Public defence in Product Development, MA Senni Kirjavainen

Title of the thesis: Scaffolding Novelty in Product Development: Enhancing Idea Generation and Development 

Thesis defender: Senni Kirjavainen
Opponent: Prof. Julie Linsey, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Custos: Prof. Tua Björklund,Aalto University School of Engineering

Creating and developing novel ideas form the foundation of innovation, and have a societal and economic impact. Finland's goal is to increase the share of RDI (research, development, and innovation) investments to 4 percent of GDP, but in addition to investments in creative capabilities, practices, and processes are needed. This dissertation aimed to identify practical support structures that make novel, useful ideas more likely to emerge and survive. The work bridges scaffolding theory from the field of educational research with engineering design and innovation management literature, synthesizing a framework of distributed scaffolding in novel idea generation and development. 

Building on a deconstruction of 127 ideation methods, four ideation experiments with 194 students, and 43 interviews in a multinational tech firm, the thesis shows that novelty is supported by both material scaffolds such as methods, processes, tools, and resources, as well as social scaffolds such as networks and people dedicated to development.

For example, methodological skills and practices for implementing design methods in organizations increase the chances of harnessing creativity and generating novel and original outcomes. Further, scaffolding is most effective when scaffolds are implemented as a holistic system, as these scaffolds are interconnected and a scaffold offered or missing on one domain can hinder or boost support, or even compensate for the lack of support in other domains. As an example, early, low-cost, iterative prototyping helps uncover opportunities compared to not experimenting. On the other hand, advancing ideas in an organization is dependent on individuals who might use their own networks to access prototyping resources for advancing novelty if they lack sufficient material and social scaffolds in their own organization.

This dissertation emphasizes the need for broad organizational commitment to fostering creativity through structured support mechanisms. To utilize novel idea generation and development scaffolds, methodological skills, targeted resources, organizational willingness, as well as sufficient networks are needed – and they have to be put to use. Thus, an organization pursuing novelty and innovation should review its processes and practices against the organizational priorities - do they support novel idea generation and development or do they maybe favor familiar and incremental ideas? 

Keywords: Product development, Novelty, Ideation, Prototyping, Championing, Scaffolding

Thesis available for public display 7 days prior to the defence at Aaltodoc. 

Contact information: 
Senni Kirjavainen
E-mail: senni.kirjavainen@aalto.fi