Academic design research often fails to contribute to design practice. This dissertation explores how design research collaborations can provide knowledge that design professionals will use in practice. The research shows that design professionals are not addressed as an important audience between the many audiences of collaborative research projects. The research provides insight in the learning process by design professionals in design research collaborations and it identifies opportunities for even more learning. It shows that design professionals can learn about more than designing, but also about application domains or project organization.
The Collaborative Innovation and Entrepreneurship professorship focuses on the collaborative paradigm in economic transformation - the ways diverse organizations in globalvalue chains innovate and act in partnerships to address ecological and social grand challenges. Collaboration with multiple and diverse stakeholders is complex and challenging. Stakeholders have different interests, may compete with each other, or are just not ready to move as fast or as radically as others. Yet, we know that grand challenges are too complex and systemic for any one organization to address alone. Business leaders have an important role to play in transforming economic ecosystems and catalysing change among stakeholders and industry actors. They must move from linear thinking, where sustainability is a market for green or social products, to circular and inclusive thinking, where regeneration of natural ecosystems occurs and economic profits are equally distributed.The Collaborative Innovation and Entrepreneurship professorship aims to contribute knowledge, support organizations, and facilitate learning about collaborative organizational forms and practices - what we call collaborative organizing - for a more sustainable, regenerative and thriving 21st century economic system.
Sociocultural and dialogic theories of education have identified the need to integrate both pedagogical content and language knowledge into teachers’ professional development to promote effective interaction with students about subject content. In this intervention study, a meta-perspective on language was developed to understand how experienced teacher educators (N = 29) conceptualize ongoing language development in professional learning and teaching (referred to as language-developing learning in this study) as part of their pedagogical content knowledge. The data were analysed using content analysis. Language-developing learning was mainly conceived as teacher-oriented professional development. In this process, the language aspect was regarded not only as a tool that applies regulatory and explanatory language but also as a target that connects academic knowledge and interpersonally oriented language. The results increase our awareness of teacher educators’ practical knowledge of academic and interpersonal language in specific disciplinary contexts of teacher professional development in higher education.
In order to achieve much-needed transitions in energy and health, systemic changes are required that are firmly based on the principles of regard for others and community values, while at the same time operating in market conditions. Social entrepreneurship and community entrepreneurship (SCE) hold the promise to catalyze such transitions, as they combine bottom-up social initiatives with a focus on financially viable business models. SCE requires a facilitating ecosystem in order to be able to fully realize its potential. As yet it is unclear in which way the entrepreneurial ecosystem for social and community entrepreneurship facilitates or hinders the flourishing and scaling of such entrepreneurship. It is also unclear how exactly entrepreneurs and stakeholders influence their ecosystem to become more facilitative. This research programme addresses these questions. Conceptually it integrates entrepreneurial ecosystem frameworks with upcoming theories on civic wealth creation, collaborative governance, participative learning and collective action frameworks.This multidisciplinary research project capitalizes on a unique consortium: the Dutch City Deal ‘Impact Ondernemen’. In this collaborative research, we enhance and expand current data collection efforts and adopt a living-lab setting centered on nine local and regional cases for collaborative learning through experimenting with innovative financial and business models. We develop meaningful, participatory design and evaluation methods and state-of-the-art digital tools to increase the effectiveness of impact measurement and management. Educational modules for professionals are developed to boost the abovementioned transition. The project’s learnings on mechanisms and processes can easily be adapted and translated to a broad range of impact areas.
