Sharpen your foresight skills - take help of skills that are unusual for the organization

Do you work in a municipality, region or at a state public authority? Are you thinking about the future, how everything will turn out? In that case, I think you should apply for support from Vinnova in the call for proposals Residens Framsyn!

Vinnova has previously offered support for so-called residency programs. The support has consisted of offering an organization the opportunity to invite and collaborate with a person who has unusual skills for the workplace.

As a municipal employee, for example, I have had the great privilege of working together with the artist and filmmaker Viktor Hertz within the framework of Vinnova the call for proposals Residens X. Viktor participated for several months in the municipality's work and had the opportunity to create a film about innovation in the public sector. For Viktor, it was new to participate on the inside in a municipality's everyday life, and for us it was new to have a filmmaker as part of our team. In addition to being a lot of fun, Viktor's stay in the municipality led to mutual learning and actually a really nice and concrete end results. It became both a film and a number of film-inspired advertising posters for innovation.

As an employee at Stiftelsen Svensk Industridesign, I have also had the great privilege of taking part in the Riksbanken's jubilee fund offer Flexit. The focus of that residency program was partly different. Here, together with a doctoral researcher, we had to apply for funds to have the chosen researcher on site for around two years. This was of course fantastic value creation because we normally did not have access to researchers, who in collaboration with a university college could also research a question relevant to the workplace. Jon Engström blev en del av stiftelsens medarbetargrupp och vi fick både en fin kollega, tillgång till en forskare och ett fint undersökande arbete genomfört.

I en tid med exponentiell utvecklingstakt har man stor nytta av att hitta relevanta sätt att förstå, använda och förhålla sig till det som ligger runt hörnet - bli bättre rustad att leda från framtiden. Nu finns alltså den fina möjligheten för offentliga organisationer att under en tid bjuda in en person med kompetens och erfarenhet inom just framsynsområdet. 

Min uppmaning är: Ta chansen, prata ihop er med lämplig person och sök!

Vill du läsa mer om framsyn så kan du kika in här samt komma på vårt information meeting 12:e september:

• Emerging innovations
• We need to practice reconnaissance from the future