How can interdisciplinary teams collaborate on developing innovative ideas with a particular focus on underlying conditions, such as psychological safety? And how might a chatbot help facilitate the creative process and support group work?

Senior Researcher and Theme Leader at SLATE, Dr. Ingunn Johanne Ness, has participated as an official speaker during “Tjenesteutviklingsdagen”. The event was held on Thursday April 11th at the University of Bergen (UiB), and was opened by the University Director, Tore Tungodden. Dr. Ness held a talk focused on the topic “When the Goal is Innovation: On Creativity and Collaboration in Interdisciplinary Groups”.

The Norwegian word «tjenesteutvikling» describes the development of services, and as a term, it is used in different contexts internally at UiB, in the university sector, and in various industries. An approach to this matter that is often seen at several of the universities in Norway, is «tjenesteutvikling» linked to the development of IT services or work related to major system introductions.

However, at UiB, service development has also been used as an organizational development measure to strengthen interaction across joint administrative departments and faculties, as well as increase the innovation competence of administrative staff. Service development is about services, but also about how the organization delivers these services. It includes improving work processes, collaboration and culture. The aim of “tjenesteutvikling” is to promote a culture and mindset for a user-friendly approach in development.

The goal of the event “Tjenesteutviklingsdagen” was to learn more about this and see how others have worked with the development of ideas and their implementation, and how to achieve creative collaboration and innovation.

As somebody who has conducted multi-level research in both organizations and in schools/higher education institutions since 2008, Dr. Ingunn Johanne Ness was a highly relevant speaker for “Tjenesteutviklingsdagen”. She has investigated different leadership strategies and how technology can support and mediate creative and innovative processes.

During her talk, Dr. Ness presented results from both recent research on innovation leadership and her PhD project, The Room of Opportunity (2016), on how interdisciplinary teams develop innovative ideas with a particular focus on underlying conditions, such as openness, curiosity, and respect, which can lead to trust and psychological safety. Dr. Ness explained that these are crucial ingredients in innovation work. She also argued that in order to build an innovative culture, it is important that all levels in an organization are involved.

In addition, Dr. Ness was invited to join a panel discussion on experiences with creativity and innovation, and how to improve UiB in this regard. On the panel with Dr. Ness were other participants from UiB: Ingve Bergheim, the Head of the Section for Working Environment and Organizational Development at the Division of Human Resources, Torgeir Rinke Bangstad, Senior Adviser at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, and Lisa Lund, Senior Adviser at the Division of Human Resources.

The panelists discussed how others have worked with the development of ideas and their implementation, and how to achieve creative collaboration and innovation.

A Chatbot That Facilitates Group Work

Dr. Ingunn Johanne Ness also talked about a chatbot she is developing, called I-Ness (Inez). Based on her research, Dr. Ness has been involved in training the chatbot with the aim to function as a facilitator of the creative process (Ness, I.J., forthcoming).

Inez is trained using the Room of Opportunity model, and can support group work, go through each phase of it, remind participants of what is important, take on different roles, and summarize the work before a product of the work is presented.

Dr. Ness will present the chatbot Inez during the 4th International Conference of Possibility Studies on July 8th – 12th at Cambridge University, UK. The theme of the conference is “Expanding Conceptions for Research on Possibility”. Also participating from SLATE will be Dr. André Rabello Mestre (PhD Candidate at SLATE) and Dr. Vlad Glaveanu (Professor II at SLATE, and Professor at Dublin City University).