CERN IdeaSquare Journal of Experimental Innovation - Vol. 5 No. 1 (2021): Special issue: "Experimenting with Challenge-Based Innovation"

Since 2013, CERN IdeaSquare has issued thousands of “licenses to dream” to students, faculties, and stakeholders engaged in Challenge Based Innovation (CBI) inspired programs (CBI-like) together with universities and institutions willing to inspire future change-makers to tackle global challenges.CBI-like programs are educational projects where university students, PhDs, and MBA fellows work in multidisciplinary teams to solve innovation challenges while applying Design Thinking principles (Kurikka et al., 2016). Teaching the design thinking process includes implementing user-centered activities, building prototypes to test hypotheses, collaborating in multidisciplinary teams, and developingproject-based teaching structures (Dym et al., 2005). The CBI-like programs widened the Design Thinking approach by incorporating additional elements such as international collaboration (Jensen et al., 2018), distributed collaboration (Kurikka and Utriainen, 2014), translation of fundamental research into societal applications (Kurikka et al., 2016), open innovation, and collaboration with companies and organizations.The initial motivation to establish IdeaSquare and to create CBI-like programs was to translate fundamental research into societal applications (Kurikka et al., 2016). In CBI-like programs, teams are inspired by technological ideas from instrumentation development or basic research at CERN, one of the world’s leading research centersin particle physics, to creating disruptive innovation for societal impact in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. For this reason, in terms of innovation processes, all the CBI-like programs are designed to lie at the intersection among open science and open innovation. This makes IdeaSquare a platform where scholars experiment and exchange best practices around the fuzzy front-endphase of innovation.Over the years, scholars have used CBI-like programs to experiment with different innovation, teaching, and design methodologies (Dell’Era and Landoni, 2014). This work resulted in 21 publications (7 Journal papers, 14 Conference papers), two reports, and 7+ Master Theses summarised in Table 1.Tab 1.CBI-inspiredprograms literature review.YearPapers2014(Kurikka and Utriainen, 2014)2015(Bortesi, 2015; Buzzaccaro, 2015; Gerstenberg et al., 2015; Heliövaara, 2015; Kriesi et al., 2015; Manetti, 2015; Utriainen, 2015)2016(Hassi et al., 2016; Kalasniemi, 2016; Kriesi et al., 2016; Kurikka et al., 2016)2017(Benvenuti et al., 2017; Kurikka, 2017a, 2017b; Masini, 2017; Mincolelli, 2017; Utriainen and Taajamaa, 2017; Utriainen, 2017)2018(Charosky, Hassi, et al., 2018; Charosky, Leveratto, et al., 2018; Jensen et al., 2018)2019(CERN Ideasquare, 2019; Faria and Fernandes, 2019; Palomäki, 2019; Pisoni et al., 2019)2020(Copy et al., 2020; Gallagher and Savage, 2020; Pisoni et al., 2020; Teo, 2020)This special issue was inspired by these eight years of experimentation, leading to six papers that focus on three main topics: (1) learning from experimenting with CBI (Ojasalo and Kaartti, 2021; Papageorgiou et al., 2021), (2) experimenting with deep tech in innovation processes (Balboni et al., 2021; Thong et al., 2021), and (3) impact and future of CBI experimentations (Colombari et al., 2021; Colombelli et al., 2021).