The EU-funded GoNano project enables co-creation between citizens, researchers, industry, civil society organisations and policy makers across Europe to align future nanotechnologies with societal needs and concerns. Co-creation is a widely used, but loosely defined term that has been applied in different contexts. Co-creation can be understood as the collaborative development of new value. It is a form of collaborative innovation: ideas are shared and improved together.
GoNano has defined co-creation as the emergence of productive collaborations between researchers and societal stakeholders over longer timeframes, focusing on specific nanotechnology research lines, leading to tangible outcomes such as a new research avenue, proposal, product or prototype. GoNano developed pilot projects in the areas of food, health and energy to explore how researchers can work with publics and professional stakeholders to create novel suggestions for future nanotechnology products.
Toolkit: Involving societal stakeholders as a source of creativity in research
GoNano developed a Co-creation toolkit in which we would like to share our lessons learned. We hope it will support researchers and engineers who would like to engage with citizens and societal stakeholders as a source of creative thinking. The toolkit offers a six-step approach to help researchers and engineers define their goal, identify the relevant stakeholders and design, implement and reflect on the co-creation process. GoNano hopes to inspire researchers and engineers to continue this journey, working together with citizens and societal stakeholders to create value in new settings, with new topics and with creative outcomes.
You can download all the material in the left sidebar:
– Brochure with all information for a co-creation workshop.
– PowerPoint presentation to support the process
– Two posters (extended and simpel version) to print for your event, showing the six-step approach to co-creation
– Practical and strategic canvases to support step 3: Start planning
– Toolkits from other projects and organizations to support step 4: Organize your co-creation event
– YouTube clips with an impression of the GoNano workshop to support step 4: Organizing your co-creation event
– Questionnaire canvas used by GoNano to support step 5: Evaluation and reflection on the process
The GoNano approach
GoNano believes that research and innovation can benefit from being more open to societal needs and concerns. Over the course of three years (2017-2020), GoNano enabled collaborative development (co-creation) in three nanotechnology application areas: food, energy and health. We first consulted citizens about their wishes, needs and concerns regarding future nanotechnology applications. This was used as input for the first and second stakeholder workshops, which aimed to stimulate citizens, civil society organisations, industry, researchers and policy makers across Europe to co-create research aims and think about concrete (product) suggestions for future nanotechnologies. Read more about the GoNano approach and results.