How to innovate in your research

Based on your research, regardless of what point you are, and through three experiential workshops facilitated by an expert in co-creation for innovation with online collaborative tools, you will explore and detect real challenges and multidisciplinary design solutions.

The Universitat Rovira i Virgili from Tarragona presents this course, designed by doctoral students, as a first approach to co-creation methodologies that you can apply to your research, professional and personal life. You will learn to think about the future in the ideation process and move from idea to action into a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment.

Date: 26/01, 01/02 and, 9/02, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Language: English
Places: 18 PhD students. The places will be given according to the order of registration, which guarantees the teams' multidisciplinary.
Deadline: 17/01
Registration process: 1. Apply through this online form; 2. If you are selected to join the course, you will receive a confirmation email before 20/01. In the following days, you will find the email with the link to the virtual campus with all the needed material and links.

TO REGISTER YOU MUST USE YOUR UNIVERSITY EMAIL ADDRESS

• Course objective:  

 
This course has two main objectives. The first is to provide to you a quality moment and tools to explore, detect and design new opportunities to innovate in your research through co-creation methods. And the second, to experience new ways to innovate through online co-creation to understand how such researchers can use the co-creation in their professional environment. 
 
It is aimed mainly at early open-minded PhD students. 
 

• How?

The PhD student will work as a team with other doctoral students from different disciplines. Learning will be experiential (learning by doing), facilitated by a professional in co-creation for innovation and with digital co-creation tools. Students design the challenge to be solved. The format will be an online workshop using the collaborative digital tool Miro and distributed in three sessions of two hours each and tasks between sessions. 
 
 

• Content of the sessions:

 
Session 1. What makes my research unique? The PhD students will work on the value purpose of their research and expose it to the other participants who will help them improve it with their fresh look. They will select the thematic challenge they want to explore based on what motivates them and form interdisciplinary teams. They will work together that each can contribute. 
 
Session 2. Future Challenges. They will work on future scenarios about the thematic challenge using the Future Foresight methodology. They will identify future challenges for the society that they would like to explore. They will jointly design questions-challenges to solve. 
 
Session 3. Introduction to the co-creation of solutions. From the question-challenge, they will work with co-creation methodologies to identify an idea-solution they would like to develop within the framework of your joint research. 
 

• Learnings: 

 
·    The PhD students will learn to identify and explain the value of your research, what makes it unique, both to fellow scientists, companies and society. 
·    The PhD students will broaden the scientific and the social perspective. Therefore, they will work in an interdisciplinary environment. Also, they will identify social challenges about sustainability, climate and energy, human life and health, and digital technology in society related to their current research with given tools and methodologies. As a result, they will improve their capacities to detect future challenges that generate new business opportunities, favour the transfer and social impact of your research, and solve society's real future needs. 
·    The PhD students will learn to collaborate using co-creation methodologies based on design thinking, sprint, service design, foresight etc., and to understand the adequate tool at any moment.  
·    The PhD students will learn some tools and methodologies for creativity and co-creation that will be useful in their research to make it more efficient (detecting root problems, generating ideas and making decisions, etc.). 
·    The fact that these learnings are focused on their theses will help them see the potential of introducing transversality into their research through co-creation and how this allows them to approach complex solutions and learn ways to do so. 

• Skills: 

 
The PhD students will acquire or enhance the skills required by the labour market of the future. Such as learning to learn, adapting to rapid changes, working with other people, connecting facts and creativity, vision, assessment of ideas, detection of opportunities, taking the initiative, dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity (according to Upskilling-Europe of the European Commission). 
 
This course can contribute to medium-term benefits: 
  
·    Contribute to more researchers who know how to make their value visible in the academic and business market. 

·    Contribute to PhD students detecting opportunities to transfer the results of their thesis to solve the real future needs of society. Generating more social impact.  
·    Contribute to training more creative doctors, with a social purpose, decisive, with tools to collaborate more efficiently to solve complex challenges and a more transversal perspective. 
 

Apply for the course: 

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