TrollLABS - Skunk Works Understanding the underlying principles of Skunk Works like extreme Ideation and Concept Creation Projects

TrollLABS, both as a physical space and as a group of scientists is a test bed for 1) researching, 2) making and 3) teaching extreme product and concept development. Together researchers, students and R&D personal from various technical and professional backgrounds execute short, very intense concept creation and prototyping sessions with the aim of experimenting on the limits of existing engineering solutions; the challenges are extreme, skunk works like, and form the basis for our research on underlying paradigms, method and tools. Troll Labs is inspired by and based on experiences from Stanford University´s d.school and Aalto Design Factory and aims to be the core of a radical co-creation and maker space for NTNU and beyond. Special focus has been given to uncover and systematically/experimentally and quantitatively investigate underlying first principles and paradigms of the fuzzy frond end through and concept creation and rapid prototyping. The initiative, supported by RCN and Flåkk, Kongsberg Innovation, Kongsberg Maritime and the iKuben cluster finances some four doctoral students, bringing the total doctoral count for TrollLABS up to nine. Pushing interdisciplinarity, co-location, company integration, and project/problem focus to the max, we craft one of the most creative and vibrant early stage product/system development setting in Norway. By carefully selecting formal concepts (such as design thinking, scrum and agile and concurrent and systems engineering), educational coaching (flipped classroom, project/problem based teaching, MOOCs) and quantitatively capturing interactions (dedicated self-build experiment setups and sensors) and results (descriptive and classic statistics, ML and AI), we increase the knowledge of early stage engineering, its tools and the education thereof. All spaces (NTNU, iKuben, Sintef Raufoss Manufacturing, Kongsberg Innovation) incl. various rapid prototyping equipment (3D printers, laser cutters, CNC mills, electronic and mechatronic workshop) and sensor prototyping station have been completed and run various smaller and larger projects sprints. The basic approach has been spread all over Norway with many site visits by private and public groups running or intending to run ideation/creativity space. Research on the topic of ideation spaces with empirical data for Norway has been published. Follow up grants by NTNU TTO (Discovery) and RCN (Student FORNY) have been acquired and some start up activities have commenced successfully. At NTNU, a master specialization had been created incl. an experimental design thinking course attracts more than 100 students annually. In August 2016 NordDesign 2016 was held by TrollLABS, an international conference with over 120 attendants from 19 countries. In parallel a national executive MBA has been set up under the umbrella of DT Arena Bergen. Research wise, TrollLabs researchers have so far created about over 80 scientific publications that generate national publication points, plus more than 30 project and master thesis (15 ongoing), putting the research group firmly onto the international map. The latest big success has been the NOKUT award as SFU, Sentre-for-fremragende-utdanning with the SFU Engage project where TrollLABS is WP leader and closely collaborates with NTNU´s School of Entrepreneurship, NTNU´s Expert in Teams, NTNU Spark and NORD University. Troll Labs at NTNU - pushing the boundaries of engineering creativity and thoughts, concept generation and innovation in Norway.

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To survive or even to thrive in a time of technological discontinuity, companies not only have to master incremental product development (PD) and manufacturing challenges (concentrating onto lean manufacturing and PD skills) but they also need cutting edg e skills, process knowledge and support for conducing extreme product/service/system development projects - Skunk Work like ideation and concept creation projects. These projects, like the (in)famous DARPA projects, Lockheed Martin planes, Google XLabs gl asses and autonomous cars, or SpaceX Hyperloop train concepts are notoriously under researched, due to secrecy and a disconnect between industry and academia. Also, the skill sets and methods and environments associated with sich projects are not widely d ispersed, due to company size and resources and the fact that such Skunk Works actually constitute a significant disruptive element for the mainstream company culture and work. To overcome this, we are creating a living lab, where we jointly with industry conduct extremely interdisciplinary ideation and concept creation sprints, all the whilst we are capturing all ongoing interactions between people and objects and environment (software, hardware/tools and physical environment). The aim is of course to create extreme new concept and products for the participating companies, but also to transfer the needed knowledge and skills to the same. Together we aim to uncover the hidden first principles of Skunk Work like PD projects so that we can improve our current methods and approaches. Beyond the obvious academic output of PhDs and peer reviewed articles, we intent setting the foundation for a continuos education MBA in new PD that will profit the Norwegian industry as a whole. Together, we, NCE Systems Eng., SINTEF Raufoss, SBS, iKuben, Kongsberg Maritime and NTNU, will shape our knowledge on industry disruption and educate the engineering generation to cope with (maybe to trigger) disruptive technological innovations.