A couple of weeks ago I participated in a Design Thinking Lab activity at the University of Tromso (high up north in the Arctic), Norway. About 30 of us spent two hours thinking deeply about a challenge that is widely acknowledged — reducing the chasm between research (happening in Universities) and practice (happening within industries). The event was part of a research project to identify how to make this work.

[image error]All of us working together at the Design Thinking Lab. Photo Courtesy: Prof Rasmussen

The workshop was fun and facilitated by a pair of young entrepreneurs who run Design Thinking workshops for students and corporations. We sat in what they called, “The DTLab” – a space created for such activities.

The group was wonderful with two-thirds of the participants from industry and the remaining third from academia (of which I was a part). It was fun with a lot of productive outcomes. At the end it seemed to me that both sides (university and industry) were equally interested in closing this gap, and one of the biggest challenges was — lack of regular interactions to build solutions. Both sides agreed to implement at least one idea (of the many ideas we came up with). I am sure this will yield results.

When I first visited Bodo, I thought it was quite up north. But after I traveled further to Tromso, I realized I was pretty wrong! Some of my colleagues in the meeting actually traveled south for it