"I found it exciting to be lost" - Cross Innovation with DESY

The Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY for short) and the Design Zentrum Hamburg are ten kilometres apart - and yet the people who work here are worlds apart. The staff at DESY conduct basic research: they work with lasers, accelerators and photons. Their work is evidence-based and the results are falsifiable. At the Design Zentrum Hamburg, which is representative of so many creative places in the city, the work is open-ended, innovative and creative.

Can these two approaches benefit from each other? This is put to the test in the Cross Innovation Lab (CIL) at the Cross Innovation Hub. Over several weeks, four experts from the pool of creatives are working with DESY researchers on a joint idea: an oasis that combines research, education and spending time in public spaces.

From filter coffee and Linkin Park

On a Monday morning in September, you can sense a relaxed familiarity between the participants, who are chatting about Linkin Park's oeuvre over filter coffee and crumble cake. You can tell that the DESY researchers and the experts from the pool of creatives have been able to get to know each other during the four project units that have already taken place. Sometimes one group feels at home, sometimes the other. In the tailor-made programme, DESY employees give tours of their impressive premises, while other sessions, such as the concept proof workshop today, take place at the Design Zentrum's long table - and on magnetic walls, at the coffee counter and on the benches by the window. But it wasn't so peaceful right from the start, says Michael Schieben, co-facilitator of the project. But more on that later.

What questions does DESY know the answer to?

Firstly, we need to understand what the aim of the pilot project is. One of the initiators on the part of DESY is Zahra Saleh, who works in the Innovation & Technology Transfer department. The innovation manager's job is to use transdisciplinary collaboration to transfer DESY's basic research into more unusual areas of application - such as fashion or sustainability. "We want to broaden our spectrum and discover hidden potential in our research," says Saleh. She is driven by the hope that DESY may harbour important answers to questions that other industries are grappling with. A successful practical example: fashion designer Jennifer Johnson approached DESY with a specific enquiry. "The designer has an autoimmune disease and was looking for a material that effectively protects against high levels of solar radiation," says Saleh, describing the start of the collaboration. She was then connected with a DESY scientist; together they are now developing a spraying process that sustainably coats fabrics, which are literally utilised in the Hamburg label J-040. A prime example of cross innovation - and an "outside-in process" in which a question was brought to the research institute from outside. "We want to support DESY in conducting 'research outside the box'," says Patrick Scheckelhoff from the Cross Innovation Hub, summarising the aim of the lab.

Cross Innovation Hub and DESY build a lighthouse

But there are other goals: DESY's innovation management wants to make it palatable for its researchers to exchange ideas with other people and institutions. "This is an important soft skill," says Saleh. "We want our scientists to see their research through the eyes of others." This change of perspective is not only important for their own research, but also for the acquisition of new funding and cooperation partners. It serves as a proof of concept in the Transfer Worlds project (see info box), in which the CIL is embedded, and is intended to prove that collaboration with new stakeholders can advance the research centre. In the next step, Saleh's department must also create space for the researchers: financial, temporal and literal. This is a long process that DESY is undertaking together with the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW).

The Cross Innovation Hub and DESY are also building a joint lighthouse here: the project also proves that creative minds are important sources of inspiration for science. This is new territory for the Cross Innovation Hub, which has already successfully implemented several lab formats with industry and is now venturing into research. Will it work?

Industrial designer Sebastian Mends-Cole, who is accompanying a lab for the fourth time, reports: "I was very excited about the collaboration, also in comparison to business representatives." And he can confirm this: The scientists are extremely creative. Despite their different ways of working, all participants share a curiosity for new solutions.

It's exciting to be lost

Synergy, curiosity and team spirit from the very first second? It wasn't quite that simple, because uncertainty is part of an open-ended process. A circumstance that many creative people are familiar with from their work. After all, creative processes often begin with an open question, which they approach freely and innovatively. "I was totally open-ended," confirms industrial designer Mechthild Ubl, "and found it exciting to be lost". At the same time, she senses that her new team colleagues are far less used to uncertainty.

This is demonstrated, for example, by the brainstorming session that started the brainstorming process. The basic principle of the method is to first accept all ideas without judgement. "However, you immediately realised during the process that feasibility is always taken into account at DESY," says Hannah Kemper from the Cross Innovation Hub, describing the session. "Ideas were translated directly into complex formulas, calculated - and declared unfeasible," adds Michael Schieben with a laugh. However, other ideas were followed with curiosity and showed that the Cross Innovation Lab's methods work. "I recommend that the researchers take what they have learnt here into their everyday work," says Saleh, emphasising the added value of the conceptual framework that the hub has developed.

So while the focus is initially on opposing approaches, the creative minds gain a better understanding of the research centre's scope for possibilities and DESY employees learn to allow for uncertainty and ambiguity. "Scientists usually know exactly what they want," says participating engineer David Reuther. In the lab, the process is much more open-ended and Reuther enjoys the fact that so many free questions are asked in the programme. "This is also becoming increasingly important for us," he says, because basic research is now so differentiated that the transfer of knowledge must also grow among DESY employees.

The result is a Trojan horse

Anyone who follows the lab quickly realises that the process is at least as important as the result. But what is the team working on now? SOLR (Sustainable Oasis for Learning and Recharge) is a place in public space that generates solar power. However, users who want to charge their mobile phones, for example, have to take part in a sustainability quiz. A Trojan horse that uses a gamification approach to raise awareness about sustainability and the work of DESY. SOLR also offers DESY the opportunity to test future technologies and make its work more visible to the public.participant Christina Schwemmbauer, who actually researches dark matter, demonstrates the rapid progress of the project: "Five workshop days ago, the idea was nothing more than an open question. Now the researcher presents the concept in a convincing elevator pitch.

But what happens next? Postdoctoral researcher Nikita Khodakovskiy analyses how realistic the next steps are, which include building a prototype, for example. Because what creatives and researchers definitely have in common is a lack of time - and financial resources. However, the finalised concept, which was presented at the end of November, is the perfect basis for acquiring funding and motivates the newly formed team to pursue the idea further. And so hopefully an oasis will emerge that shows that the creative industries and science can learn a lot from each other.