakeholders – theoreticians, practitioners and managers – to understand the subtle processes that can occur when they try to co-create the solutions of the future.
What are the perspectives for your research?
My research findings can help explain why cross-sectoral co-creation processes have yet to prove they work. Research tends to focus on improving urban co-creation processes rather than on conducting in-depth analyses of the processes themselves – and of their consequences. In my research, I have attempted to conduct a critical analysis of these processes, and my findings shed light on the fundamental challenges and risk factors of these processes.