Knowledgeability culture: Co-creation in practice

Co-creation is a term that traverses a philosophy, method and mindset of collective creativity. It is an evolving construct used by diverse disciplines, but as yet is imperfectly defined (Sanders & Stappers, 2012). This paper explores co-creation within a community of practice in Design Factory Melbourne (DFM) at Swinburne University of Technology. This community of practice includes researchers, academics, industry and external collaborators working towards shared meaning, which is the collective understanding of the industry problem-context. We understand co-creation as negotiation through which solutions are optimised rather than compromised. The community of practice is guided by five principles; safety, exploration, responsibility, communication and collaboration. This paper is a case study that applies these five principles to demonstrate how shared meaning is negotiated and achieved in practice. The paper is an artefact co-created by seven individual voices working together within the community of practice in an industry-integrated doctoral program.