Common Portfolios to Solve Contemporary Challenges
Future by Lund works within different themes - such as Future Living & Spaces, Creatives & Changemakers, Moving Things & People and Digital Cities & Citizens. Within each theme, we work in portfolios, which in turn can include one or more projects. Themes, portfolios and projects in specific areas are all based on challenges and issues, but the mindset behind them differs slightly.
What is the idea behind organizing the work of smart, creative and sustainable innovations in portfolios?
- Portfolio thinking can be seen as a consequence of the complexity of our time and is a way to create an understanding of how to tackle challenges, says project developer Katarina Scott. It provides a great opportunity to connect things across sectors and areas. It's also about risk minimisation, because with today's big challenges, we need each other in a new way. Portfolio thinking is also an opportunity to mix the small with the big, so that even small players with local connections can step in and create solutions together with the larger ones. We at Future by Lund are certainly not alone in discussing portfolios, but it has become an increasingly common way of working.
A portfolio is not a project, but it can contain one or more projects. The portfolio starts from a challenge, an opportunity or a will. In order to achieve the goal, it is often necessary to bring together several actors with different competencies from different industries in order to create solutions together. The portfolio is based on the whole. Then you go down the parts and see how these can be driven forward and what partners are needed. For example, the parts of the portfolio can be executed in project form.
- An example is how we work with the project Kalaudioskop in the portfolio “Personalised future of digital concerts”, says Katarina Scott. It is about offering the spectator the opportunity to take part in and control an experience consisting of a concert in real time in digital form. Here, streaming solutions are tested to provide a good audience experience even for those who are not on site. The viewer should be able to choose which cameras and audio recordings they want to focus on at the moment. The live stream also creates the opportunity to react, interact and ask questions because everything happens in real time. To achieve this, the project gathers, among other things, various technology suppliers and cultural organizers. Kalaudioscope is a project, but in portfolio form the work can grow further even after the end of the project. It is conceivable that in the future, for example, interactive digital debates, shows, sports events and other cultural experiences could be created in a similar way.
In the portfolio, as in some projects, you put together several different areas that must combine to reach a solution. Well-chosen partners increase the overall competence of a portfolio. This means that no one has to do everything themselves, but instead can focus more on what you are really good at — your skills, your technology, your resource, your business idea.
Future by Lund has long described the work carried out in our network as intermediate work. To make this understandable, a model is used with a blue zone, which is the area where you have your own mandate and can decide for yourself, green zone where you can have interaction and dialogue with shared mandate and yellow zone, which is a place with unclear mandates and where you may need to stimulate, facilitate, test and monitor the outside world in order to create knowledge and understanding. Often the work done in a portfolio ends up in the yellow zone. Even if no one is in charge in the yellow zone, there may be an intermediary player like Future by Lund who can also be described as a “Portfolio caretaker” who looks after the common. (Link to the Zone Model)
- For us, a portfolio means a form of collaboration and collaboration within a community of interests, continues Katarina Scott. In order for the work to develop, intermediate work is often required in which someone is neutral, collects the intentions of the actors and maintains cooperation. Communication, leadership, relationship-building activities and joint learning are key ingredients in such a constellation. This is the logic behind why we in the FBL work the way we do. It can be tricky at times, but if we can't build trust, we can't make it happen.
When starting a portfolio, experience has shown that it is especially important to bring together actors to formulate the context.
- As we have gained experience working with portfolios, we have learned how important it is to make these contextual formulations early. Our goal is to set the boundaries and scope by working with the will intention and value basis of many partners. It can be difficult, but is the basis of everything else, concludes Katarina Scott.
Future by Lund and Lund University use the LIEPT model (Lund Innovation Ecosystem Portfolio Tracking) to demonstrate the movement of projects and portfolios in an ecosystem. (Link to the Liept model)