Artworks 001 - Paroc, Unionen - TILLT

– THE ARTS & BUSINESS JOURNAL –

ISSUE 01 VOLUME 01 JUNE 2013

We love the arts and we love business, with the two combined everybody wins

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CLICK AND BUY ONLINE ART Artworks discovers who’s spending the big money

MANUFACTURING A 3D REVOLUTION Taking art and industry to a new dimension

COLLISION OR COLLABORATION? Intel Media’s Simon Waterfall on technology and art

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CREATIVITY Lars Strannegård explores art and economic growth

THE ARTS AND BUSINESS WORKING TOGETHER

A new magazine. Another one. Great, as if there’s not enough out there already. ...And isn’t looking at the intersection between the arts and business not only a bit niche, but also superfluous while the world is still recovering from the most oppressive global financial crisis in living memory?

No. Neither.

Everybody is touched by both business and the arts. The intersection is very small and we, at Artworks, think this is a big mistake. Currently the two seem to be different things: the arts, on one hand, are enjoyed by people in their own time, and business, on the other, is work – you do your job, you get paid, you go home.

But things have changed. The internet has brought more transparency than anybody ever imagined. People want more – from the products they buy, the places they go and the jobs they do.

Why should people leave their personalities and passions at home when they go to work? Businesses are constantly referring to the need for creativity to find solutions, and competition for talent and customer loyalty has never been more pronounced.

As more and more people are working from home and entrepreneurship becomes more accessible, businesses need to let the creativity more prevalent in the arts than anywhere else into their culture.

Business needs the arts. But the arts also need business.

State funding for the arts is decreasing everywhere you look with greater emphasis on reducing deficits, and spending on healthcare, education and infrastructure. Art needs to stand on its

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up PABLO PICASSO

own two feet.And once it has, or in the instances where it already has, it needs to demonstrate leadership.

When appealing for funding, many arts institutions talk about the value they add to the community; how they help to enrich society by bringing both entertainment and original thinking to audiences. When they succeed they must set an example to businesses by helping their smaller cousins in farther reaches of the arts, and in smaller towns and villages for that matter.

Businesses can help the arts far more, but they seem to need to be shown the way. We want to encourage that, of course, but people in the arts need business sense. There are more ways than just sponsorship to get funding for arts projects, and more opportunities to administrate and monetise projects than are often practised.

This intersection is not just about overlap, however. It is about collaboration, partnership – mergers not acquisitions.

Both spiritually and economically, we all need the unknown and hidden value that can be unlocked by the arts enriching business, and business enriching the arts.

This magazine is about exploring ideas, sparking new ventures, helping people to visualise new opportunities and being as entertaining as it is useful. We hope you find it as beautiful to look at as it is interesting and inspiring, whether you are an artist or executive.

FOUNDING PARTNERS

COLLABORATING PARTNERS Our vision is supported by our collaborative partners who provide reach and insight. Together, we work to realise the mutual benefits inarts and business partnerships

NORWAY

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SWEDEN

We are proud of the support of four bold, creative and inspiring companies, who share our belief that business and the arts combined enrich society.

FINLAND

DENMARK

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1 in 5 TEENAGERS SAY THEY WANT A CREATIVE JOB

www.statoil.com/artprogramme

All development will cease if we hesitate to do things differently and do not continue pushing the borders of what is possible.

A word of advice to other chief executives interested in engaging in an artistic intervention is to take full trust in the process, go with the flow and stay alert to what comes out of it Henrik Dahlquist, former lean director, Sankta Maria PAGE 101

In order to create an innovationoriented climate you need to dare letting go of control and that is exactly what an artistic intervention can help you achieve.

Only by removing all thinking taboos, brand new thinking will be possible Klas Ålander, corporate communications manager, FlexLink EDWARD HOPPER’S OCTOBER ON CAPE COD – SOLD FOR –

$9.6m

Confrontation with the arts not only provokes new thinking and stimulates opinions, it may also create a changed working environment and a respectful insight into the differences of individuality. We dared to engage in a venture, which was neither comfortable nor safe, and that gave us a tremendous payback Karin Lindblad, former HR manager, Aspen Lantmännen www.artworksjournal.com

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TO AN INTERNET BIDDER, SETTING THE HIGHEST PRICE FOR A WORK OF ART SOLD ONLINE AT AN INTERNATIONAL AUCTION

Tired brains won’t produce new thinking. And that is why the artistic way of thinking is so interesting; it triggers new thinking. For us, the semi-crazy idea of bringing an artist into the organisation generated a tremendous amount of added value Jan-Peter Idström, former project manager at AstraZeneca

300 MORE THAN

ONLINE ART VENTURES HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED ACROSS THE WORLD

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When we brought an artist into the business, a lot of employees suddenly gained courage to expand on the fixed frames. Many times, astounding ideas are produced in informal environments, such as coffee breaks. Art can have exactly that type of functionality, paving the way for unexpected problemsolving methods Johan Westman, NovAseptic chief executive 11

CAO BUSINESS

WANTED: CHIEF ARTS OFFICER We are on a mission. Artworks is launching a campaign to get one company per month to sign up to appoint a chief arts officer over the next 12 months.

OUR ARTISTS

By June 2014, we want 12 businesses to join our campaign to hire a new member of staff to work with all other departments of the company to inspire artistic values and practices wherever possible. Not for the sake of it, but to add value and boost bottom-line results.

We are delighted to work with two of Britain’s most sought-after young artists, Nick and Phil Goss, who created Artworks exclusive cover illustrations

We will track progress of the Artworks campaign in each edition of the magazine and online. We will be looking at the different ways this adds value, different problems this causes and solutions found, as well as documenting particular successes and failures.

Nick Goss lives and works as an artist in London. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in 2009 with a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art. Recent solo exhibitions include Tin Drum, Josh Lilley Gallery, London (2012), Herz Man Sky, Simon Preston Gallery, New York (2011) and Veverka, Josh Lilley Gallery, London (2010). Selected group exhibitions include Never Ever Land, Anna Kustera, New York (2012), Newspeak: British Art Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (2011).

For more information contact us or sign up online. And please share, tweet or post.

Phil Goss lives and works as an illustrator in London. He is currently studying for a MA in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art. He has exhibited in a number of spaces in London, including work in a group show at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He also works extensively in print and publishing, designing visuals for a number of record companies and bands, as well as creating posters and editorial illustrations.

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ADDING VALUE… Not being able to see the wood for the trees is something a lot of businesses suffer from. They are too focused on achieving their objectives that they don’t take a step back or think enough about how they are doing things and why.

People who practise the arts are constantly thinking about these elements and are equally focused on delivery. The elements are intrinsic. Having a chief arts officer will help to change the use of the arts from an additional aspect of a business, into a core component that emanates through every other part of the business, just as finance, operations, marketing or technology do.

As part of the wider group, with other areas of focus, we believe that a chief arts officer would add huge value to the communications, culture and creativity of a business.

The concept involves appointing someone at managerial level who has responsibility for taking artistic opportunities or points of view in every facet of the business. This could be from an external perspective, through marketing or public relations, or internally through office design, collaboration, and personal development and wellbeing, but also operationally through integrity, ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and partnerships.

The arts have a place at the very heart of business, not just at the periphery. The world’s leading arts institutions all have business people working to help them succeed. We have no doubt that the world’s leading businesses in any field would benefit from a chief arts officer.

In this first edition of Artworks, there is a compelling case study by Professor Ariane Berthoin Antal that shows how an artistic intervention benefited a leading Scandinavian company and Tom Tresser suggests seven ways to integrate creativity into business leadership. These two articles begin to show what a chief arts officer – or CAO – could achieve and how.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? TELL US ONLINE AT www.artworksjournal.com

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CAO | BUSINESS

MAKING STONE WOOL AND ART

Paroc’s Unburnable Christmas Goat, an art collaboration made from non-flammable stone wool, promoted the company’s product and thwarted vandals

Professor Ariane Berthoin Antal, of the Social WORDS

Ariane Berthoin Antal

Imagine that you are a manager responsible for a project that is bringing an artist to work inside your organisation for several months. Or imagine you are the artist entering the foreign world of the organisation. And what about putting yourself into the shoes of an employee just having learnt you will be engaging with an artist in your factory? How are you feeling? What kind of value do you expect this will bring?

In the seconds it took you to read the three invitations to step into the shoes of each of these people you probably experienced a flurry of different reactions, with one common element throughout: uncertainty. What value can come of such an undertaking?

Many artists constantly live and work in frames of uncertainty, but organisations are usually designed to create a sense of clarity and predictability, so neither managers nor employees tend to feel comfortable with journeys into uncharted territory at work. Exploring and pushing boundaries is what artists do, but not usually inside organisations and alongside employees. Therefore, all the participants in an artistic intervention in an organisation are embarking on a journey whose process and destination are both new and different each time. When artists and members of an organisation decide to travel together, they have the opportunity to discover something new because they have

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Science Research Center Berlin, describes how a group of Swedish factory workers embarked on a journey of change with actress Victoria Brattström

to chart a fresh way towards places that cannot be precisely defined in advance.

In the pages that follow, I offer glimpses into such a journey, drawing on interviews, observations, email exchanges and a survey I conducted in a Swedish factory of stone wool insulation producers Paroc AB. I present the case from the perspectives of the managers, employees and artists in three steps to illustrate first how opportunities for learning adventures begin, second how the itineraries take shape and third what kinds of value the participants discover when they look back on their journey THE JOURNEY

very fact that it was uncommon is what triggered him to take the idea seriously because his company had already tried addressing organisational development challenges in traditional ways for many years and he realised they needed to try something new if they wanted to achieve something new.

As a theatre and film director and trained actress, Victoria Brattström was tempted to work with employees in a production site because she is “interested in exploring how the tools of the creative process, which are my everyday tools, work in new areas, under new conditions, and to see how I can – how we can – sharpen and develop these creative instruments so that art can interfere with and intervene in society.”

POINT OF DEPARTURE INTENDED DESTINATION At a meeting of senior HR managers, hosted by Paroc AB at its plant in Hällekis, south-west Sweden, Lars Lindström heard the guest speaker describe how artists had accompanied other organisations on journeys of change. Lars, like other managers, was sceptical at first because bringing an artist into the workplace was not a common approach. And the idea was most definitely not an obvious match with a company that produces insulation material from stone wool, using rocks from the Swedish countryside. But then, the

Lars did not know exactly where the journey would lead, but as human resources manager at the Scandinavian headquarters of Paroc AB, he knew the organisation needed to move, so stepping out to try something new was essential.

He talked with the management team, the plant managers and the trade union representatives, and he informed top management at group level. Together they agreed that they should book three ten-month long engagements with artists in Sweden

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right away, two for production plants in 2008 and one at headquarters the following year. Lars and his colleagues wanted to indicate clearly to the employees that they believed in the process. They saw the engagement with an artist as a way of helping people make sense of the numerous changes underway in the organisation.

They then defined issues that the first residency should address at one of the plants: increase knowledge and pride in being an environmental company; increase pride in employees’ own work; increase co-operation across the company; facilitate organisational and leadership development; and increase capability to innovate.

But the destination was not foremost on theatre director Victoria’s mind: the process of exploring the unknown is what she wanted from the trip. She had to start

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by trying to understand simultaneously “what was the need, the hoped for destination and the reality” in the organisation.

And she did this in her own way, “body and mind having the courage to jump into the unknown question of ‘how?’”

The Paroc employees in the rural setting of Hällekis first learnt about the decision to embark with an artist from rumours and a magazine from artistdriven staff and organisational development facilitators TILLT. The cover of the magazine had a photograph of a ballet dancer, so of course people wondered... would they now have to dance on the shop floor? This was one more demand from management that did not make sense to them. When Lars presented the project, the reception was not warm. Gabryjel Blom, a young forklift operator, said he

was so uninterested in what management had to say that he fell asleep, until Victoria got up and engaged him and the others directly: suddenly he felt energised. He still had no idea of what the destination would be, but he sensed that something unusual could happen in this venture.

ITINERARY: PLANNED AND EMERGENT Victoria had a sketchy itinerary when she first stepped on to the bridge with Paroc, because TILLT provides some general milestones for the ten-month-long journey of artists in residence: the responsibility for actually developing a plan lay with the project group that had been created to lead the Hällekis plant voyage. VicContinued on 20 | 21

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CAO | BUSINESS

I am interested in exploring how the tools of the creative process, which are my everyday tools, work in new areas, under new conditions, and to see how I can – how we can – sharpen and develop these creative instruments so that art can interfere with and intervene in society

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toria met with that group each week, and she spent time getting to know the foreign environment and its people, visiting every shift in production.

Lars had asked each department to delegate a member to the project group, specifically excluding senior management in order to maximise employee leadership of the journey with the artist.

The project group put up special notice boards and idea boxes all around the factory to encourage as many colleagues as possible to shape the plan, and participate in the journey. That was not so easy because people were sceptical and busy enough already. Nevertheless, the activities of the project team and Victoria’s visits around the plant had an effect: many ideas did come in, from which they selected those that related best to the general objectives management had defined at the outset.

The group decided to dare to do something that had never been tried at the plant: to bring together employees from the two factories on the site. They organised a series of events to kick off the plant-wide journey. Playful events. “It was important to break the ice and get people to have fun at work. Imagine, some of the people had not even shook hands in over 30 years.”

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Some employees decided to document work at the factory with photographs in a very new way. “When you work in the factory, you often become one with the machine. In the 1970s in Sweden lots of artists came into factories and took pictures, but usually of the machines.

We wanted to highlight the humans who make the machines work. We wanted people with machines. We make this factory work.” Other employees decided to record the sounds in the factories that accompany their work throughout the day and night shifts, thereby giving value to features of their environment that are rarely attended to consciously.

The project group also organised a competition, inviting their colleagues to submit photographs, short stories and poems. What does this have to do with making stone wool insulation? “We wanted to mix the world of work, which is cold and structured, in which we spend our days, and the world of culture in which we spend our free time, which is human.”

The ideas came from the employees and the project group made it happen. So what was the role of the artist in the Paroc journey at Hällekis? Employees recalled later that “she was the energy”. With it she could release employees from their self-limiting definitions of a situation. An employee described an interaction with an older colleague “who said ‘this is shit...everything

was better in the old days’. Victoria talked with him a long time and tempted him to try. He totally fell in love with Victoria.”

Other employees explained: “Without her, we would have done something like every other project.” “We’ve been here for many years, we know the routines. We know how the collective mind works. We needed someone to open the box, even throw the box away.”

LOOKING BACK: WAS THE TRIP WORTH IT?

MANAGEMENT IN PAROC NOTED THAT WITHIN A YEAR THERE WAS A

24 % INCREASE IN EFFICIENCY IN THE HÄLLEKIS PLANT www.artworksjournal.com

Management in Paroc noted that within a year there was a 24 per cent increase in efficiency in the Hällekis plant. Lars is quick to point out that there were other processes underway as well, so this result was not due to the artistic intervention alone, but he believes that it played an important part, providing “lubrication to help succeed in other projects as well, instead of being just another project that consumes resources”. Participating in the journey helped people understand the processes in the company, not just their own bit of it. Another indicator for management that the trip was worth it came from the external auditors. “The auditors noticed changes; they came to the factory and noted in their report afterwards that they had seen a big change in how people had responded to their visit this year. People were much more open to sharing knowledge, much more co-operative than in the past.”

When the employees are asked about what they valued about the experience, it is not surprising that increases in efficiency and the praise from the

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auditors are not the items on the tip of their tongues. What they value most are the personal benefits from having been actively involved in an unusual development process. The benefits from engaging with artistic practices spill over into their private lives as well as their work.

When Gabryjel explained the connection in the keynote address he gave at an international conference in Brussels, he said: “Culture is what we do as humans that enriches our lives. We come to work to get the salary that allows us to lead our lives. We do our work, we take pride in it – why not enrich our lives at work too?”

The members of the project group emphasise to others who are considering taking a journey of their own: “Make sure you do it from the ground level up, not top down.”

For Victoria it was “definitely worth the trip”. As an artist what she found particularly valuable was the “creative resistance” with which the employees engaged in the relationship with her.

Working together in artistic interventions cannot be reduced to harmonious agreement: creative resistance ignites energy and sparks ideas.

From an article by Ariane Bethoin Antal (2013) Seeing Values: Artistic interventions in organisations as potential sources of values-added. Dirk Baecker and Birger P. Priddat (eds), Oekonomie der Werte/Economics of Values. Marburg: Metropolis Verlag

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Lars Lindström, HR manager at PAROC

LEFT

Artistic interventions by TILLT at PAROC

LARS LINDSTRÖM, HR MANAGER AT PAROC SCANDINAVIA, COMMENTS “You have to know the local history at the Paroc Hällekis plant to fully grasp the change in staff attitude, before and after having artist Victoria Brattström in residence for almost a year.

“While in elementary school, the employees who now work at the plant were told they must do their homework properly, otherwise they would end up at the mill – at Paroc.

“Victoria regained some of their confidence. She made them proud to be a Paroc employee; she made them proud of their professional knowledge. And the projects she initiated ended up making the headlines in newspapers, on radio and on national television.

“What better good can you have as an employer than overhearing, at coffee break, that the daughter of one of your employees had joyously exclaimed the night before: ‘Daddy, daddy, I saw you on the telly’?”

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BUSINESS

The group was strapped in a giant, fluorescent elastic rubber band, reducing the individual freedom of movement and forcing us to move with the group as one

WORDS

Jon Liinason

THE UNION BOSS, A WORKSHOP AND A GIANT RUBBER BAND Pernilla Laurin, head of Unionen Lindholmen, one of

Sweden’s biggest trade unions, responds to questions, posed by Jon Liinason of artist-driven staff and organisational development facilitators TILLT, on her experience of an innovation laboratory

Why did you choose to engage in an artist-driven 24-hour innovation laboratory?

Was it difficult for you to put away your leadership role while taking part in the lab?

Well, despite the fact that Unionen is the largest trade union in the private sector in Sweden, we are still susceptible to the principles of the survival of the fittest and we need to constantly keep evolving.

After having met with the people at TILLT, we felt invigorated and curious as to what an artist-driven 24-hour laboratory could bring about. It certainly sounded exciting and the gut feeling was that it could be an interesting format for kicking off our newly assembled team, consisting of eight staff members devoted to working with service innovation at Unionen Lindholmen for two years.

That was not the main issue for me, but I was certainly eager to make sure everyone in the group felt alright all the way through. But as soon as I realised that TILLT took care of the process management, I let go of that too. I did start to think a lot about the concept of letting go afterwards and the role of letting go in an open innovation process specifically. This was particularly rewarding for me since I have been schooled in a long tradition of working in goal-oriented processing.

What was it like to participate?

It all began with the artist giving each and every one of the participants a giant yellow Pilates balance ball with which we were encouraged to make a collectively balanced belly flop. The metaphor of life-work balance instantly dawned upon me. What with one of our goals for this team being “you are fully pardoned in failure”, this exercise turned out to be spot-on. I can tell you that it took a few bumped noses to find a group-balanced belly flop.

What was the group expecting?

They had been briefed about the lab being a workshop and a brainstorming tool for answering a set of goal-oriented questions that we had thrown in, such as “How do we recruit 8,000 new members in two years?” and “How can we communicate more efficiently with new sectors?” Other than that we just enthused them to bring an open mind and a playful mood.

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What happened next?

We were introduced to a mission called Silent Walk in which we were supposed to find a specific piece of public art in the area as quickly as possible, without talking to each other. The group was strapped in a giant, fluorescent elastic rubber band, reducing the individual freedom of movement and forcing us to move with the group as one. We were also instructed to change position within the group at least three times during the mission so that we could all try out what it was like to lead and follow within this group. Since we could not communicate verbally with anyone, somebody in the group searched the web for this piece of public art and we managed to find it rather quickly.

Interestingly enough, reactions to this mission were quite diverging. Someone felt that we had cheated since we made use of the internet; others were frustrated after completing the mission and were eager to return to base camp when some in the group wanted to experiment more with the rubber band. Heated discussions on who pulled too hard and who resisted Continued on 26 | 27

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BUSINESS

LEFT

Pernilla Laurin, head of Unionen Lindholmen

BELOW & RIGHT

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Unionen 24-hour artist-driven innovation lab

too much followed. Who was in charge?

What is the relation between efficiency and motivation? And what really constitutes a successful mission?

Thus, at this stage, questions of core values were being introduced to the group in a rather untraditional manner. It really made us reflect upon who we are as a group and the importance of sometimes playing around at work. The rubber band, of course, became a metaphor for how we could experiment with our goals and frameworks, both on a professional and personal level.

After that we were introduced to a provocative mission called Undercover Friends in which we were to interview random people in the street on their opinion of the concept of trust, using duct tape and the yellow exercise balls as instruments of approach. Instructions were given for us to try to, in as many ways as possible, make contact with people without exposing our identity and to really break out of our comfort zone in doing so.

Thus we ended up trying all sorts of things, like throwing the exercise balls at people in order to get their attention. We persuaded them to stay for an interview, we tried luring them with candy, we bribed them and we even forced them to stay for a chat by surrounding them with tape. All in all, it was an extremely uncomfortable experience, I can tell you. Imagine having a ball thrown at you and then being asked to talk about trust. That was really something. It really does hurt to expand on your comfort zone and to do the “un-normal”.

Surprisingly, no one was really intimidated by our unconventional methods of making contact. They were all very curious and interested in what we were trying to achieve (with the exception of that one guy that was taped to a pole on his way to the ferry after work). This resulted in us feeling that nothing in the normal daily routine of recruiting members could ever match the levels of fear we went through with this exercise.

As well as this we had intensive metaphor brainstorming sessions on how to present the required specs for a superhero suit, tailor made for Undone recruiters, which was intriguing, to say the least.

We came up with an interesting final metaphor of Undone being a “Barb papa” in the eyes of our members – soft, caring, flexible and innovative.

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We were to interview random people in the street, using duct tape and yellow exercise balls as instruments of approach

Summing up, what was the outcome?

WHAT DO YOU THINK? TELL US ONLINE AT www.artworksjournal.com

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It gave us tremendous energy and insights into how to break the ice when contacting prospective members, and it was a challenging and enjoyable launch of our two-year plan in service innovation at Undone Lind Holmen.

And we were pleased to learn more about working in an open creative process, both on a theoretical and practical level.

It needs to be said that it is difficult to quantify all the results this lab yielded and stack them neatly in an excel sheet; it just does not add up that way. Ideas and concepts have kept cropping up all the time since the lab, but these are often things that really cannot be measured. That, however, does not mean they do not count.

The bottom line for us, really, was increased levels of courage; since we managed to cope with the challenging missions in this innovation lab, we now feel perfectly fine with handling pretty much anything in terms of accepting and actively looking for new conceptual thinking and practices.

All in all, this has been a systematic way of working with creativity in an open process of experimentation, leading us right into the landscape where we want to be for the coming two years, that is to say in service innovation.

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