Throughout the RiConfigure project, collaborative innovation has been closely followed, harvesting experience from social experiments, comparative analysis and dialogue events with innovation practitioners and policy makers. With valuable learning from these experiences, the Studies Centre on Science, Communication and Society of the University Pompeu Fabra (CSS-UPF, Spain) and Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG, Austria) have designed and developed three training programmes: Inviting civil society on stage, How to kick-start a collaboration and Tackling grand challenges with collaborative action.
The courses are partially inspired and based on the trainings created by the project “Higher Education Institutions and Responsible Research and Innovation” (HEIRRI) and address actors, managers or representatives from the four sectors of society interested or involved in innovation processes.
Purpose, outcome and content
Building on experience and knowledge, the courses explore a set of aspects that facilitate or hinder collaborative innovations and provide tools, methodologies and strategic guidelines to support the design, implementation and evaluation of quadruple helix collaborations in innovation. Moreover, the courses provide a platform for networking and for creating alliances with people and institutions with a shared interest into a particular societal issue or grand challenge. The content of the programmes differs in depth and perspective, but all focus on the transversal aspects of QHCs and provide a variety of examples and cases gathered in RiConfigure.
To develop the courses, CSS-UPF and LBG used a pedagogical methodology called the 5E’s Instructional model, which represents five sequential stages of a learning cycle: Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend (or Elaborate), and Evaluate. As part of the different stages there are participatory learning approaches, as Inquiry-based and Problem-based methodologies. For instance, in the open online course, the participants adapt and use personal knowledge and experience in the pursuit of solving an innovation problem. In all cases, the courses couple training situations with real-life practical cases to activate the full range of experience, knowledge and capacities.
Course materials
Find the course materials for “Diversifying innovation: Tackling grand challenges with collaborative action” here.
Find the course materials for “Diversifying innovation: How to kick-start a collaboration” here.
Find the course materials for “Diversifying innovation: Inviting civil society on stage” here.