Abstract
Linking education and research requires a transdisciplinary perspective and specific attention to translating research into practice by producing easy-to-understand materials and experiences that prepare students for the challenge of navigating complexity on the systems scale. An emerging trend in service design for the public sector is the ideation and deployment of a systemic approach to tackle complex grand challenges, which requires an adaptation and novel design of learning methodologies and content for public sector stakeholders aiming to learn to innovate. Systemic approach has been studied extensively in business literature and private sector concepts. However, when applied to the public sector and municipalities, it is an innovation that transcends their traditional roles to become orchestrators of multi-actor collaborations. It is theorized that achieving climate neutrality in urban contexts requires municipalities to adopt a systemic innovation which integrates technological solutions, economic and financial constraints, and social innovations. The interconnectivity of these elements implies that municipalities’ actions must constantly adapt across silos to remain relevant and targeted in a constantly changing local context. From the observation that to achieve the systemic innovation required for reaching climate neutrality in cities, organisational change in the municipality is required. Thus, municipalities need to build the relevant capabilities required to address climate issues by becoming learning organisations which can continuously learn how to learn together. In this context, knowledge translation is essential for bridging research and practice, ensuring that evidence-based insights inform policy and decision- making processes. The NetZeroCities EU-funded project aims to support European cities to become Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by deploying a Learning by Doing design approach [26] to create stakeholder buy-in to shift the public sector mindset when proposing comprehensive, innovative solutions co-created with citizens, private companies, civic organizations and research institutions, which disrupt the current siloed approaches to managing cities. The NetZeroCities project provides cities with information, tools, and expertise to support urban climate transitions to achieve climate neutrality in a socially inclusive way. This research outlines how the strategy tool of the Sweet Spot framework is typically utilized in corporate strategy making and applied to sustainability [20] through a co-design methodology. It identifies key organisational capabilities, alternative pathways, and stakeholder needs to support climate action at the municipal level. The results have informed the design of the NetZero Cities Learning offer value proposition [22], an educational digital portal designed to empower and legitimise public administrators, researchers, civic organisations, policymakers, consultants, and change-makers to reach climate neutrality in urban areas through learning from other cities. This paper highlights the critical role of knowledge translation in bridging research and policy implementation, strengthening the links between academic inquiry and real-world climate action, and giving EU municipalities the skills required to implement climate transition technologies in the public sector systemically. It provides a theoretical contribution to the discourse on how a transdisciplinary team may co-design education programs for the public sector through a strategy tool typically utilised in the business methods of innovation. Keywords: Systemic innovation, education, capability building, technology, learning organisation, digital learning, development, learning by doing, co-design.
ISBN (International Standard Book Number)
978-84-09-74218-9
Citation
Ricard, M., Rizzo, F., Bresciani, S. (2025) Bridging Research and Practice in the Public Sector: Leveraging Sweet Spot Analysis of NetZeroCities Outcomes to Advance Climate Action in European Municipalities, EDULEARN25 Proceedings, pp. 10075-10082.
See full paper here: https://hdl.handle.net/11311/1293889