DBS 1 (1) pp.

7–28 Intellect Limited 2015

Journal of Design, Business & Society

Volume 1 Number 1
© 2015 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/dbs.1.1.7_1

Rex Degnegaard
INITIATIVES A/S

Stine Degnegaard
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts

Peter Coughlan
Bainbridge Graduate Institute

How to Design for Large-Scale

Multi-Stakeholder Co-Creation
Initiatives: Reframing Crime
Prevention Challenges with
the Police in Denmark

Abstract Keywords
The police in Denmark have made a strategic intent to engage and activate external co-creation
stakeholders in crime prevention efforts. However, knowledge of how to unfold the strategic visualization
potential of such multi-stakeholder, co-creation-based business models is scarce. The design thinking
current study was initiated to explore the roles of design thinking and strategic visu- police
alization in designing for multi-stakeholder, co-creation-based business models. The strategy
study is based on the design, execution and results of a workshop with the Danish multi-stakeholder
police in which almost 100 innovation professionals worked on designing solutions community based
for crime prevention challenges identified and put forth by the Danish police. The problem solving
article points to how design thinking and strategic visualization can be essential co-design

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Rex Degnegaard | Stine Degnegaard ...

Figure 1: LAICS Summit.

vehicles in realizing the potential of co-creation-based business models by allow-

ing for emergence, while at the same time creating clarity that potentially leads to a
productive reframing of the targeted challenge.

Introduction
In late May 2013, 96 Danish professionals from across sectors and industries
met for a day to work together on a challenge of relevance to citizens of any
nation – crime prevention.
Danish Police Commissioner Helle Kyndesen had identified what she
considered to be her two most complex and persistent challenges and brought
them with her for the group of innovation professionals to work on. These
challenges were (1) combating and preventing organized crime in vulnerable
neighbourhoods in Denmark; and (2) reducing the large numbers of burglaries
occurring in private homes in Denmark.
Design has long been viewed as a way to create value for businesses
through the creation of new products, services and experiences. Recently,
however, the design process has begun to be viewed as a means for address-
ing business challenges, where the tools and methods of design can be turned
inwardly on an organization to bring about desired change as discussed by,
for instance, Boland and Collopy (2006). Well-designed products, services and
experiences that customers appreciate and see value in are of course critical
to the success of an organization, but the capabilities inherent in a design
process – the ability to sense customer and employee unmet needs, to gener-
ate ideas that meet those needs, and to develop and test those ideas in low-
cost and low-risk ways – are capabilities that can be used to help organizations
with any challenge they are facing, whether market-facing or internal.
Although Denmark is known for its strong tradition in design, the use of
design to solve business and organizational problems is still a relatively new
practice. However, the police commissioner was open to new ways to help her
approach her challenges and was intrigued by the idea that design could play
a role in helping her make headway on her organization’s long-standing and

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Figure 2: The insights from the LAICS Summit.

difficult problems. Already committed to a process of co-creation, Kyndesen

readily agreed to bring in design-based approaches such as storytelling, brain-
storming and prototyping, which could help supplement the process and move
her closer towards specific actionable solutions. These solutions would be
informed by participants’ actual experiences with the police (and with crime),
as well as by related experiences outside the realm of crime prevention.
Bringing design intentionally into the co-creation process would expand
the range of possible solutions by tapping into human behaviour at a deeper
level to reveal citizens’ mental models, reframing the challenges in human
terms, and creating solutions that borrowed from other sectors and indus-
tries – solutions that had already proven their value elsewhere and might be
adapted by the police to help solve their most challenging problems.
Throughout the day-long workshop, the group of innovation professionals
addressed the commissioner’s two challenges using a carefully designed proc-
ess that was aimed at accommodating the strategic perspective of the police,
the specific constraints of the Danish police organization, and the extremely
complex nature of the challenge.
At the end of the workshop, participants presented to the police commis-
sioner eight solutions for the two given challenges. From these solutions the
police commissioner identified three opportunity areas for her organization,
including (1) proximity (reducing the gap between the police and citizens);
(2) smarter use of technology as an enabler of safety and security; and (3)
knowing when and how to partner to achieve the best outcomes for all
stakeholders.
This case, together with its process and its outcomes, explores how
designing for problem finding and problem solutions in multi-stakeholder
societal challenges can be enabled through a blend of co-creation, strategic
visualization and design thinking processes.

The strategic challenges within the Danish police

The Danish police have a strong focus on activating and engaging other stake-
holders in tackling police-related challenges within the areas of safety and
security. This clear trajectory towards co-creation is described below in order
to give an understanding of how the police have come to the conclusion that
they need to focus on co-creation, with design thinking and strategic visuali-
zation as essential vehicles to realize the potential of co-creation.
One of the authors of this article has worked extensively with the police
as a researcher and advisor since the beginning of 2006. During this time,
the police have undergone drastic changes. They have gone from a concealed
organization in which the police themselves ‘knew best’ regarding questions

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Rex Degnegaard | Stine Degnegaard ...

related to operational police tasks or highly complex specialist concerns such

as IT or finance. Today, this is changing dramatically. The Danish police have
opened up to the idea of bringing in other specialist competencies at all levels
and functions of the organization. Furthermore, they have become more open
to partnerships and collaboration with external resources.
The police are experiencing a need to collaborate with other public insti-
tutions, corporations, NGOs and civic groups to address challenges in their
domains of responsibility (as discussed in Degnegaard and Waldorff, 2013).
The police have turned to co-creation as a structured and systematic approach
to activate and engage other stakeholders in solving police-related tasks.
The tendency towards a higher degree of co-creation-based collabora-
tion in safety and security concerns is seen both nationally and internationally.
Nationally, this is seen with cases involving burglaries in private homes, vulner-
able neighbourhoods, organized crime and particularly complex challenges
such as human trafficking and exit programmes for previous gang members.
This tendency is also clear internationally. Core police tasks that have
previously been considered national matters are increasingly becoming inter-
national matters due to the globalization of criminal activity. Thus, burglaries
in private homes, human trafficking and cyber crime have increasingly begun
to span national borders. This tendency is reflected in the focus set by the
international think tank of National Police Commissioners ‘Pearls in Policing’
who have set co-creation at the top of their agenda in recent years as crime
patterns have become still more complex, transnational and as they increas-
ingly cross government agency boundaries and specialist disciplines.
For the Danish police, the intent to activate and engage external stake-
holders has been made explicit in the strategy for 2011–2015. The strategy
highlights a number of focus areas that include ‘Listen more actively and
communicate more directly with stakeholders’, and ‘Think and act in an
inter-sectorial manner with other official agencies and companies, and work
on knowledge transfer externally and internally’ (Danish National Police and
Public Prosecution Service, 2010).
In pursuit of executing on this strategic intent and delivering on the increas-
ingly complex police-related challenges, the police have made a focused effort
towards building co-creation capabilities in the organization. They have done
this by including co-creation as an essential part of a newly designed master’s
degree programme in police management for executive police officers, and by
applying co-creation methodologies on specific police challenges.
In applying co-creation methods to police work, it is clear that existing
methodologies and processes need adjustment to be useful in the police. The
organizational specificity of the police poses concerns and sets requirements
that are different from the foundation on which many organizational method-
ologies and processes are constructed. Given the often sensitive nature of their
work and being the executive power in society brings with it concerns regard-
ing relational and informational asymmetry, access challenges, specific cultural
and identity challenges, etc. (Degnegaard, 2010). However, the challenges that
the police faced in applying co-creation did not solely apply to police organi-
zations. In the process of applying co-creation methodologies, challenges that
would be of relevance to co-creation initiatives in other sectors were encoun-
tered and required further development in process and methodologies.
Two of the main challenges that surfaced in applying co-creation method-
ologies to police cases were direct reasons for introducing design thinking and
strategic visualization as essential process vehicles. One challenge that was faced

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in applying co-creation methodologies in safety- and security-related cases with

the police was that of framing the co-creation challenge. Framing the challenge
of a co-creation initiative is of great importance – and it is a very difficult task.
On the one hand, the challenge must be framed in a way that it can enable each
stakeholder in the initiative to contribute with value to the overall challenge.
On the other hand, the challenge must be framed so that each stakeholder can
see that they do not only contribute to the overall challenge but also that the
initiative produces value for them too (Ramaswamy and Gouilllart, 2010).
The balancing of these two concerns in co-creation initiatives was essen-
tially a call for help in framing the challenge in a useful and constructive way.
To assist in framing the co-creation challenge, design thinking plays a primary
role in this essential part of the co-creation process. The role of design think-
ing is described in further detail in the section ‘Why design thinking and
strategic visualization?’ below.
The fact that the different stakeholders in co-creation initiatives have differ-
ent interests is a premise of co-creation initiatives. Co-creation initiatives rely on
joint efforts from actors with what can be described as dynamic value potential
(Degnegaard, 2012). Value potential of a co-creation initiative can be said to be
dynamic in that it is made up of different ‘currencies’ across stakeholders. One
stakeholder may value knowledge as a primary value – as is the case, for exam-
ple, with universities. Another stakeholder may value culture, as could be the
case with a city or with institutions such as theatres, sports clubs, etc. A third
value potential could be financial, in terms of goods sold, as is often the case with
private corporations. Thus, the value potential of the initiative is dynamic in that
it takes a different form depending on which stakeholder’s perspective is taken.
This poses extreme difficulties in terms of the process in these multi-stakeholder
initiatives. The processing of co-creation initiatives is most often iterative, involv-
ing the revisitation of previously discussed matters throughout the process and
allowing for emergence in the process. In co-creation initiatives, this has proven
to pose processual challenges in regard to primarily three concerns: (1) how to
create clarity of the different positions, capabilities and responsibilities of the
various stakeholders; (2) how to create a clear enough picture of the initiative to
serve as a substantial basis for decision-making among the stakeholders in the
process; and (3) how to establish a basis for communicating the initiative inside
the respective organizations of the different stakeholders – organizations with
different communication traditions. To help overcome these process-related
challenges in co-creation initiatives, strategic visualization plays an impor-
tant role. See more about the role of strategic visualization in the section ‘Why
design thinking and strategic visualization?’ below.
Thus, design thinking and strategic visualization are essential vehicles for
the processes in co-creation initiatives in overcoming some of the common
difficulties and challenges that appear in these large-scale multi-stakeholder
initiatives.

Co-creation efforts to address the challenges

Co-creation has undergone an explosive growth in the literature as well
as in practice in recent years. The field of co-creation is moving into sepa-
rate areas of application, with marketing being the most dominant direction
(Degnegaard, 2012).
The field has transitioned from a primarily marketing and product devel-
opment focus in the beginning of the century with Prahalad and Ramaswamy

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(2004) playing strong roles in the field. In more recent years, co-creation as
a field has provided other fields such as innovation (Pfitzer, Bockstette and
Stamp, 2013) and – of particular relevance to this study – co-creation is
moving into problem-solving and problem-finding approaches as discussed
by Gouillart and Billings (2013).
The latter is an emerging co-creation trajectory of designing initiatives as
a way of engaging diverse actors across corporations, sectors and agencies to
address challenges that are too complex and comprehensive for any one actor
to address successfully (Degnegaard, 2012; Gouillart and Billings, 2013).
This approach to co-creation with a community-powered approach to
problem-solving is very much in line with the strategic co-creation direction
of the police and with the approach to co-creation that underlies the current
study.

Why design thinking and strategic visualization?

Design thinking and strategic visualization offer a systematic approach to
exploring opportunities in a way that traditional problem-solving approaches
cannot. Strategic visualization and design thinking allow for dynamic and
open problem-solving processes (Boland and Collopy, 2006) striving towards
the best possible solution through collaborative processes where we all are
co-designers (Moggridge, 2007). Co-creation, design thinking and strategic
visualization are also created around a human-centred perspective (Brown, 2009
Degnegaard, 2012; Mukhtar, Ismail and Yahya, 2012; Norman, 1988) letting
the user/client/consumer experience be at the centre of the process.

Design thinking
As the name suggests, design thinking refers to the ways that designers think.
Nelson and Stolterman (2012) argue that design thinking is a ‘third way’,
bridging the two dominant ways of thinking (in the Western European tradi-
tion) – scientific thinking and artistic thinking. Specific design thinking skills
include empathy (being able to see things from another person’s perspective
and therefore being able to discover unmet needs); craft (the ability to make
even abstract thoughts concrete and experiential so that they can be evaluated
by others); synthesis (the ability to see connections across disparate pieces of
data); and optimism (the propensity to believe that a solution is possible even
if it is not immediately apparent).
Tim Brown, Chief Executive Officer of IDEO, a design and innovation
consultancy, articulates the value of design thinking as ‘accelerating innova-
tion to create better solutions to the challenges facing business and society’
(Brown, 2009). In addition to providing a rapid and reliable method to
come up with solutions in just about any sector, design thinking provides a
number of other benefits. Many design research methods help stakeholders
develop empathy for other stakeholders in a system, enabling higher levels of
trust, which in turn leads to higher quality collaboration. (For some of these
empathy-building methods, see for instance, IDEO, 2003 or Kumar, 2012.)
Design thinking also allows teams to efficiently synthesize and draw
insights from large amounts of seemingly disparate data. Using the common
design-thinking tools of storytelling and frameworks enables groups to quickly
spot patterns and identify opportunities. Rapid prototyping allows participants
to quickly translate abstract ideas into more concrete representations that can
be used to gather feedback and reveal stakeholders’ mental models.

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Finally, the practice of introducing prototypes into living systems allows

for low risk, low cost assessment of proposed solutions while at the same time
engaging new stakeholders in the co-creation of those solutions as they test
and refine them in the course of their work.

Strategic visualization
Strategic visualization is the use of large-scale imagery for strategic purposes
and is used in change management, visioning and organizational develop-
ment processes (Öste, 2012). Strategic visualizations are spatial-visual narra-
tives and are created through collaborative and/or facilitated processes with
the aim of solving problems, improving collaboration, building engagement
and strengthening communication and action.
Strategic visualization enables groups to work with complexity by creating
clarity, serving as a foundation for decision-making, and allowing groups to
discuss and qualify processes collaboratively.
In practice, there is a clear tendency towards the increased use of spatial-
visual representation as necessary tools for complex problem-solving in
business-related challenges, particularly within the realms of spatial-visual
representation referred to as strategic visualization. In previous years, the
field has experienced a massive growth in demand for strategic visualiza-
tion in organizations that wish to address complex business-related chal-
lenges. Examples of cases include strategy implementation in global working
environments, making sense of vast amounts of information (big data),
co-designing solutions with customers and handling complexity.
The growing importance of representational artefacts such as visualizations
in complex business challenges and multi-stakeholder processes has been
accompanied by growth
in the popularity and application of new decision-
making and problem-solving approaches, for example tactility in business
modelling (Luebbe and Weske, 2012), visual data mapping or ‘knowledge scaf-
folding’, which encompasses physical and architectural dimensions (Alexander,
Eppler and Bresciani, 2013) and visual-spatial arrangement as an aid for collab-
orative work and knowledge sharing (Bresciani and Eppler, 2009).
Strategic visualization was represented in various formats at the summit –
as process design tools behind the scenes (sketching), as visual process guid-
ance throughout the day (posters and handouts) and as tools for workshop
participants to engage with the content (posters/templates). Finally, the day’s
work was illustrated in real time on a large, one-metre by seven-metre poster,
capturing the flow of the day, content and output and thus serving as a visual
resumé of the event.

Setting the stage

The event for the workshop was the first annual summit of the Leadership
and Innovation in Complex Systems (LAICS) master’s programme, a shared
master’s degree between Copenhagen Business School and Aarhus University.
Students in the LAICS programme are experienced innovation professionals
from both the private and public sectors with skills and experience in collabo-
rative innovative processes.
The summit was an exclusive event for LAICS students, alumni, faculty
and friends, based on the idea that each participant would leave their own
organizations for one day and work together on a challenge with specific
relevance to society and of interest to all participants.

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The event was both a learning opportunity for the participants, but equally
importantly a way of utilizing the knowledge and resources of alumni, students
and friends to give back to society.

The process
Designing the event
The LAICS Summit was designed over Skype, across countries and time
zones. With the organizers being in California and Denmark, there was a
strong need to align understanding during the process. Frequent strate-
gic visualizations were therefore made to represent the ongoing design and
thus to prevent miscommunications by translating abstract conversations into
tangible, visual scenarios.
In designing the summit process, the visualizations enabled the organizers
to connect high-level ideas to a coherent structure and to then see what was
missing in the process flow in order to meet the overall purpose of the day.
The strategic visualizations enabled the organizers to ‘zoom’ into the future,
allowing them to see what was to take place at each stage, and to follow the
participants’ journey throughout the day. It thus became clear what informa-
tion and tools would be needed throughout the process, as well as providing
a clear understanding of timing, roles and responsibilities.
Designing the event was an iterative process where strategic visualizations
captured, at any given time, the design team’s current understanding of the
event. Through tangible visualizations, the organizers were able to establish a
common view, which resulted in a rapid, efficient, yet creative process across
time zones.
The strategic visualization below served throughout the event as the
‘red thread’ that connected many levels. On the contextual level, it provided

Figure 3: Designing the process.

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Figure 4: Designing the templates.

background information for the participants as to who they were, why they
were there, what their roles were and what their efforts would amount to after
the summit. On the content level, it presented the case they would be work-
ing on and introduced the case owner. And on the process level it showed the
flow of the day and the tasks linked to each process step: what to do in each
exercise, how much time was allocated for each exercise and what visuals,
tools and prototyping materials to use.

Figure 5: Sketching the process flow.

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Rex Degnegaard | Stine Degnegaard ...

Figure 6: Strategic visualization of the LAICS Summit.

Figure 7: Participants inspecting the strategic visualization.

For the event itself, the strategic visualization was digitalized (drawn by
hand in an illustration programme on a computer) serving the purpose of
agenda and process guidance for the participants. The agenda was printed on
large posters and on handouts for the participants.

The summit
Summit leader Rex Degnegaard welcomed the LAICS innovation experts and
thanked them for taking the time to spend a day working together on such a
challenging societal issue. Degnegaard explained that the Danish police readily
acknowledged that it is unable to solve current and future complex challenges

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Figure 8: Stanford University d.School design-thinking model.

alone and is therefore reaching out to civilians, organizations and institutions

to co-create new solutions. This day was just one example of the Danish police
force’s willingness to bring others in to help with their challenges.
For 96 people to be able to work on the same challenge for one day and
create a useful output, a balanced process with both room for creativity and a
solid structure would need to be in place. The process designed by the authors
to lead the participants through the day was built with a design-thinking proc-
ess as taught at Stanford’s d.School and used by design firms such as IDEO.
The process followed for the day was comprised of five different phases:
Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Roughly equal amounts of
time were spent on each step of the process.

Empathy phase: Background interview

Sitting comfortably in two armchairs in a living-room setting on the stage,
Police Commissioner Kyndesen was interviewed by Peter Coughlan, at the
time a partner at IDEO. By means of the interview, participants learned about
the commissioner’s vision to maintain safety and security in cooperation
with society. They also learned about the many drug-, gang-, and organized
crime-related challenges that the Danish police are struggling with, as well as
initiatives that had already been launched to fight crime. From a long list of
complex challenges, Commissioner Kyndesen had chosen two challenges for
the innovation experts to work on at the summit: how to fight and prevent
organized crime in vulnerable neighbourhoods; and the prevention of burgla-
ries in private homes. Kyndesen herself was calm but insistent when address-
ing the crowd: ‘We need to work with society outside the police force to solve
these challenges and we need help to see how to do it.’
As the interview progressed, Coughlan probed to get closer to the root
cause of the Danish police challenges. Kyndesen explained that data secu-
rity; the need in a highly democratic country for evidence before taking action
against suspected criminals; and reluctance on the part of the police to work
with non-police institutions were barriers for co-creating with stakeholders
outside the law enforcement system.

Define phase: Sharing stories

After listening to the challenges from the police, it was time for the partici-
pants to share personal stories related to the police challenges. The biggest
issues for the police in terms of co-creating with others seemed to be issues

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Rex Degnegaard | Stine Degnegaard ...

Figure 9: Sharing stories.

of control, transparency, trust and engagement. Due to the number of partici-

pants at the summit and the relatively short process, these four themes had
been identified with the help of Commissioner Kyndesen before the workshop
and were provided to participants as prompts to help focus their storytelling.
In groups of four or five, the participants were asked to share real-
life, tangible stories about when they had experienced one of four of these
principles: stories about gaining (or losing) control; stories in which trust was
either created or destroyed; stories related to appropriate or inappropriate
levels of transparency; or stories that illustrated when participants had experi-
enced extremely high or low levels of engagement. At each table were instruc-
tional sheets with the four topics written on them, with one of the four topics
highlighted to indicate which topic that table was to focus on (although table
groups were instructed that should the highlighted topic not work for them,
they were free to choose a different topic to fuel their storytelling).

Figure 10: Instructional sheet at the tables.

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The participants were asked to record headlines for their stories on post-
its. These headlines would help participants later recall the stories they had
told about experiencing control, transparency, trust and engagement. By using
the four themes as lenses for sharing stories, the groups had now gathered
highly personal and relevant data to help them generate novel ideas about the
challenges. The story headlines would thus function as the inspirational foun-
dation for the next process step, ideation.

Ideation phase: Brainstorming and idea stretching

After each participant had shared a story or stories related to the police, the
groups were now ready to enter the next design step: brainstorming. Rules
practised by IDEO (including defer judgment, encourage wild ideas, build on
the ideas of others, stay focused on the topic, be visual, one conversation at
a time and go for quantity) were introduced in order to support the team’s
brainstorming efforts. Each team had 20 minutes to come up with ideas.
Examples of some ideas that came out of this session include: use Facebook
for crime prevention; break into your neighbour’s house (to demonstrate how
it is vulnerable); an X-Factor competition for criminals; a ‘be a police officer
for a day’ programme; a ‘draw your burglar’ app; and gangster apprentice
programmes (to help citizens learn how criminals think).
In design-thinking terms, the participants were now in a period of diver-
gence – generating dozens of ideas – before they would be asked to converge
on a small number of ideas to develop further during the next step in the
process (see illustration below).
After brainstorming, participants were now asked to apply idea stretch-
ing to four of the many ideas they had come up with. Using the tool found
in Figure 12 below, the participants were asked to make their ideas ‘bigger’
by expanding them either vertically (to encompass an additional principle) or
horizontally (to encompass another step in the co-creation process). So, for
example, if an idea was about strengthening trust, the third universal principle,
participants were asked to try to stretch the idea to encompass the principles
of transparency or engagement. Likewise, if an idea was about identifying an
opportunity, participants were asked to grow the idea so that it might also
encompass envisioning possibilities. In this way, participants could push their
thinking in order to come up with unexpected solutions.

Figure 11: Divergent and convergent phases (Brown, 2009).

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Figure 12: Co-creation journey, work template.

Prototyping: Build to think

Moving into the fourth phase of the design-thinking process, the partici-
pants were introduced to prototyping. Coughlan explained how ‘our hands
are often smarter than our brains’ and how a prototype, therefore, could
serve as a ‘thinking tool’. Prototyping helps make ideas tangible – we can
show how an idea might be part of a larger process, or how a particular detail

Figure 13: Prototyping.

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might work. Creating a tangible manifestation of the idea takes the idea out of
an individual’s head and makes it accessible to others, encouraging dialogue.
During the summit, groups were given an hour to build and refine a prototype
of their selected idea, and to prepare to present it to the client, Commissioner
Kyndesen.

Test: Presentation
The last phase in the d.School design-thinking model is referred to as ‘test’.
In this particular case, the test was a presentation to Commissioner Kyndesen
to see her reaction to the idea. Groups were asked to present their concepts
according to a presentation guideline (see Figure 14 below).

Figure 14: Instructional poster for presentation.

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Rex Degnegaard | Stine Degnegaard ...

Outcomes
In all, eight ideas were presented to the commissioner for her feedback. As is
common in this type of single-day workshop involving people with varying
levels of skill, there was a wide range of ideas presented (although there was
some overlap and repetition), from new-to-the-world concepts to meta-
phors that helped communicate a desirable future state. An example of a
new-to-the-world concept was an idea called ‘entrepreneurs for neighbour-
hood security’, a concept that leverages criminals’ expertise about breaking
into and entering homes to inform the creation of products and services to
protect residential property. An example of a metaphor idea was titled ‘police
station for sale’, a concept that looked at how police behaviour might be
different if there was a shift from the model of a central police station to one
in which police spent much more of their time in communities.
After each presentation, the commissioner made some extemporane-
ous comments about the idea presented. Upon hearing the eight solutions
presented to her, the commissioner shared her rapid synthesis of the presen-
tations into three distinct themes or opportunity areas that the police could
pursue. We have articulated her themes in the form of design challenges:

1. How might we (the police) be closer to citizens? This question addresses

the perceived distance (literal and metaphorical) between the police force
and the citizenry.
2. How might we more effectively build and use technology to support safety
and security? This question looks at the long-standing tradition of the police
being responsible for creating its own centralized technologies, largely in
an attempt to maintain secure control over the data being collected.
3. How might we recognize when it is best to build our own products and serv-
ices and when it is best to partner with others. This question acknowledges
the police commissioner’s realization that in order to create some of the solu-
tions that the summit participants had presented to her, the police would
need to look beyond its current capabilities and resources and to partner
with others who were better suited to helping to address certain challenges.

The presentation by design teams of the eight concepts provided a venue for
Danish citizens to enter directly into dialogue with the commissioner, and to
present their sometimes less than positive views about the current state of law
enforcement and how it could be made more effective. The participants were
able, through humour and creativity, to highlight for the commissioner some
opportunities to fundamentally shift the relationship between police and citi-
zens. Similarly, Commissioner Kyndesen was able to see, in a tangible and
efficient way (through the series of back-to-back presentations) some patterns
of citizen needs as well as patterns of solutions. This enabled the commis-
sioner to reframe her work – work in which a closer connection to citizens
was important, and work in which technology could play a role in connect-
ing, rather than creating barriers, between police and citizens. The visual and
tangible nature of the process led to this reframing of the challenge at hand.
The outcomes from this event were typical of what can be created by a
group of people with first-hand knowledge of a challenge and a strong proc-
ess to help guide them from initial inspiration through to proposed actions.
Outcomes for the day are of course different from long-term outcomes –
while the ideas generated by participants were embraced (to varying degrees)

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by Commissioner Kyndesen, the real test of value would come later, in the
ability of the Commissioner to introduce the proposed ideas in an appropriate
way into the greater law enforcement system.

The insight
As we reviewed the design, execution and output of the summit, the authors
were left with a renewed understanding of why the event was more valuable
than just the resulting eight ideas imagined for Commissioner Kyndesen and
her team to address her challenge.
The combined process introduced Commissioner Kyndesen to a host
of new tools to help her think about her challenges in new ways. From the
design-thinking toolkit, she now has ways to reframe seemingly huge systems
problems as human-scale problems, problems that involve the mental models
and feelings of individuals dealing with one another.
The LAICS participants were able to contribute to reframing the chal-
lenge as a human-scale one by telling personal stories that reflected their own
unique relationships to the police and to the topics of safety and security. In so
doing, they provided tangible examples of how the populace deals with safety
and security day to day, person to person, a perspective the police commis-
sioner does not often experience given her day-to-day national perspective of
the law enforcement system.
This exposure to design thinking also provided Kyndesen with a process
that allowed for ideas to emerge from the ‘end users’ of the systems that the
police have put in place. The ideas generated by these end users will be more
relevant because they have been conceived by people closest to day-to-day
reality.
Furthermore, design thinking has provided Kyndesen with a set of
tools that allow for potentially disruptive ideas to enter into the conversa-
tion. Ordinarily, standard process improvement processes used by most
large organizations would lead to only incremental improvements of exist-
ing practices, products or services. With design thinking, there is the possi-
bility to move beyond incremental innovation and to develop evolutionary
or even revolutionary concepts to meet the needs revealed through the
human-centred design process (for a discussion of the distinction between
these different types of innovation, see Jacoby and Rodriguez, 2007).
The process showed that strategic visualization brings additional tools to
the table, by creating (literally) the ability for a room full of people to hold a big
picture view of the challenge(s) at hand. In a related way, the strategic visuali-
zation artefact also allows summit participants to know that there is a begin-
ning, middle and end to the process, that it has been done before, and that the
facilitators have a detailed plan for how they will support participants to achieve
the goal of coming up with novel solutions for the police commissioner.
In terms of group work, the strategic visualization templates allowed for
the participants to engage in a complex problem-solving process, juggling
different requirements, needs and stakeholders with ease. They provided a
structure for creative thinking with clear frames and expectations but with
room for multiple solutions.
In terms of the visual resumé, the participants were able to revisit the flow
and content of the day. The visual resumé is also a tool to confirm the produc-
tivity and intensity of the day, leaving participants with a feeling of satisfaction
about their efforts.

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Rex Degnegaard | Stine Degnegaard ...

Figure 15: Groups working with co-creation journey template.

This visualization of the process allows participants to manage their discom-

fort of uncertainty during what is often seen and felt as a chaotic process.  In
creative processes, uncertainty can stifle creativity, as discussed by Mueller,
Melwani and Goncalo (2012). Therefore, since creativity is a premise for design-
thinking processes (Kelley and Kelley, 2013), reducing uncertainty in the process
is of great value to the process and the outcome. This applies both to those who
are experienced in such processes and for those who have never before engaged
in such a process. In this sense, strategic visualization plays an essential role in
reducing certainty for participants, allowing for creativity in the process.
Moving beyond this wealth of tools – tools that helped to make the chal-
lenge personal for participants, allowed for emergence, enabled disruptive

Figure 16: Stine Degnegaard retelling the process using visual resumé.

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 How to Design for Large-Scale Multi-Stakeholder ...

Figure 17: Reframing the process.

ideas, created a big picture view and managed discomfort in chaos, the
authors observed that this particular combination of tools, in this particular
order, enabled a transformation in the case owner, Commissioner Kyndesen.
She was able to look at the eight ideas presented to her, quickly see themes
among the solutions that were generated, and to translate these themes into
new principles by which she could now view and assess all of the challenges
she faced in her role as commissioner.
Through the act of engaging in the process, the commissioner had begun
to reframe the way she viewed not just the challenges that the LAICS partici-
pants had worked on during our session, but all the challenges that she as a
leader had to deal with. 

Discussion and conclusion

The co-creation-based business models of the police set demands for the
underlying processes used to design initiatives in that context. Designing for
emergence is particularly relevant in multi-stakeholder large-scale societal
challenges such as those presented by the police.
The current study illustrated how processual design for emergence is possi-
ble in a cross-disciplinary process design using co-creation approaches and
methodologies, particularly from design thinking and strategic visualization.

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Rex Degnegaard | Stine Degnegaard ...

Designing for emergence proved to be of great relevance in the current case

not only in relation to process but also in relation to content. Thus, the process
was designed in pursuit of exploring the potential of the challenges given by
the case owner, Police Commissioner Kyndesen. However, as a result of the
process in allowing for emergence in the process, Kyndesen ended up with a
reframing of her approach to problem identification itself. The process thereby
entailed not only a problem-olving process but also a problem-finding process.
Problem finding is of greatest relevance in multi-stakeholder co-creation initi-
atives since the value potential is dynamic (Degnegaard, 2012) in that it differs
across the different stakeholders as well as being different from the overall chal-
lenge identified for the initiative as such. Often, problem-solving and problem-
finding processes are divided (Nickerson, Yen and Mahoney, 2012). The
process design in the current study proved to successfully combine problem-
­solving and problem-finding approaches in a co-creation business model.
These combinations of problem-finding and problem-solving in co-creation
initiatives could serve as an approach to framing challenges in co-creation
processes, which is a liability in many of the latter (Degnegaard, 2012).
Early indicators point to an emerging trend in innovation across sectors –
that new products, services and experiences will more and more frequently
emerge in the space between organizations rather than inside a single organ-
ization, as discussed by Cornella (2013) and supported by Pfitzer, Bockstette
and Stamp (2013). If these early indications indeed come to pass, then meth-
odologies such as that documented in this article may prove to be critical to
the survival of organizations of all types as innovation opportunities become
more and more difficult to pursue in an ever increasingly connected world.
In the current study, we have explored the roles of design thinking and
strategic visualization in designing processes for new business models based
on co-creation with operational cases provided by the Danish police. The study
points to how design plays an essential role in unfolding co-creation-based
business models and how design thinking and strategic visualization can be
essential vehicles in designing for co-creation.

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suggested citatioN
Degnegaard, R., Degnegaard, S. and Coughlan, P. (2015), ‘How to Design for
Large-Scale Multi-Stakeholder Co-Creation Initiatives: Reframing Crime

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Rex Degnegaard | Stine Degnegaard ...

Prevention Challenges with the Police in Denmark’, Journal of Design,

Business & Society 1: 1, pp. 7–28, doi: 10.1386/dbs.1.1.7_1

Contributor details
Rex Degnegaard, Ph.D. is Co-Founder and CEO of the research based advi-
sory firm INITIATIVES. He is responsible for co-designing and driving strate-
gic co-creation processes with our clients. Rex is deeply involved in developing
co-creation apps for both private sector and private-public sector initiatives
with a specific focus on security, health care, and sustainability.
He teaches co-creation at the MBA programme and executive programmes.
Furthermore, he is an active researcher in applied research and holds advisory
role as an innovation expert for the Danish Agency for Science, Technology
and innovation. Furthermore, he serves on councils for the Danish Design
Association and on an expert panel for electronics and design.
Contact: INITIATIVES A/S, Corkgade 4, 2150 Nordhavn, Denmark.
E-mail: rex@initiatives.co

Stine Degnegaard is Ph.D. Fellow at Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts

and Co-Founder and Strategic Planner at INITIATIVES. Stine is responsible
for co-designing and visualizing complex, multi-stakeholder challenges.
Furthermore, Stine is Global Ambassador and Guest Lecturer at Stanford
d.school.
Contact: Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design, Philip de
Langes Allé 10, 1435 Copenhagen, Denmark.
E-mail: sded@kadk.dk

Peter Coughlan, Ph.D. has twenty years of experience applying design

thinking to a range of challenges. He believes in the power of design to create
common understanding and to help lower resistance to change in complex
human systems. During his fifteen-year tenure at IDEO, Peter developed
the Transformation by Design practice to help client organizations navigate
change. He has developed tools and processes to help teams to co-create and
implement desired future visions. Peter currently teaches in the Organization
Systems Renewal programme at Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Seattle,
Washington, and he is an affiliate with the Institute for the Future in Palo
Alto, California. He has a Ph.D. in the behavioural sciences from UCLA.
E-mail: petercoughlan@gmail.com

Rex Degnegaard, Stine Degnegaard and Peter Coughlan have asserted their
right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as
the authors of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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