Background

Change Laboratory (CL) as the object of development in KP-Lab

Change Laboratory® is a method for exploring and initiating developing work practices by the practitioners together with the interventionist-researchers (Engeström, Virkkunen, Helle, Pihlaja & Poikela, 1996). The idea is to bring work redesign closer to the daily shop floor practice while still keeping it analytical, which means dialectics of close embeddedness in and reflective distance from work. The method supports expansive learning (Engeström, 1987), which involves major transformations of the work activity within or across work units and organizations.

Change Laboratory method was developed on the fundamental notion on the dual stimulation (Vygotsky, 1978). The first stimulus is provided by showing the participating workers data from their work. This data is called the mirror. The second stimulus, aimed at starting to solve the problems seen in the mirror, is a systemic model of activity offered to the participants whereby they may vision and design the future way of working.

When using the Change Laboratory method, we address a whole setting of learning tools employed in the development of work aiming at facilitating boundary crossing between the fields of expertise and knowledge. As work is more and more done in (distributed) networks, and companies act more and more globally, the learning tools should be developed to enhance the collaborative analysis and development of distributed work. Therefore, we gather researchers, designers as well as practitioners (participants from the partnering professional organizations) and end users to design and experiment with “virtual” Change Laboratory tools. The focus of interest will be in following and analyzing how the participants take the tools into use and develop them, and how the new tools will change the collaboration and learning.

Change Laboratory design and development at Pöyry

Pöyry is a globally operating consulting and engineering firm. It has three core areas of expertise: energy, forest industry, and infrastructure and environment. This case concentrates on Pöyry’s Forest Industry business area, which is ranked a market leader in its sector providing engineering and project implementation services for pulp and paper industry projects worldwide, maintenance engineering and other local services to the mills, consulting on forest industry strategies and operations and investment banking.

The challenges we are addressing within the frame of the KP-Lab are of strategic nature for Pöyry. The practices of product development and knowledge creation have to support the expansion and innovation in the present market situation. On the operational level, the development and learning challenges of the knowledge practices of Pöyry were summarized in the Deliverable 10.1 report in questions like: How do we reach shared practices and ways of running projects even when operating in a network? How do we ensure in a systematic way learning from one project to another over time? Related to these questions, we have started to focus on the problems of the design, implementation and sustainable use of the knowledge tools and systems in the collaborative network of Pöyry. The theoretical focus is on: shared practices and object of work in a global network; design, implementation and sustainable use of the knowledge tools and systems in the collaborative network; creating a learning instrumentalities for concept-level changes of the core business activity.

In the course of the historical shift from an initially nation-wide to today’s global company, Pöyry has developed and keeps on developing radically new product and business development processes. This includes wide range of challenges; from how to enhance innovation in global network to how to ensure successful roll-out and sustainable use of developed tools. Product and business development thus far has been head-office centric, which has meant an underutilization of the developmental potential of the global network as a whole.

As a piloting case for the first round of the Change Laboratory development, we have chosen the global CRM (Custom Relations Management) system and its implementation by different customer-servicing units. Beyond the operational-level questions, there are the strategic questions of creating a learning system to support the concept-level changes of the core business activity and their implementation throughout the network. The technology-in-use at Pöyry faces the business-strategic challenge of transforming the customer processes from several parallel practices of different, previously independent, business units (with own historical backgrounds) to one unifying process defined on the level of the global forest industry business. In the case of the CRM, the manifest problem is the present underutilization of the CRM tools, referring to the fact that the entries to the logs storing the information of customer contacts and final proposals are fewer than expected. Specifically, the CRM process and tools designed within the Forest Industry group are poorly implemented by the network of engineering units.

In this case we presume that the awareness of CRM processes in different parts of the company, and the needs for shared knowledge provides the first step in getting motivated to use the tools. This was the focus of the first pilot during spring 2007. For this pilot, we produced mirror material on the problems of the use of the CRM system, which was discussed by the designers of the system, the users themselves, and the management of development and application service units.

In addition to the data on Pöyry’s activities described above we have gathered data from the KP-Lab design process focusing on the CL design. It contains a series of audio taped KP-Lab multi-disciplinary design meetings on the design of the Change Laboratory tools. This material sheds light to a) phases of collaborative design within the KP-Lab project and b) negotiations between the KP-Lab researchers and the Pöyry developers on the potential objects of development to be addressed in the Change Laboratory tools pilot. The outcomes have informed the CL design process in terms of matrixes, mock-ups, use specifications and requirements of Shared Space (in collaboration with WP6).

Research questions

1 What are the phases of the multi-disciplinary design of the CL tools in terms of

• designing learning instrumentalities for co-configuration work

• object creation through creation of boundary objects

• contradictions and disturbances

• multiple social languages and perspectives

2 How do the work developmental interest of Pöyry and the design interests of CL tool development meet and contribute in terms of

• the development of learning tools for work

• development of in-parallel methods of data gathering and analysis (of work development and tools design)

• development of multi-level design process

3 How does the virtual CL tool look like in terms of

• components designed, technical solutions made in the KP-Lab context
• end use activity by the researcher-interventionists (researchers and consults)

Timeline and contact persons and senior researchers

Research question 1: Data gathered, the first phase analyzed by Hanna Toiviainen and Yrjö Engeström. Analysis continues by Hanna Toiviainen, Seppo Toikka, Jiri Lallimo.

Research question 2: Data gathered, analysis going on.

Research question 3: Starts 2008.