Inclusive Innovation and Expansive Learning in UPCHAIN
The UPCHAIN project is guided by the principles of inclusive innovation and expansive learning. Rather than viewing innovation as something developed by researchers and transferred to communities, we understand innovation as a collaborative process where knowledge, experiences, and ideas emerge through interaction between diverse actors.
Our approach builds on the idea that sustainable energy transitions require more than technical solutions. They also depend on understanding local practices, needs, livelihoods, institutions, and learning processes. In UPCHAIN, researchers, schools, entrepreneurs, community members, local authorities, and civil society organisations therefore work together to explore how green charcoal innovations can be developed, adapted, and embedded in everyday life.
Inclusive Innovation in Practice
For UPCHAIN, inclusive innovation means creating opportunities for different actors to contribute to and influence innovation processes.
This includes:
- Engaging community members in testing and adapting green charcoal production and use.
- Working with schools as spaces for environmental learning and experimentation.
- Involving local entrepreneurs and producers in exploring livelihood opportunities.
- Integrating local knowledge into research, mapping, and decision-making processes.
- Facilitating dialogue across disciplines, sectors, and stakeholder groups.
Inclusive innovation is not simply about participation. It is about ensuring that different forms of knowledge and experience contribute meaningfully to how innovations are shaped and developed. Throughout the project, we continuously explore how local actors can not only participate in innovation activities but also influence their direction and future development.
Expansive Learning
UPCHAIN also draws inspiration from expansive learning, which emphasises how new practices and solutions emerge when people collectively address complex challenges that cannot be solved through existing approaches alone.
In the project, researchers, community members, schools, entrepreneurs, and local institutions bring different perspectives, experiences, and forms of expertise into ongoing innovation processes. Through experimentation, reflection, and collaboration, participants explore new ways of producing, using, learning about, and organising green charcoal initiatives.
Rather than focusing solely on the transfer of knowledge, expansive learning highlights the development of new understandings and practices that emerge through collective engagement with real-world challenges.
An Ongoing Process
For UPCHAIN, expansive learning is not a predefined method or a fixed outcome. It is an ongoing process of experimentation, reflection, and adaptation. As challenges, opportunities, and local conditions evolve, participants continuously develop new understandings and practices together.