Exploring a Co-Creative Problem Solving Toolbox in the Context of Norwegian High-Tech Industry

Norwegian high-tech industries face a rapidly changing market need. Staying ahead of competitors and developing significant innovative solutions are essential for business value. Systems engineering has proven to be an effective approach for developing technical (hard) systems. People, organizations, and technical functionality contribute to an increasing complexity in today's high-tech systems. This makes the traditional systems engineering approach insufficient for innovation in a socio-technical context. This article looks toward systems architecting, systems oriented design, and participatory design for collaborative and creative ways of working to support systems engineers in developing significant innovations. We explore a rich toolbox and the outline of a new methodology for such co-creative problem solving. First, we identify industry needs for the new methodology and derive success criteria for the toolbox embodied in the new methodology. Through ten industry cases within Norwegian high-tech industries, we analyze and discuss the toolbox composed of methods and tools for early exploration, validation, and knowledge transfer in the concept phase. Finally, we provide examples on how the toolbox supports the industry needs and outline the new methodology.