Global collaboration and mutual learning in design are put forth as means to address the UN SDGs. This paper draws upon experiences in the Design Society's AFRICA-DESIGN initiative to build a network of design academics and practitioners based in Africa with a focus on design for sustainable development. We identify education and social sustainability as particular opportunities and challenges, highlighting the critical element of mutual learning in the collaboration process.

The aim of the study is to contribute to the knowledge on how to develop students' skills and capabilities required when addressing complex societal challenges in practice. In this paper we are investigating the design and implementation of a teacher training module focusing on improving teacher's ability to facilitate students' teams learning and collaboration skills. The feedback and learning from the design and implementation of the module at universities in Botswana, Kenya and Sweden is presented and discussed in this paper.

The number of challenges facing companies in their development activities is numerous, some coming from new markets and technologies, and some more abstract, like conflicts between short term efficiency and long term innovativeness. Improving collaboration between industry and academia is considered critical—the aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion on long term learning collaboration between academia and industry, being a core competence area in itself. Another purpose is to form a platform for experience sharing, and increased integration capability for sustaining common knowledge—and practice development. The paper includes an analysis of several collaboration programs between academia and industry conducted in Sweden, resulting in conclusions and advises concerning what to consider for collaborative work.

A challenge for many medical technology companies acting in a business-to-business (B2B) context is to develop innovative products that satisfy the sometimes differing needs and requirements of their end-users and purchasers. These companies have to exploit knowledge about both stakeholders in order to maintain an innovative edge. Research to date has largely focused on the acquisition of customer knowledge, in particular on formal methods to acquire customer knowledge in the search for new opportunities. Much less research has considered how companies acting in a B2B context handle and make use of end-user and purchaser knowledge internally. One fundamental prerequisite to disseminate and exploit knowledge about end-users and purchasers in a company is that employees carry out a continuous social interaction concerning these stakeholders. But what are the structures for these dual social networks concerning end-users and purchasers within a company acting in a B2B context? In this article we apply social network analysis to investigate, describe and compare the different patterns of social interaction of end-user and purchaser knowledge in a business unit within a large medical technology company acting in a B2B context. A survey questionnaire was designed and sent out to 115 employees within the business unit, resulting in 86 valid responses (response rate 75%). The aim of the survey was to map how conversations about end-users and purchasers had occurred within the organization over the last three years. The results indicate large differences, both in structure and content, between the social interaction concerning end-users and purchasers. Based on these findings, we argue that medical technology companies acting in a B2B context can, by adapting their approach to the way they communicate end-user and purchaser knowledge, release untapped potential to increase both their innovation performance and their competitive advantage. We conclude with suggested directions for future research on this topic.

This paper discuss the planning and organising of research conducted by Industrial PhD students, i.e. PhD students conducting research studies aiming for a PhD while employed in industrial companies. Industrial PhD projects within engineering design research in Sweden can be considered a phenomenon, i.e. existing but sparsely documented. This paper provides empirical illustrations by presenting three Industrial PhD projects conducted in three companies with product developing operations in Sweden. The specific research design of Industrial PhD projects provides benefits such as an effective bridging between academia and industry. Additionally, this type of research projects face challenges, such as having two-folded aims of the project: both academic and industrial goals. Based on experiences from these projects, implications for planning and organising of future Industrial PhD projects are discussed. Finally, we suggest that Industrial PhD projects are effective means, if used properly, for assimilation of research findings to industry, and for academia to understand the industrial practice.

Product innovation in highly complex and technological areas, such as medical technology, puts high requirements on the innovation capability of an organisation. Previous research and publications have highlighted organisational issues and learning matters as important and necessary for the development of innovation capability. Action learning requires reflection on the ways things are carried out, changes in current actions, implementation and improvement and thereafter another round of reflection. This could be difficult for one organisation to carry out internally and so this research uses a learning network set-up involving several organisations for inter-organisational action learning. The purpose of this article is to describe the learning network set-up used in a current action learning project in the medical technology industry and to discuss the initial experience gained. The research project aims at increasing the innovation capability of the participating organisations. The method used is based on action learning and involves representatives from industrial partners, public health organisations and academic partners. The different organisations run innovation projects over a time period of three years and meet three times a year in learning network sessions with the purpose of developing knowledge by action learning interaction between the different organisations. During these learning network sessions the participants are facilitated to go through different phases: reflection, new concepts, new actions, implementation and new reflection. The paper elaborates on theories of innovation capability and learning networks and thereafter the methods of action research, experiential learning and action learning. The action learning network structure, the experience gained in the initial phases of the project and the experience of action learning and learning networks is then presented. The importance of trust-building between partners in the network in order to facilitate action learning and development of innovation capability is discussed, as is the learning that takes place in the interaction between academics from different disciplines in their interaction with the practitioners.

The article is presents a literature study related to user involvement in the early stages of the product innovation process in the medical technology industry. Five fundamental capabilities in early stages user involvement are presented and reasoned about. The capabilities are identification of users, acquiring, assimilation, and transformation of user knowledge as well as exploiting. The result of the article contributes to future research in an action research project with the medical technology industry and the public healthcare sector in Sweden.