Engaging 'People in Transit' : Design of a Collaboration Hub

Abstract

The concept of collaboration has been used as an effective strategy to achieve an intended result by numerous entities across various points of time in history. Beginning from the societal nature of human civilisations and medieval kingdoms to its modern uses in trade and politics, collaboration has shaped the world in its many forms by creating significant impacts in the society. The field of education and innovation are also impacted by the merits of collaboration in developing new knowledge and implementing a wide array of innovative solutions to the benefit of society. In recent years, collaborative activities between universities and industries are regarded as a source of knowledge production and technological advancements by fostering the economic and innovative competitiveness of the involved stakeholders. Industries can benefit from the outcomes generated by scientific research at the universities. These outcomes include the fundamental understanding of a particular phenomenon, in the form of theories or principles that are channelled through scientific publications. Universities can benefit from the opportunity to explore the industrial context to generate knowledge and obtain additional sources of funding for research activities. Thus, the importance of University-Industry (U-I) collaborations is considered relevant for the primary operations of the stakeholders involved. With factors that continually support the collaboration between universities and industries in the present and the foreseeable future, it becomes necessary for the context of collaboration to be explored further. Hence, a real-time collaboration between a university and several industry stakeholders is selected for further research using design thinking methodologies, and its underlying factors and future needs of the stakeholders of the collaboration are identified, and a future context is developed that defines the characteristics of the collaboration in the future. Through the process of understanding the current context of the collaboration, it is understood that there are unfulfilled needs among the stakeholders that lessen the impact on the outcomes of the collaboration activities. To address these unmet needs and also to adapt to the future context of the collaboration, the future context is extrapolated to design future scenarios that can be used as an opportunity to add value to the collaboration by devising a Hub collaboration and evolving its activities across various points in the future. Initially, the collaboration can be improved by creating a knowledge platform that acts as a modified repository for knowledge that is created by the collaborative activities and also as a social network that connects the stakeholders, thereby providing new opportunities for collaboration. Further, the concept of a collaborative laboratory that is functionally connected to other laboratories that offer new expertise and knowledge domain is proposed to develop and execute multi-stakeholder projects involving interdisciplinary research. Following this, an Innovation Transfer office is proposed for the collaboration to integrate the elements of the society into the collaboration thereby developing a system of infrastructures that enables the implementation and the integration of the innovation outcomes into a desirable, viable and feasible systems. These solution concepts form as steps towards a vision for the stakeholders of the collaboration to create gainful impacts on knowledge, business and society by spearheading innovation through collaboration. Thus, a collaboration of this kind is not to be seen merely as a union of stakeholders trying to develop innovation but has the potential to improve people’s lives by providing the best travel experiences without compromising on the operational factors of the collaboration.