System Innovation - Climate-KIC Learning Portal

Welcome to System Innovation and Climate Change

Find out more and sign up to start the course now!

Introductory video

Find out how to use and work with this flexible learning format on System Innovation. Depending on your background and challenge, you can design your own learning experience while working your way through the different tools included in the learning modules.

System innovation is a complex concept and even more complex to implement. At the same time, innovating a system like the local economy or a mobility scheme is very individual. It depends on the local actors, their relationships and skills, financial resources and much more. For this reason, the present eLearning material allows you to design your own learning experience, depending on your background, your expertise and the challenge that you are working on.

Can I afford the time?
The learning format is designed to be used in a completely flexible way, depending on your role in your working environment, your organisation, your experience, the competence that you are looking for and the challenge for which you might need additional facilitation skills and – obviously – the time you have available. Each combination of learning modules will provide you with an individual learning experience and you can always complement with additional learning modules.

System Innovation overview

Here you can find out more about the course.

Course information - What is this learning material about?

The learning material will support you to develop your skills related to facilitation, in order to enable you to better manage multi-functional teams and complex stakeholder environments. It is rooted in a modular structure built upon four modules that account for the main steps in the system innovation process before getting into the prototyping phase. That is:

Stakeholder management,
Multi-level perspective,
Visioning and backcasting
Niche management.

This structure is meant to facilitate the problem-solving process by setting out a pathway in the always blurred, uncertain and fuzzy process for system innovation. The four modules holding the tools feed into a multidisciplinary setting, including transitions management but also practical elements from innovation management, systemic thinking, design thinking and project management. Based on this structure, the learning approach is based on the assertion “learning by doing through the application of tools on the users’ cases”. The tools are introduced by practitioner-oriented explanations in the form of learning nuggets

Who’s it for? - Is this the right course for me?

The eLearning elements are presented to facilitate a learning process where different types of activities, at different times and with multiple resources can be applied. The tools used are also designed to support project management, organizational change and capacity building process for organizations or multi-stakeholder project set ups.

Flexible. The learning format is designed for you to pick out the tools that best fit your challenge and then you can adapt those you chose to your own context. Tools are explained through learning nuggets and they can be accessed and combined in any possible way.

Standalone. The modules have been conceived to work individually and as a full suite. That means, you can single out one tool and apply it to your project, whether you are going to use more tools or not. Regardless of this capacity to be applied in a standalone way, it is highly advisable to conceive a pathway to follow within your innovation project including a coherent set of tools.

Visual. Most of the tools used in the learning modules have been designed as visual devices to spark creativity, and systemic and lateral thinking. The videos are not illustrated to make them pretty. The pictures have a clear purpose and shouldn´t be skipped. It may take you time to feel comfortable with the visual metaphors proposed, but these techniques will help developing your non-linear and creative thinking (you just might need to practise a bit).

Systemic. The learning format aims for a systemic understanding of problems and challenges. Therefore, you can expect this type of conceptualization underlying every module instead of a linear process of reasoning. This is why all the tools you will experience have been designed to be applied in multidisciplinary and even multicultural frameworks and to factor in data and inputs from the context surrounding the project.

Learning outcomes - What will I do and learn in this course?

The System Innovation modules will enable you to structure and manage the challenges and exploit opportunities of sustainability innovations and transitions. The goal is twofold: improving the understanding of a challenge by going deeper, broader and improving the quality of the discussions and conversations around the problem among stakeholders. It means to put the focus not only on the problem solving process but also on the learning process while designing and implementing solutions. The tools are presented in a simple and visual approach with the purpose of supporting practitioners’ everyday work on climate change, transition and system innovation.

Duration - How much time should I plan for completing this course?

We understand that not everyone has the time to explore the whole eLearning material– and that’s fine. You are free to choose your own learning pathway – to do as much, or as little, as you like. You can opt in and out of different parts and complete only those that are most useful and relevant to you.

The learning modules include a collection of interactive bite-sized tools and you can decide what you would like to study and when. A quick way to make your choice is to select the information icon on each learning module, which will give you a summary of what it is about.

The learning materials will remain available to you once you are registered so you can always return to complete further learning modules at a later date if you get busy.

The learning modules include three to five tools and you should allow 10-20 minutes to view each tool.