A creative spark to the maritime industry - the IRM-tool project publicaton 2019

This publication has been published in Novias series R: https://www.novia.fi/forskning/novias-publikationsserie/serie-r-rapporter

Preface

We are on the edge in several ways. Climate change poses severe threats, and fast digitalization provides new solutions. Our culture changes, and our roles at work change. As robots are better than humans at many things, the skills to create by hand, think creatively and analytically, as well as work as part of multidisciplinary teams becomes more important in the future. It is easy to presume that soon comes a day when artists and creative experts are needed as consultants for various projects as members of organisations. Combining knowledge in a new way is the key to next generation innovations. But how can an engineer co-create with an artist, and how do artists adjust to industrial fields?

At least the participants of the IRM-Tool project, both in maritime and creative fields, think that there should be more creative starting points for the R&D projects. This publication brings forth implementation and results of the innovation project that explored preconditions and obstacles of maritime innovation and combined creative knowledge with maritime challenges to boost problem-solving of the companies.

The IRM-Tool project was implemented during 2017-2019. It was coordinated by the Aboa Mare Maritime Academy of the Novia University of Applied Sciences. Other partners were the Turku University of Applied Sciences and Åbo Akademi University. Meyer Turku acted as a strategicpartner. Project was co-financed by the European Social Fund. The IRM-Tool project has been innovative and agile project that has been able to make a lot of initiatives, boost new co-operation and even create new jobs. The project has made the innovation more accessible for companies and experts despite of the company size, field of expertise, and prior experience of innovation work. Innovation knowledge within both maritime and creative fields has increased. In this publication, the reader is first introduced to the IRM-Tool project journey to provide the idea of the whole.

Then, Design Thinking requires its own chapter as it has been the baseline for project implementation. Following, the reader gets an understanding of the development of the Innovation tool, which is the main result of the IRM-Tool project. Next follows a deeper look into the several encounters between maritime and creative professionals that the IRM-Tool project has arranged. Many creative professionals, such as writers, visual artists, game developers, musicians and service designers were interested in learning about the maritime industry. Similarly, many maritime experts such as architects, designers, engineers, HR professionals, quality managers, R&D managers and CTO’s took part in the project to explore how they could innovate better. These encounters have been very meaningful to local business ecosystems especially in Turku and Pietarsaari, in Finland. The publication introduces also the experiences and results in testing the Innovation tool to maritime innovation challenges and concludes with the applicability and significance of the creative industries’ knowledge for the future innovations. The publication ends with boosting the reader to find his/her own innovation flow.

IRM-Tool project team would like to thank all the workshop participants, artists, experts, students, companies, and other project stakeholders for participating and contributing to the project.

Hope you enjoy your reading and find new ideas for your work!

Rita Rauvola,
Project Manager,
The IRM-Tool Project

Link to the publication in PDF-format.