The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation has awarded 28 MSEK to a new research program focused on digital innovation, combining scientific excellence with societal impact. The program will be conducted at the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation (SCDI), with nodes at the Stockholm School of Economics House of Innovation, Umeå University and the University of Gothenburg. SCDI partners with RISE Digital Innovation for the project.

Digitalization is changing many service industries. Nowhere is this more apparent than in standard business-to-consumer services. But also, business-to-business services are also being increasingly blended with digital technologies. Little is known about how this latter type of service is being changed by the onset of robots and artificial intelligence.

Design is central to innovation. It refers to the way that people create ideas and solve problems. So far, innovation has been something that human beings alone do. But more recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has slowly begun to be used in innovation, saving people from doing the work of innovation, and freeing up human ingenuity to focus on the bigger picture of why we innovate.