This research explores the current practice and future potential of co-creation mechanisms at resource exploration and extraction projects. Co-creation is a term commonly used in business to refer to collaborative development of new value (concepts and solutions) together with stakeholders. In this context, it is used to describe a participatory process through which different groups (the company, host communities and governments) collaborative solve problems and cross-fertilize knowledge assets in the context of mineral exploration and extraction on indigenous lands. The project takes up the challenge of identifying, investigating and developing the potential for enhanced participatory mechanisms, leading to a more workable, responsive and respectful forms of stakeholder engagement. The aim of the project is to identify new spaces for industry innovation, and propose new solutions to stakeholder engagement at mining projects, contributing to successful agreement making and Sustainable Development outcomes for the projects’ host governments and communities. The research seeks to explore potential for a model of engagement which follows transformability of social forms and social innovation, ensuring that the agreement-making at mining projects is founded on actual stakeholder relations and obligations, within which local people are a crucial, internalised resource. The research engages with a wide spectrum of corporate, indigenous and state stakeholders at mining projects in Papua New Guinea (PNG). PNG has exerted an instructive and disproportionate influence on the mining industry - the industry's engagement with the notions of sustainable development and corporate social responsibility is often considered to be the direct consequence of the country’s experiences of 'irresponsible' mining projects such as Panguna mine on the island of Bougainville and Ok Tedi mine in the coutry's Star Mountains region. These experiences brought to the fore discussions about stakeholder roles and responsibilities in the resource extraction sector and forced the governments and mining companies to acknowledge local communities as powerful and significant stakeholders of resource extraction projects. The country’s influence on the ways in which the mining industry approaches and acts upon its responsibilities towards host countries and communities persists, making PNG a valuable and informative setting for this research project.
