The aim is to investigate how stakeholders can participate in the early phases of construction projects and how relevant insights can be gathered from stakeholders with very different backgrounds and interests. To gain these insights, it is important to understand how a space can be created to facilitate communication between professionals and stakeholders. The research draws on the literature of design and user-driven innovation in order to get a richer understanding of stakeholders' involvement in construction. The method applied is research based on three stakeholder workshops, interviews and observations from a single case study. The findings provide valuable information on six aspects of who the stakeholders are in construction, what these stakeholders can do in construction when involved, how to involve these stakeholders in a construction project, how a space can be staged and facilitated for the meeting of stakeholders, and what kind of information can be collected from the stakeholders to influence the development process. The findings show how creating and facilitating a workshop as a socio-technical space across boundaries can overcome barriers and improve stakeholders' involvement and thus provide better insights into their needs, values and concerns.
Increased competition requires retail stores to increasingly focus on improving their customers’ experiences. Along this line, this article explores how a co-design approach can help retail stores of outdoor products develop consumer communities as a part of their store concept. Such stores may be particularly interesting in relation to consumer communities, because of the consumers’ often passionate relationship to activities related to the products in focus. Two longitudinal case studies of outdoor product stores in Denmark are investigated. The two cases are investigated through interviews, store observations, network meetings, and co-design workshops. Several important findings are discovered: first, in relation to community forms, the article defined three archetypes: business–consumer (BC), consumer–consumer (CC), and a combination of the two (BCCC). Second, in relation to the premises for the creation of communities, the article defined three types: consumer motivation, consumer availability, and consumer homogeneity. Third, in relation to consumer community activities, the article argued that these could be understood as being defined by three elements: the business, the consumers, and the products. Finally, the article defined four overall types of community-initiated activities by distinguishing if they are consumer-initiated or business-initiated and if they have a recreational or goal-oriented purpose.
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