The innovation management literature describes a competitive advantage when applying Design Thinking (DT) in corporate environments. In this paper we study the perceived challenges, enablers, and benefits for implementing DT in publicly funded transdisciplinary industry-academia research and innovation consortia (RIC). We facilitate and investigate five large RIC from the food and high-tech industry in Norway and Germany using an explorative qualitative action research design. Our research shows that the challenges of using DT in RIC are to some extent comparable to those for the corporate context. Additionally, we identify distinct challenges for RIC. Benefits from using DT in RIC are stronger user and innovation focus, better transdisciplinary collaboration, and triangulation of qualitative with scientific data. We suggest that complex RIC benefit from an intermediary (DT) role translating business needs into research questions, and research results into understandable and business-relevant information and innovation.

Over the recent years, the importance of innovation in academic R&D projects has increased. Nevertheless, innovation facilitation in the academic field has rarely been researched. Currently, innovation support focuses on the industrial context. In our study we aim to address this research gap and examine the facilitation of innovation in the academic and the industrial context. In our abductive empirical case study, we investigate the role, skills, mindset and instruments of innovation facilitators by interviewing 25 individuals from nine organizations. We discovered different behaviors and perspectives in dealing with innovation work, depending on the context of the either academic or industry-driven projects. Academic innovation projects focus on feasibility, whereas industry-driven projects focus on viability. In both contexts, the facilitators usually intend to include the user perspective (desirability). With our results we contribute to the facilitation literature and show that innovation projects and their facilitation depend on their specific context and the mentality of the facilitators. With these results, we strive to improve academic and industry-driven projects with advice for innovation practitioners and facilitators on helpful tools and important perspectives to fully exploit the innovation potential.