Centre for Experience Economy
BI-Norwegian School of Management,
Kristiansand, Norway
Centre for Experience Economy
 
Within the experience economy, our main research interests are the study of cultural and (post-) industrial organisations: museums, sights of culture and places of leisure.
We furthermore assist, investigate, and analyse businesses, regions, and towns that (want to) use art, culture, and cultural heritage as their innovation tool and developmental strategy.
Attractions, experience product development, marketing, and marketing aesthetics are our key topics.
 
Staff working within the IKON project
 
PhD and teacher Sarah Holst Kjær works on the research project: ‘Tourism, Leisure and Culture Industry in Natural and (Post) Industrial Seaport Environments’.
·         Ethnography, cultural analysis, attraction, and regional development, user driven innovation, experience design, and its cultural themes (‘Imagineering’), culture-based innovation, cultural heritage, culture industries, storytelling, course design, teaching, and executive lecturing
 
PhD and teacher Per Strömberg works on the research project: ‘Experience Economy of Readymade-Spaces – Recycling as an Innovative Strategy’
·         Course and seminar design, teaching and executive lecturing, cultural heritage, attraction, and regional development, visual culture, marketing aesthetics, culture industries, cultural analysis, culture-based creativity, art as innovation, tourist guiding experiences.
 
PhD Candidate and teacher Kjetil Aukland works on the research project:‘Experience Based Branding of Traditional Businesses’.
·         Marketing, branding strategies, method, statistics, experience theory, course seminar design, teaching, and executive lecturing, research/interrogations.
 
PhD candidate and teacher Tor Geir Kvinen works on the research project: ‘Co-Creation as a Factor of Success in Theme Parks’.
·         Organisation, project management, Human Resource Management, teaching, and executive lecturing, coaching, co-creation.

 
Center for Tourism
School of Business, Economics and Law at Gothenburg University
Gothenburg, Sweden
School of Business, Economics and Law
 
The Department of Business Administration is the biggest department at the School of Business, Economics, and Law and one of the biggest departments of business administration in the Nordic region.
The department offers training at all academic levels and within most elements of the subject. This is a leading department both within the University of Gothenburg and nationally, training student to Masters level. It is also a national leader in training doctoral students in business economics. The success of this training at advanced academic levels is founded on an organisation-based research tradition dating back to the 1920s.
Research takes place in competence groups and at centres. There are eight competence groups: Financial Reporting and Analysis; Management Accounting; Human Resource Management; Industrial and Financial Management; Logistics and Transport; Learning and Change; Marketing; and Studies of Organisation and Society. There are four research centres of which Center for Tourism is one.
Research at the department is based on a strong empirical tradition. This means that our researchers focus on studying how organisations – in both the private and the public sector – work within their surroundings and interact with them. This has helped our researchers to be able to build up extensive national and international networks with trade, industry, and the public sector, and with researchers in their respective specialist fields.
 
Center for Tourism
The Center for Tourism forms a cross disciplinary research platform in close collaboration with the tourism industry. The mission is to initiate, develop, and support increased knowledge development and professionalization within the tourism field. The objective is to become one of the leading tourism research centres in Europe.
The Center for Tourism is conducting qualified research and education in the field of tourism. The staff at the Center represents a broad range of academic competences, and research is often interdisciplinary. Current prioritised research at the CFT is event and meetings management, impact analysis of tourism, hotel and restaurant management, destinations management, and cultural tourism. Moreover, the Centre provides higher education in tourism, for instance on the Masters programme "Tourism and Hospitality Management".
 
Staff working within the IKON project
 
John Armbrecht
John Armbrecht’s research interest lies within cultural tourism, cultural values, and impact studies. There are many examples where cultural tourism has boosted local economies, especially in remote and peripheral regions. However, there are also numerous examples where cultural attractions have drawn little interest from tourists. John Armbrecht is convinced that we have to better understand the values that are delivered within a cultural context and thus cultural tourism. When having an understanding of which experiences are “delivered” and valued by the consumer we will be able to offer suitable cultural products. Offering an attractive cultural product to a tourist is, however, only one side of the coin. The other is to understand the importance of cultural experiences and institutions in a local context. Often cultural products are part of the local population’s life and identity. Therefore, to develop sustainable cultural tourism, John Armbrecht thinks that the local population’s attitudes towards and values of the cultural product are equally important. The aim of John Armbrecht’s research is therefore to develop further the understanding of values that culture generates, for both the tourists and the local population.

 
Østfoldforskning AS,
Fredrikstad, Norway
 
Østfoldforksning AS
Østfoldforskning AS consists of two research groups, where the group related to IKON is working with ”business and spatial development”. The thematic and scientific research focus in this group is organizing and management of innovation processes, at company, network, and regional level. The research services are connected to analysis, development, and evaluation processes on and between these levels. The main methodical approach is action research. 
Within the experience economy, the main interest is connected to these perspectives:
Regional level: structural/spatial analysis, innovation policies, and strategies, partnership, clusters, innovation systems.
Company level: value creation, entrepreneurship, and business development, cooperation and business models, network.
Product/service level: product-/service innovation.
 
Staff working within the IKON project
 
Steinar Normann
At the moment, our research activities are mainly related to two empirical cases: IKON and an ARENA-project within ”audiovisual cultural productions”. ARENA is a central innovation instrument in Norway aimed for developing promising networks and clusters. The man responsible for the research activities within the experience economy field at Østfoldforskning is Steinar Normann,who is intending to start his PhD-work addressing two main research questions:
1.       Regional/local innovation systems
In which way can the ”innovation system” (related to specific areas of IKON/ARENA) be (re)designed to secure and/or increase innovation results and value creation?
2.       Capability of innovation and entrepreneurship (at organisational/company level)
To which extent do the actors succeed in exploring and exploiting their possibilities and resources to increase innovation capability and results?

 
ApEx – Center for Applied Experience Economy
and InDiMedia – Research Center for Interactive, Digital Media
Aalborg University, Denmark
 
Aalborg University
The purpose of Aalborg University is to conduct research and provide a higher level of research-based education of the highest international, academic standard. Aalborg University offers educations at Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD levels as well as a variety of programmes for continuing education at Master’s and Diploma levels.
Aalborg University encompasses the following three faculties: The Faculty of Humanities, The Faculty of Social Sciences, and The Faculty of Engineering, Science, and Medicine. The three faculties offer in total 65 different educational programmes within five scientific fields; Humanities, Social Science, Natural Science, Engineering, and Medicine. The university employs approximately 1200 faculty and 800 administrative and technical staff, while close to 14,000 students are enrolled at the University, ranging from students at preparatory courses through doctoral-level candidates.
One of Aalborg University's trademarks is its unique pedagogic model of teaching: the problem-based, project-organized model (PBL: Problem-based Learning). With this method a great part of the semester teaching and student work revolves around complex, real-life problems or issues that the students wonder about and try to find answers to in scientific manners while working together in groups.
A characteristic feature of AAU is the courage to follow new paths within research as well as education. As a result, AAU is one of Denmark’s leading universities in terms of uncovering innovative ways of cooperating with the surrounding world at a local as well as national and international level.
 
ApEx – Center for Applied Experience Economy
ApEx is short for Center for Applied Experience Economy. ApEx is a regional cluster organisation for the cluster of experience economy in Nordjylland. ApEx is working on bringing experience economy and experience design into practise, whereby unique experiences and innovation can be created followed by growth and employment within the field of experience economy. ApEx is based on a tight knit cooperation and partnership with the business community, culture, research, education, and public authorities.
ApEx’s vision is to become a regional, national, and international center that leads the way in showing how knowledge of experience economy and experience design can be put into practice and provide unique experiences, innovation, and positive figures on the bottom line.
ApEx works with, among other things, experience based museum communication and digital, interactive communication of cultural heritage. In specific, this occurs under the auspices of Kulturarvsklyngen (the cluster of cultural heritage) and the project Cultural HeriTALEs.
 
InDiMedia – Research Centre for Interactive, Digital Media.
InDiMedia is a research center at Aalborg University, which concerns itself with interactive digital media. Interactive digital media includes products, services, experiences, and learning within a broad spectre of media platforms.
The interest of InDiMedia’s researchers is turned towards the study of the media’s potential to allow the user influence on the content and form of the media-communicated information. From aesthetic, sociological, and technological approaches the research center explores and develops interactive, digital ways of communicating. A key characteristic feature of the approach is the use of interdisciplinary theories and methods.
The subject matter of InDiMedia’s research is interactive digital media. The research domain is ‘experiences’, which includes analysis, comprehension, concept development, production, and implementation of human experiences. In this connection, there is a particular focus on IT-supported experiences. The approach is primarily centred on the user, which suggests that the starting point of research and development is from the user’s perspective on or experience with the new media, media products, and services.
 
Staff working with the IKON-project
 
Jens F. Jensen
Jens F. Jensen is a professor of interactive multimedia at Aalborg University, Institute of Communication, Head of ExCITe (Center for Experience Economy, Creative Industries and Technologies), Head of ApEx (Center for Applied Experience Economy), and Head of InDiMedia (Research Center for Interactive Digital Media). Jens F. Jensen’s research areas include: Interactive, digital media; interaction and interactivity; digital aesthetics; social media; experience economy and creative industries; experience technologies; experience design methods; methods  for testing experiences; user driven innovation, experience-based communication of cultural heritage. This also includes digital communication of cultural heritage and experience-based museum communication.
For a number of years Jens F. Jensen has published books and articles on interactive media, media aesthetics, media culture, social media, experience economy, and experience design.