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== Uncertainty in contemporary world ==
<p>In a contemporary world ''uncertainty'' is often perceived as an increasingly prominent feature of existence, combined with imagined possible worlds of horror, fear and despair. In addition to environmental crisis, refugees and terrorism this situation is even more evident in the current COVID-19 pandemics. In such a world we have no basis upon which to be confident about what will happen next in the immediate or far future, or that we can take any measures that could be absolutely guaranteed to determine or change our futures. The future is contingent and unknowable and ''uncertainty'' – however unwelcome and blamed for crisis, insecurity, vulnerability and indecision – is constant, ongoing and continual. Uncertainty is a way of being (Akama, Sumartojo, and Pink 2019).</p>

== Problem-Solution Approach ==
<p>Still, within the so-called problem-solution approach – which is still predominant in the conventional industrial research and development process – we try to make predictions about our future. What happens very frequently is that the products and services are developed in isolation and in rather monodisciplinary settings in which development teams aim to predict the future, especially by assuming what are the requirements and needs of potential “users”. When put on the market we assume that people will passively consume and use these solutions. What we only have to do is to convince them to use our products and services, therefore investing in sales and marketing. In other words, we try to impose behavioural change.</p>
<p>The problem-solution is very much in line with the utopian paradigm which considers people as passive consumers of technology which will save our world, because it was developed by the brilliant minds. The problem, however, is that this model would work in a simple, predictive society.</p>
<p>However, the problem-solution model is not able to answer on the majority of our contemporary, wicked problems and does not work in the real world of ''uncertainty''. Key challenge is that the technology is still unfinished and incomplete when it reaches the market – it is completed by people who do not behave as passive consumers. When products reach market, they frequently do not provide the solutions as envisioned by the developers. In reality people resist, manipulate with technology, use it in a different way etc.; thus, improvise with it to fulfil their everyday life needs (also considering social acceptance, power and pressure).&nbsp;</p>



[[File:problem-solution approach.png]]

Image 1: Problem-solution approach: <span style="background-color: rgb(241, 196, 15);">Source:&nbsp;</span>


<p>This new model of understanding requires a paradigmatical shift, asking ourselves:</p>
<p style="margin-left: 25px;">''"What people do with the technology and not what technology does to people".''</p>
<p>It is not about helping policy makers or industry to find ways to make (or to force) people accept and use new technology properly (technology which is developed in isolation). In contrast to problem-solution paradigm the model is not about enforcing behavioural change. As expressed by Pink (2019):</p>
<p style="margin-left: 25px;">''"Don't try to change the behaviour but think how the behaviour could be that change".''</p>

== Turning uncertainty into focused exploration ==
<p>The Active8-Planet paradigm acknowledges that ''uncertainty'' plays a disruptive and generative role in our work. Our understanding of uncertainty draws from anthropological renderings which are themselves derived from the practice in anthropological ethnography of immersing oneself in worlds where we do not know what will happen next (Akama, Sumartojo, and Pink 2019; Pink 2019). Instead of staying with its often-negative associations, we try to come at the uncertainty with a different attitude; i.e., ''uncertainty brings and opens up for possibilities''. It does not close down what might happen yet into predictive untruths, but rather opens up pathways of what might be next and enables us to creatively and imaginatively inhabit such worlds with possibilities.</p>
<p>As noted by (Akama, Sumartojo, and Pink 2019, 1–18) the key for success is the ''possibility of moving beyond''; which does not seek to predict futures but creates many possibilities. Moving beyond refers to a willingness to fall into and engage with a possibility beyond our scope of tangible knowing and feeling. Possibilities are not closed products or even templates – they are instead open concepts and lead to many starting points. Such emergent phenomena cannot be analysed or predicted, because they are not objects, but they can be attuned to and even welcomed.</p>
<p>Our central task is to explore how uncertainty can be transformative, how we attune to and engage with it more attentively as part of our practice in change-making processes, and how uncertainty might be harnessed for producing new and open ways of understanding, making and imagining in the world.</p>
<p>Based on respective conceptual explorations the methodological recommendations are:&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
#Putting uncertainty at the core of our investigatory and change-making practice (uncertainty as a tool for the making of possibilities).
#Interdisciplinary and essentially collaborative: with other disciplines (social sciences and humanities hand in hand with engineering and technical sciences) and with other sectors (university-business). Dare to see things from other perspectives than your own (enhance transdisciplinary). Practicing along the boundaries of each discipline by blending, borrowing, hacking and remixing various theories and approaches to activate them in our specific 7+1 case study contexts.
#Opening up of many possibilities with people and creating new opportunities in collaboration (exploring ways of using, making sense of mundane activities, emerging technologies or engaging with urban, social, spatial and environmental changes). Involve people from the start, they might want to contribute.
#Seeking unconventional ways to collaborate with different stakeholders beyond conventional problem-solution paradigm (solution-based approach or formulating cause-and-effect).
#A theoretically framed and structured methodology, but still open enough to emerge in different forms when being customized to different (institutional, collaborative, cultural) contexts and requirements. It does not cede dominance to the theory or practice of any one discipline.
#Producing the methodology which is not only suitable for the development of university-business learning approaches but its principles can equally be applied to a number of collaborative and interdisciplinary change-making processes.
#An agenda to critique the (often utopian) assumptions.
#Ethics: thinking about responsible and ethical futures.