Experience is a rich resource for knowing and learning. Too much experience can – as we all know - also be the reason for inertia and and ultimate resistance to change.

Experiencing the unusual, however, is a fascinating tool for innovators. How does it feel to leave the beaten path and experiment with new contexts, contents and processes? How does a change in perspective change value propositions? And how does changing practices, processes and platforms allow for fundamentally different forms of value creation?

Successfully leading innovation and cooperation requires distinct tools and techniques. It also requires to challenge long-standing assumptions and to ask questions beyond the normal:

• Why do we generally assume reducing bureaucracy would foster innovation? What is the evidence? Isn’t the opposite equally true?

• Why do we generally assume innovation would require strong leadership? What is the evidence? Isn’t the opposite equally true? 

• Why do we generally assume cooperation and competition are conflicting concepts? Don’t innovation competitions often create wonderful teams? And don’t we experience the strongest competition often among cooperation partners?

We could theoretically discuss these questions or empirically test the hypotheses behind the assumptions. For us, however, the richest source of knowing and learning lies in collaborative projects that aim to explore and experiment in order to experience the unusual.

In the topic areas of

• Leadership
• Innovation and
• Cooperation

you will find vignettes of selected projects that showcase our approach to collaborative knowledge creation. In each of the projects you will identify a diverse set of actors, coming from different arenas like academia, business, consulting or policy making. By joining their forces and devoting their energy to advancing our knowledge in the field of leading innovation and cooperation, they create unique experiences and evidence-based mangagement innovations.