Public participation in mission-oriented innovation projects

Mission-oriented innovation policy is currently gaining renewed interest as an approach for addressing societal challenges. One of the promises is that missions can mobilise and align diverse stakeholders around a shared goal. Recent literature underlines the importance of public participation (e.g. municipalities and civil society organisations...

Middle-segment housing by implementing passive land policyMiddle-policy: An exploratory case study on how middle-segment housing is developed by using land-use instruments in wicked problems and with low municipal landownership

The Dutch housing market has a shortage and especially a shortage in its middle-segment between, low-income, social housing, and higher-income, homeownership. Because of this, municipalities have become more active in creating middle-segment housing, but most Dutch municipalities have few land positions which has urged them to create middle...

Teacher strategies that foster students’ boundary-crossing expertise when addressing problems with wicked tendencies

Professionals are increasingly involved in attempts to under- stand and address problems with wicked tendencies, which require crossing boundaries between disciplines, organisa- tions and stakeholder perspectives. This multiple-case study investigated six higher professional education courses in order to develop better understanding of how...

Bewijsvoering van Duurzaamheid in Architectuur: Een Wicked Problem

Sustainability is trending. With large numbers, architects are part of the movement that is in search of a more sustainable world. An important part of this search is the urge to prove sustainability. Currently available methods to prove sustainability in architecture play into this demand. However, practice shows that these methods are not...

Higher Education and Wicked Problems: Students Engaging with Complexity and Uncertainty in Sustainability Transitions

The challenges we collectively face, such as climate change, are characterized by more complexity, interdependence, and dynamism than is common for educational practice. This presents a challenge for (university) education. These sustainability transition challenges are often described as wicked or VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and...

A Healthy Metaphor?: The North Sea Consultation and the Power of Words

The North Sea Consultation was set up to resolve conflicting claims for space in the North Sea. In 2020, this consultation process resulted in the North Sea Agreement, which was supported by the Dutch Parliament and cabinet as a long-term policy; however, the fishing sector felt excluded, left the consultation process, and does not support the...

Wicked problems in a technological world

In this article, the morality in the “wickedness” of design problems as wicked problems is explored. I will use for that purpose the characteristics of wicked problems as identified by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber. These characteristics suggest interdisciplinary thinking for solving such problems. An awareness of the wicked nature of design...

Revisiting Rittel and Webber's Dilemmas: Designerly Thinking Against the Background of New Societal Distrust

In this article, we posit designerly thinking as a family of design approaches that some believe are able to effectively respond to wicked problems. We will scrutinize this premise by revisiting Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber's 1973 article in which the notion of wicked problems was originally introduced. In it, Rittel and Webber note the...

The Wickedness of Rittel and Webber’s Dilemmas

Rittel and Webber connected their notion of “wicked problems” to three fundamental planning dilemmas. Many approaches within public administration theory have explicitly addressed wicked problems yet hardly paid attention to the dilemmas. We revisit the planning dilemmas to find out their potential relevance for current administration theory...

Multiple co-existing ontologies in the paraná delta: An action-research approach to the case of the Paraná Delta, Argentina

Adaptive delta management (ADM) deals with making flexible and robust plans in the uncertain environment of deltas. ADM receives increasing attention to be applied globally, including in Argentina. In this research, I have studied how modelling can assist ADM in Argentina through action research by applying various participatory methods like...

Production of competing water knowledge in the face of water crises: Revisiting the IWRM success story of the Lerma-Chapala Basin, Mexico

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is an approach that aims to change conventional water management. International agencies and organizations have promoted IWRM across the globe. The Lerma-Chapala Basin in Mexico is an archetypal case study on basin closure, where IWRM principles were said to have been applied in the early 2000s to...

''Speaking: Part I - Speaking architecture / Part II - Speaking architecture / Part III - Speaking through form: Three-part graduation project in Architecture and Science Communication

This series – “Speaking – is part of a graduation project for a double degree in Architecture and Science Communication at the Delft University of Technology. The overall aim of this project was to design a form language that can be used in complex problem-solving processes in the field of science communication. The graduation project consists...

Analysing refugee camp management from a network perspective: How network management can enhance the transition of refugee camp Za'atari

The aim of this thesis is to identify the obstacles for the transition of refugee camps and to identify whether network management can be a way to deal with this. The combiniation of the long-term existence of refugee camps, its negative impact on individuals, the inevitable urbanization and the lack of policy implementation of the UN refugee...

Project management uncertainty, wicked problems and decision making: Project managers in practice solving wicked problems

This thesis explores project managers in practice solving wicked problems. The research are reached by conducting case study researcher focussing on three cases. Out of the research can be concluded that project managers solve wicked problems as it is a technical problem by using the rational decision model. However, during solving they notice...

Robust Decision Support Methods: A Comparative Analysis

Methods for decision support in the context of deep uncertainty have been gaining interest in the context of complex and adaptive problems that are characterized by “tipping point” behaviours. Unlike a traditional “predict-then-act” methods, which determine policies based on specific predictions of future behaviour, these decision support...

The wicked problem of commercial value creation in open data ecosystems: Policy guidelines for governments

Creating commercial value through open data use in open data ecosystems is a wicked problem. This problem is characterized by a lack of specific formulation, complex interactions amongst a variety of stakeholders, a lack of criteria determining a satisfactory solution, including what constitutes `value', and uncertain outcomes. Wicked problems...

How Design Thinking can enrich the strategy development process in current organizational context

The organizational context of firms is continuously subjective to change as, for example, new regulations, ever changing market trends (e.g. the shift from ownership to sharing as with the music streaming service of Spotify) and disruptive innovations in technology (e.g. 3D-printing, the ‘cloud’ or ‘the internet of things’) relentlessly alter...

Design a Way Out of Wickedness: A case study on innovation and natural capitalism for green growth at the Ministry of Economic Affairs

There is a growing understanding that sustainable development is only achievable through integration into our economic systems. Sustainability does not have to be traded off against profit or business success, but sustainability can be a driver for business, this is called green growth. The Ministry of Economic Affairs aims to promote green...