This week, I attended the AMS conference on Urban Challenges & Innovation titled “Connecting the Dots, Closing the Loops.” Across contributions from scientists, policymakers, and industry, one insight stood out: innovation rarely fails due to a lack of ideas or technology – but because of how we navigate complexity, uncertainty, and collaboration in practice.
The work I presented addresses exactly this gap. Together with Pascal Frank, I developed ARISE (Approaching Real-life Issues through Self-inquiry) – an approach that strengthens innovation by working directly with real situations from daily practice
Our flyer –
What does this mean in practice?
In a series of 3–4 sessions, we support professionals in working with the real, dynamic, and interpersonal situations they encounter in their work. Using structured formats and simple tools, participants engage with their lived experience, make underlying assumptions visible, and experiment with how they could respond differently in concrete situations.
This leads to practical shifts. Participants develop ways of working that they can directly integrate into their projects – for example:
- creating space for short check-ins or check-outs in meetings,
- putting collaboration itself on the agenda (e.g. openly addressing tensions, expectations, or uncertainties),
- or designing simple formats – such as structured “speed-dating” at the start of a project – to strengthen relationships and build shared understanding across stakeholders.
Rather than offering fixed solutions, ARISE creates structured conditions to:
- work with real challenges as they unfold,
- translate insights into small, testable actions,
- and build the capacity to process and navigate complexity, collaboratively.
In this way, innovation becomes not just something we design – but something we learn to enact together, across disciplines, organisations, and perspectives.
On May 12, we are organising a two-hour workshop to raise awareness of this skillset and the important role of ‘mediators of innovation’ in the wider innovation ecosystem –
