Malin Lindberg is a professor in the Industrial Design program at Luleå University of Technology—Scandinavia’s northernmost technical university, offering research and education in engineering and the natural sciences as well as the humanities, social sciences, and the arts. Her research focuses on how innovative solutions are developed in response to the needs and challenges of organizations and society, across the nonprofit, public, and private sectors.
Her research often employs a participatory research approach, in which stakeholders are actively involved in the development of knowledge, in order to produce results that are useful both theoretically and practically.
“It’s important for research to keep pace with societal developments. When innovative solutions to current societal challenges are developed, academia should be able to provide intellectual support while also drawing on those experiences to further advance theoretical development,” says Malin.
When Luleå University of Technology was founded as a university in the 1970s, its primary purpose was to provide the industrial sector in Norrbotten with engineering research and education. Since then, the university has gradually strengthened its tradition of practice-oriented research in collaboration with industrial companies. This is reflected in the description of the university’s activities on its website: “Our research is conducted in close collaboration with companies such as Bosch, Ericsson, Scania, LKAB, and SKF.”
– In recent years, the expectations of the wider world regarding Luleå University of Technology have changed. In order for its research and education to meet today’s challenges and the needs of society, the university must contribute both technical and social knowledge, in collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders from various industries and sectors.
To address these needs, Malin has actively worked to open up the university to a wider range of stakeholders from the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. This includes nonprofit organizations in the fields of culture, adult education, and rural development; entrepreneurs in the health, tourism, and cultural and creative industries; as well as municipalities and regional authorities.
– These organizations often lack access to university researchers and students and rarely have the resources to fund research initiatives themselves based on their needs and challenges. To lower the barrier to collaboration with the university, innovative meeting spaces and forms of collaboration are needed.
Over the past 15 years, Malin has developed a variety of platforms and formats for broadening collaboration between academia and society. These include a series of knowledge-sharing initiatives where researchers and societal actors jointly address socially relevant themes, such as creative industries, women’s entrepreneurship, gender-equitable regional growth, and social innovation in the workplace. She has also developed various forms of ongoing knowledge support for practical initiatives in different fields. For example, a national knowledge support initiative for projects funded under VINNOVA’s call for proposals “Social Innovation Against Segregation – Funding Innovation Labs for Increased Inclusion,” in collaboration with Södertörn University and Ideell Arena. Another example is a regional knowledge support initiative for the strategic gender equality initiatives led by Region Norrbotten and the municipalities of Norrbotten.
– Thanks to this expanded collaboration, the university’s research has had a greater impact on society, while at the same time enabling us to identify socially relevant research needs at an early stage. For example, social innovation was identified as a field of knowledge in high demand as early as 2006, when we collaborated with Resource Centers for Women in various parts of the country.
This marked the start of a number of research projects and collaborations in the field of social innovation, in partnership with social actors throughout Sweden. One example is “Gender-Driven Social Innovation,” in which gender equality-driven innovation was explored in collaboration with the women’s organizations Winnet, Leia, and Magma. Another example is Social Innovation in Norrbotten, wherelocal and regional examples of social innovation were identified and analyzed in collaboration with, among others, Coompanion, Hela Sverige Ska Leva, Hushållningssällskapet, and Sunderby Folk High School. Yet another example is “Idea-Driven Innovation in the Wake of Societal Challenges,” where innovation in the nonprofit sector was explored in collaboration with the national organizations Sensus Studieförbund, the Church of Sweden, Ideell Arena, Forum, and Överenskommelsen. She has also led a study on how the thousands of projects funded by the European Social Fund in Sweden develop and disseminate social innovations, on behalf of Fortes and the ESF Council’s thematic platform Sustainable Working Life.
– This collaborative knowledge development not only leads to more practically applicable research results, but also to higher-quality results, as they are continuously validated against practical experience in the field being studied. It also fosters innovative formats for knowledge dissemination—such as our easy-to-read series of introductory books, our practical models for developing and supporting social innovations, and our annual conference on social innovation in the north.
Together with innovators and innovation promoters, Malin has developed the “Value of Social Innovation” model. It highlights the social, economic, and environmental value that social innovations create for individuals, organizations, and society. Another model that Malin has developed in collaboration with innovation stakeholders across the country is “Future-Shaping Innovation Support.” It guides innovation promoters in supporting social innovators, where their traditional tools for technical and commercial innovations are often insufficient. Another model is “Place Innovation for Attractive Communities,” which Malin developed in collaboration with, among others, Piteå Science Park, SVID, municipalities, business development agencies, and entrepreneurs in retail, tourism, and other experience-based industries.
– These models and insights challenge the technical and industrial dominance of interpretation in the field of innovation. It is important that theoretical developments regarding innovation draw on experiences from a wide range of social sectors and fields of activity in order to fully understand the driving forces, strategies, and contexts that enable innovations to create new value for people, organizations, and society. It is also important that public support for innovation, in the form of funding and advisory services, benefits a greater diversity of innovators and innovations than has been the case to date.
A concrete outcome of Malin’s research efforts is thus that the empirical foundation for innovation research has been broadened to include a greater diversity of actors and contexts. Another result is that more societal actors have gained access to knowledge and tools to understand and communicate their innovative activities in terms of innovation. Among other things, this has opened up new funding avenues for their activities, for example from the national innovation agency VINNOVA and from Sweden’s regions. A further result is that innovation promoters across the country have gained access to knowledge and tools to support the realization of social innovations. This is in high demand as their activities are increasingly expected to contribute to solving current societal challenges and achieving the global sustainability goals of the 2030 Agenda.