Paper short abstract:

The paper presents the interdisciplinary co-creation process of a corporate, an innovation platform, and an externally hired team. It reflects on how anthropology, design, business and technology inform the development of a new smart home product for more sustainable consumption and supply chains.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will refer to concepts of co-creation and the post-phenomenological notion of human-technology-world relations, while show-casing the development of a smart home product for people to better manage their households. It will reflect on the following three topics

a. Assumptions-driven innovation vs. good old theory and research

This section will show how applied anthropology plays a role in today's often assumptions-driven innovation. While fast-paced innovation projects demand to work with assumptions, theory and research remain an important sparring partner. Questions like: Who are the people interacting with the future product?; What's the meaning of the space in which they might interact with the future product?; What are important value shifts?; How would the future product transform people's sensory experiences in the home?; or: How will human-technology-world relations change?; need to inform the innovation space.

b. Co-Creation: Is it about finding, defining, or inventing value?

In this chapter we will discuss how anthropological investigations of finding out what is valuable can inform the generation of new value, while also reflecting on the question: does new value always have to do with what people identify as valuable today?

c. Holistic sustainability - An interaction of interdisciplinary knowledge

This section will provide an overview of the resulted product vision, challenges and approaches the team currently works on, and thereby showcase how data science, algorithm-development, anthropology, design, business modelling and hardware expertise need to interact with each other to develop a holistically sustainable product.