Copenhagen Co’creation has asked Silje Kamille Friis three questions about designers working with co-creation today.

The core of co-creation is innovation and the ability to cooperate across specialist areas. What challenges do you think face designers in terms of cooperation with customers?


Traditionally, most designers have been working to provide results for customers within a particular field of design: graphic design, multi-media design, product design, and so on. The designer is the expert responsible for developing the project and carrying it through. Within the past twenty years we have witnessed an increased reliance on user-driven methods, which provide input to the development process and hopefully improve the quality of the final product, but the designer is still the expert responsible for developing and carrying out the project. Students today learn these methods at most schools of design, and many design bureaux employ anthropologists and sociologists to carry out various surveys and such. But when we start talking about ‘cooperation’ we are indicating the need for a new range of skills. We are asking design bureaux to facilitate externally types of processes which they perhaps have not yet applied internally. This calls for a new kind of explicit knowledge about design processes and methods and an insight into psychological, educational and organisational mechanisms, for example. How to lead and manage cooperation between various areas of expertise? How to design processes? Who is responsible for the end results when untrained staff is at work in the kitchen? GK VanPatter of Humantific in New York uses the metaphor of a baker’s shop: in traditional terms, the designer has been the baker delivering good bread. The customer buys the product and hopefully goes home satisfied. End of story. But what if the customer wants to help develop the dough and bake the bread? That’s a completely new situation. Translated to the world of the design bureaux this means that the business has moved from R+D and production to Training & Development.
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How are we doing in the Danish industries? Do we release the full potential of co-creation today? No, I don’t think so, but I do believe that we are well on track. Our democratic heritage makes it easier for us to break down borders and co-create across public and private sectors and across silos and industries. When talking about Denmark’s competitive advantage, we have the potential to be frontrunners in exploring and benefitting from co-creation. But we have to keep focus and move fast.

(Lisbet Thyge Frandsen was asked to give her take on the question ‘what is the state of the art for the Danish industries working with co-creation and innovation?’ Read the case ‘Grundfos invests in talent’ here)

About Lisbet Thyge Frandsen

I see co-creation as a potential for future growth. Co-creation is an energising process where knowledge disseminates and ideas flow freely. Everybody acknowledges that knowledge sharing is imperative for effective and efficient innovation, but noboby has so far found the holy grail, even though lots and lots of money have been spent over decades on sophisticated databases and it-systems that didn’t work. Why is that? Because knowledge sharing is a human process requiring a purpose for sharing. Co-creation has always a purpose – you are in it together to solve an important task. The process produces engagement, enthusiasm, passion and by the end of the day – drive leading to innovative solutions.

(Lisbet Thyge Frandsen was asked to give her take on the question ‘how do you see co-creation as a potential for future growth?’ Read the case ‘Grundfos invests in talent’ here)

About Lisbet Thyge Frandsen