Creating Innovation to Address Societal Challenges : An analysis of stakeholder collaboration and social experimentation(<SPECIAL REPORT>TOWARD INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT)

Abstract

To tackle with societal challenges, it is of critical importance to promote innovation based on a solid understanding of the structure of problems involving in complex ways various factors including science, technology, economy, and politics from inter-disciplinary perspectives. As the existing models of university-industry-government collaboration tend to focus on narrowly-defined technical issues, a new approach to promoting collaboration with a variety of relevant stakeholders will be effective for integrating relevant knowledge and implementing Social experimentation. A case study on the 2000 Watt Society Basel Pilot Region initiated by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich illustrates the important aspects of stakeholder collaboration, including the creation of future visions based on science, setting of concrete targets, active participation and engagement of various stakeholders, development of new technologies and systems through societal experimentation, effective feedback to decision makers, incorporation into institutional design, and legitimation of innovation in society.