Innovation Day 2018 at Campus Gotland

On 5 December, Uppsala University, Science Park Gotland (SPG) and the research project Sustainable Visits: “Between The Map and The Visitor’s Experience” will be hosting Innovation Day, at which students will have the opportunity to participate in solving critical societal challenges.

For the entire day, we will work in groups with one of the major challenges facing society: sustainability. The purpose of the day is to find new ideas for how to create sustainability regarding a question that is of great significance to Gotland: destination development and cruise tourism. The question that you as a student will be asked during the day is: How can we create sustainable cruise tourism in Visby?

Throughout the day, you will work in cross-disciplinary groups in which each student can contribute his or her particular expertise. The collaboration of people with all manners of expertise facilitates the generation of truly new and creative solutions. You will get to work with real-life challenges from cruise tourism organisations and companies in Visby, with the help of the so-called Design Thinking methodology. You will receive an introduction to this method, and throughout the day you will have guidance. Design Thinking includes, via interviews and observation, understanding people’s perspectives and situations, as well as creating prototypes for the solutions you develop. Design Thinking is a common methodology used by companies and organisations globally. At the end of the day you will present your suggestions to one another.

What´s in it for you?

Do you want to use your expertise to address societal challenges? Are you dedicated and do you want to work with innovation? Do you want to get to know like-minded students, companies and organisations for continued collaboration? Do you want to learn a method for finding creative solutions through cross-disciplinary work? Do you want to develop an understanding of the local community of Gotland and the challenges it faces? Take part in Innovation Day and you will gain all of this:

  • Insight into complex societal challenges and how you with your educational background may contribute to meeting them
  • Practice of interdisciplinary work and of how you may use heterogeneity in a constructive way
  • Understanding of sustainability as  a systematic relation between ecologic, economic and social dimension, and how you may implement sustainability perspectives in practice
  • Understanding of the local community of Gotland, with it's possibilities and challenges
  • Practice of the method Design Thinking, which is used in all businesses in your future worklife
  • Networking both with possible, engaged work-places and like-minded students, for continued collaboration
  • Coffee, lunch.

The Moderator

Ulrika Persson-Fischier is researcher in sustainable tourism and manager of Master's programme in Sustainable Destinaion Development. Ulrika is moderating the Innovation Day.

This event is organised as a collaboration between Campus Gotland and Science Park Gotland (SPG) and the research project Sustainable Visits: "Between The Map and The Visitior's Experience". SPG is tasked with providing support to entrepreneurs with knowledge-intensive, technology-intensive and innovative business ideas. The focus of companies in the incubator is to some extent a reflection of the study programmes at Campus Gotland. Read more about Science Park Gotland.

What is Design thinking?

Design Thinking is a method developed at Stanford university and used globally. Design Thinking is specially suitable to understand and find solutions from point of view of the situation of the end user. Instead of identifiying generic solutions that in the end fist no-one, Design Thinking finds solutions suitable for the specific circumstances of local situations, with its focus on the users´ point of of view.

If you are not already familiar with the method, we suggest you watch the short video below (1.50 min).

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