‘Strong Living Labs’ in Higher Education: Balancing Interests in Transdisciplinary Collaboration

Multiple roles in co-creation process yields integrating multiple values, norms, and discourses. Participants bring their own ‘standard to satisfy’ (Hoffmann, Thompson Klein, & Pohl, 2019), what is considered ‘normal’ (Felt et.al. 2016), in problems to tackle, what knowledge or quality norms to apply, what product to deliver (Schikowitz, 2020). When not addressed, these mutual differences potentially ‘obstruct’ collaboration and innovation (Lahsen & Turnhout, 2021) and therefore need to become balanced (Raymond et al., 2010). However, guidelines to do so are limited (Hossain et.al., 2019).

This paper proposes the Strong Living Lab (SLL) instrument to add a meta-layer of communication to collaborative processes, providing each participant explicitly the right and the tools to defend and negotiate their own interests. Therefore, the intersubjectivity that exists between researchers is pragmatically expanded from an ‘epistemology of research’ to a collective ‘epistemology of practice’ (see also Popa et.al., 2015). Or rephrased: the knowledge values underpinning a collective innovation will be known between all participants in a lab by explication and negotiation, also the scientific ones. The underpinning concept of ‘Strong Objectivity’ is derived from Sandra Harding (1992, 1993, 1995), who proposed ‘objectivity’ and ‘neutrality’ to be ‘too weak’ to implicitly included norms in scientific approaches (Lahsen & Turnhout, 2021), leaving knowledge development biased by its scientific frames. Strong Objectivity addresses the values and norms of all participants, creating a more equal playing field.

The proposed principle of Strong Objectivity in SLL resonates highly with the asset of transdisciplinarity to include all relevant perspectives in innovation processes (Gibbons et al., 1994; Nowotny, Scott, & Gibbons, 2001). Voicing of interests in transdisciplinary innovation has been tried before (e.g. Klenk & Meehan, 2017). However, assigning participants to defend their own values’ boundary is new in SLL. The proposed Strong Living Labs instrument will be discussed with the audience.