Developing Dynamic Intellectual Capital Through Creative Group Dynamics: The ACSI Innovation Platform

In our paper, we examine an international innovation initiative called Aalto Camp for Societal Innovations (ACSI), organized in 2010 and 2011 in Finland. ACSI brings the areas of education, research and innovations together and form an international innovation forum that works as a tool for solving societal problems. ACSI is designed to provide a working platform that enables conditions for self-organization and creativity to emerge in heterogeneous problem-solving groups. We use the case study approach and examine in detail how the problem of the city of Kotka, located in Southern Finland, has been worked on in the two consecutive ACSI camps by focusing on group dynamics and supporting environmental conditions. Based on the analysis, we argue that heterogeneous self-organizing groups are a key structure for generating societal innovations and thereby a central mechanism of dynamic IC creation. We demonstrate the process of creating societal innovations and the key enabling environmental conditions and group strategies therein. In sum, the paper provides an analytical explanation of how societal innovation can be organized for. The working model for facilitated self-organizing groups is applicable for innovation purposes and creative endeavors in many types of contexts.