Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SEMINAL (Supporting Creative Minds In Urban Planning)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-01-01 do 2024-12-31
'Doing things differently' seems to be on top of our agenda in dealing with the current environmental degradation, economic stagnation, and political gridlock. We have invested a great deal of our resources in accelerating the production and implementation of new and innovative ideas. Frameworks, models and tools are developed to harness opportunities created by social momentum and technological advances: design thinking, living labs, entrepreneurial municipality, and imagination infrastructuring, each promising not just novelty, but practical, actionable solutions.
We have invested a great deal of our resources into these innovation-seeking initiatives. Yet, recent studies suggest that while effective in solving immediate, tangible problems, these models often fail to address deeper, strategic challenges. A review of living labs across Europe reveals a persistent gap: the short-term solutions they generate rarely translate into long-term strategic decision-making for cities. There is little evidence that innovative solutions produced in living labs having impact on strategic decision making in cities.
The limits and challenges of our urban innovation management frameworks are often framed using political economy and institutional design lenses and are often focused on addressing practical concerns such as budget constraints, changing citizen needs, unequal resource distribution, and flawed communication channels. The challenges with urban innovation management are often viewed as unique to the complex phenomenon of cities and addressable through creation of better frameworks, tools and institutional designs.
But aligning innovation efforts with broader strategic goals is a challenge for almost everyone across all fields. It is not unique to urban planning. Mid-sized private companies, large scale public institutions and even individuals struggle to align their innovation efforts with their broader strategic goals. The mounting evidence suggests something deeper at play. without addressing the fundamental, often conceptual, problems in how we frame innovation, merely creating more tools, frameworks, and institutions will have limited impact.
SEMINAL sought to uncover these deeper challenges in innovation management models by examining their core building block, creativity; that is how one come up with new and useful ideas. Are the limitations of urban innovation models purely economic and institutional, or do they stem from something more fundamental, our very capacity to imagine and create for an uncertain, complex future?
We have invested a great deal of our resources into these innovation-seeking initiatives. Yet, recent studies suggest that while effective in solving immediate, tangible problems, these models often fail to address deeper, strategic challenges. A review of living labs across Europe reveals a persistent gap: the short-term solutions they generate rarely translate into long-term strategic decision-making for cities. There is little evidence that innovative solutions produced in living labs having impact on strategic decision making in cities.
The limits and challenges of our urban innovation management frameworks are often framed using political economy and institutional design lenses and are often focused on addressing practical concerns such as budget constraints, changing citizen needs, unequal resource distribution, and flawed communication channels. The challenges with urban innovation management are often viewed as unique to the complex phenomenon of cities and addressable through creation of better frameworks, tools and institutional designs.
But aligning innovation efforts with broader strategic goals is a challenge for almost everyone across all fields. It is not unique to urban planning. Mid-sized private companies, large scale public institutions and even individuals struggle to align their innovation efforts with their broader strategic goals. The mounting evidence suggests something deeper at play. without addressing the fundamental, often conceptual, problems in how we frame innovation, merely creating more tools, frameworks, and institutions will have limited impact.
SEMINAL sought to uncover these deeper challenges in innovation management models by examining their core building block, creativity; that is how one come up with new and useful ideas. Are the limitations of urban innovation models purely economic and institutional, or do they stem from something more fundamental, our very capacity to imagine and create for an uncertain, complex future?
SEMINAL pursuit its goal by:
Mapping and critically reviewing creativity narratives across design, psychology, computer science, and business management. This analysis examined not only how creativity is conceptualized but also the role that studying creativity plays within each field. By situating these narratives in their technological, social, and economic contexts, SEMINAL developed a conceptual framework that fostered interdisciplinary dialogue. The review revealed two dominant perspectives on creativity: one treats creativity as a structured, replicable process accessible to all (engineered creativity), while the other views it as an elusive, understandable but not fully replicable phenomenon that resists full comprehension (experienced creativity).
Examining the implications of different creativity models for technology design (such as creativity and innovation support systems), institutional design (e.g. collective creativity in living labs), and evaluation frameworks for assessing creative ideas. Advocates of engineered creativity break the process into structured steps, assigning tasks to different individuals and emphasizing tools that facilitate collaboration, communication, and structured workshops. In contrast, proponents of experienced creativity see the process as a holistic experience, more often than not, occurring within an individual’s mind. Their focus is on fostering creative agency, helping individuals better understand their own ideas and effectively communicate them to others.
Developing a creativity support tool through iterative design. The design process explored how concepts like creative agency could be embedded into decision support tools. By integrating insights from social cognitive psychology, SEMINAL investigated both the opportunities and challenges of incorporating psychological experiments into decision-support system design. This interdisciplinary approach also led to reflections on alternative ways psychological testing could be adapted for strategic planning tools.
Mapping and critically reviewing creativity narratives across design, psychology, computer science, and business management. This analysis examined not only how creativity is conceptualized but also the role that studying creativity plays within each field. By situating these narratives in their technological, social, and economic contexts, SEMINAL developed a conceptual framework that fostered interdisciplinary dialogue. The review revealed two dominant perspectives on creativity: one treats creativity as a structured, replicable process accessible to all (engineered creativity), while the other views it as an elusive, understandable but not fully replicable phenomenon that resists full comprehension (experienced creativity).
Examining the implications of different creativity models for technology design (such as creativity and innovation support systems), institutional design (e.g. collective creativity in living labs), and evaluation frameworks for assessing creative ideas. Advocates of engineered creativity break the process into structured steps, assigning tasks to different individuals and emphasizing tools that facilitate collaboration, communication, and structured workshops. In contrast, proponents of experienced creativity see the process as a holistic experience, more often than not, occurring within an individual’s mind. Their focus is on fostering creative agency, helping individuals better understand their own ideas and effectively communicate them to others.
Developing a creativity support tool through iterative design. The design process explored how concepts like creative agency could be embedded into decision support tools. By integrating insights from social cognitive psychology, SEMINAL investigated both the opportunities and challenges of incorporating psychological experiments into decision-support system design. This interdisciplinary approach also led to reflections on alternative ways psychological testing could be adapted for strategic planning tools.
By understanding creativity in the context of decision science, SEMINAL’s exploration of creativity provided an interdisciplinary framework, connecting insights from computer science, social cognitive psychology, urban planning and business management. The works in SEMINAL, particularly the collaboration with social cognitive psychologists, shed a light on at-times paradoxical ideals set in our urban innovation frameworks. It revealed some inherent limits we have as humans in thinking creatively about futures. Limits that are not readily addressable through new institutional designs or digital tools.
The conceptual framework developed in SEMINAL provided an alternative lens for understanding the limits of our current models of urban innovation management. It revealed that much of what we think of as institutional limitation or political economic barriers, have to do with our very limits as humans. Given the history of works on creativity in artificial intelligence, the theoretical explorations in SEMINAL also revealed interesting insights into how the design of decision support systems, as extensions of our brain power, relies on understanding our cognitive limits and abilities.
The technical explorations in SEMINAL, revealed some interesting opportunities in the design of decision support systems based on the concept of style. The individuality of the decision maker can very much be accommodated for in providing systems that accommodate for various styles of decision making. In the design of decision support systems, decision makers are often assumed to be following rational approaches; that is, they collect data, analyze it, make insights, create scenarios, evaluate the impact of each scenario and decide on the best way forward.
Decision making style concept however, proved to be one of the understudied concepts in the case of strategic urban planning. Studies in psychology have shown that decision makers do have different styles of decision making that might not be directly co-related to their training or experience. Decision making styles also can determine levels of risk taking, curiosity, and at times hesitancy in taking decisions, all extremely influential on the resources used and the time needed for taking decisions.
SEMINAL was a starting attempt on how the concept of decision making style can be used in design of decision support systems and have raised interesting questions around how it can be operationalized in addressing challenges of innovation in strategic urban planning.
The conceptual framework developed in SEMINAL provided an alternative lens for understanding the limits of our current models of urban innovation management. It revealed that much of what we think of as institutional limitation or political economic barriers, have to do with our very limits as humans. Given the history of works on creativity in artificial intelligence, the theoretical explorations in SEMINAL also revealed interesting insights into how the design of decision support systems, as extensions of our brain power, relies on understanding our cognitive limits and abilities.
The technical explorations in SEMINAL, revealed some interesting opportunities in the design of decision support systems based on the concept of style. The individuality of the decision maker can very much be accommodated for in providing systems that accommodate for various styles of decision making. In the design of decision support systems, decision makers are often assumed to be following rational approaches; that is, they collect data, analyze it, make insights, create scenarios, evaluate the impact of each scenario and decide on the best way forward.
Decision making style concept however, proved to be one of the understudied concepts in the case of strategic urban planning. Studies in psychology have shown that decision makers do have different styles of decision making that might not be directly co-related to their training or experience. Decision making styles also can determine levels of risk taking, curiosity, and at times hesitancy in taking decisions, all extremely influential on the resources used and the time needed for taking decisions.
SEMINAL was a starting attempt on how the concept of decision making style can be used in design of decision support systems and have raised interesting questions around how it can be operationalized in addressing challenges of innovation in strategic urban planning.