"Politics is a hostile environment for creative processes"
New advisor at INVI: "Politics is a hostile environment for creative processes. I want to create a creative and safe space that is solution-oriented"
When 28-year-old Kristine Fisker isn't dancing on roller skates and organizing shelter trips for friends and family, she has set her sights on getting people from different backgrounds to talk together to solve complex problems. Kristine is a newly hired design advisor at INVI and, together with INVI's chief economist, will develop a toolbox for wild problems.
Fisker has a master's degree in Design & Innovation from DTU. She has just completed her master's thesis, where she brought together political organizations, visionary farmers, activists and municipalities to design what the future of sustainable agriculture in Denmark should look like. Now she will bring her skills in planning and facilitating complex technical development projects into play at INVI.
- How do you see your experience and expertise from your specialty contributing to INVI's work in tackling wildlife issues?
"My contribution to INVI will be to create partnerships and creative, safe spaces where everyone can realize their full potential. I bring methods that promote a common understanding and remove some of the word soup that I sometimes think partnerships end up in."
New design advisor at INVI, Kristine Fisker
- What methods can it be?
"It can be prioritization games or models where you illustrate the topics and try things together to create a different output than just text."
- What can your expertise bring to politics?
"I can contribute to politics by creating a playing field that makes it easier for actors from different backgrounds to collaborate on ambitious solutions. Politics is a very hostile environment for creative processes. All actors are in a mega public space where they are constantly monitored, which shuts down all creativity and makes you only dare to be on the defensive. Everyone feels they have to cover their backs. I want to create a creative and safe space that is oriented towards visionary solutions."
"I find inspiration for this in my experience from companies and startups, where you have a more pragmatic approach and where there isn't necessarily scientific evidence behind every single micro-decision. On the other hand, you are constantly testing your solutions to correct them. I have some methods to create a political sphere where it becomes more okay to try things out and fail, because you fail on such a small scale that there are no major consequences."
FACTS: KRISTINE FISKER
28 years old and comes from Aalborg.
MSc in Innovation & Design, DTU.
Guest lecturer at DTU.
Junior research consultant in the med-tech industry.
Former graphic designer & UX designer.
- What theory and methods do you think deserve special attention?
"I think systems engineering is really interesting. It's been developed to handle insanely complex and large-scale engineering projects like redesigning the energy system for an entire country or designing huge construction projects. Designers are now starting to use systems engineering in relation to complex projects that are also about society, people and sustainability, because there are a lot of great tools to deal with huge amounts of complexity and help involve a lot of stakeholders and considerations."
"On the softer side, I would also like to highlight something called frame innovation, which is a way of working with social problems. Here you rethink the premise for solving problems and get down into some deeper layers of how you might otherwise see the problem. You change the frame in a way that, for example, if you want to prevent crime on a party street, you think of it as managing a crowd like at a festival. So you go from negative framings to positive framings, and the method is also very much about how you can create the framework for actors to sympathize with each other."
- If you were to get your friends to talk about you, what do you think they would say about you?
"My friends would say that I have a lot of energy and see things from a few different angles. They'd probably also say that I'm an octopus who is involved in many different projects. I go roller skating, collect wild seeds and organize shelter trips."