Concept Lab (5 cr)

Objective

Concept Lab is a learning environment enhancing students capabilities to conduct user-centered research and design in a multi-disciplininary, multicultural context. Students engage to hands-on innovation work developing novel service, product or business concepts for their own business idea and/or for a company or a community.

The knowledge framework for this concept development work is acquired through seminar afternoons where inspirational topics are processed through lectures and workshops. Concept Lab acts as a basis for pre-incubation or proof-of concept phase and aims to educate out-of-box thinking capable, co-creative and networked professionals with methods rooting from design thinking, concept development and innovation processes.

Students grow understanding of concept development work, create a concept description and take main responsibility of their teams work and performance. Concept development teams consist of 2-8 students with differing educational and cultural backgrounds and all teams have access to concept development coaches from different fields to support the group process and guide towards suitable methods depending on a case. Concept development projects come from various fields and thus support students understanding of their own field in the context of surrounding disciplines.

The concept lab is conducted twice a year where during autumns we concentrate on business/community assignments and during springs we focus on creating and developing students' own business ideas.

Content

The Concept Lab process consists of three parts:
1. research of the phenomena under study / research for new concept ideas,
2. development of a concept idea using creative methods
3. evaluating created concept idea

All three parts will be accomplished within the framework of the student learning workshop and are supported by course activities. The students will work in teams to carry out the analysis and planning necessary to ideate a novel concept and complete a concept description.

As an example students can conduct research on how an organisation could develop new kinds of relations to it´s target audience and potential new survival concepts for the future.

The project teams will be responsible of developing their selected concept, as well as perform all the related managerial tasks. The teams will also evaluate the performance of their project together with clients (when relevant) and teachers and present their concept description outcome as well as their learning process to the whole team.

Assessment criteria, satisfactory (1)

Exceptional (5): Student is able to demonstrate a capability in creating and managing a
concept development project in an autonomous manner. The learning diary as well as
the exam show analytical skills and personal growth in terms of understanding the
phenomena around concept development and skills required to complete it
successfully. The concept plan created is based on thorough research and is well
justified. The outcome of the plan is new in a defined context, has business potential
in a defined target group and is well justified. The learning diary contains deep analysis
and reflection (personal input to the topic) for all covered topics. All mandatory tasks
are completed in time with a high quality standards by structure, referencing, content,
outlook and presentation. Presentations are found to be useful by the peers.
• Excellent (4): Students performance is primarily exceptional, but in some fields the
quality of the work, timely task completion, depth of analysis or research or materials /
presentations created lack justification, finalization or content. All tasks are completed
and the overall performance is high what comes to materials, presentations and
reflection.

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• Good (3) Student demonstrates understanding of the main concepting processes and
methods and the outcome of mandatory tasks is of a reasonable standard. There may
be some lacks in formatting, finalizing or accuracy of planning, but the research and
reflection of the concept development work done demonstrates clear understanding of
the key topics covered. All tasks are completed.
• Satisfactory (2) Student demonstrates some understanding of the key concepts and has
all tasks completed, primarily in time. There may be some flaws with content and
formatting as well as presentations and the level of reflection is shallow not
demonstrating a deep understanding of the methods and concepts covered.
• Poor (1):Student completes all required tasks but demontrates only little
understanding of the key topics covered through materials created and reflection.
Presentation is not well prepared and does not add much value to peer students.

Qualifications

Thorough understanding of project management and project processes, completed basic studies of own field