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Emma Björkenstam: Benefit is created along the way

Emma Björkenstam practises what she preaches. As an area manager at ByggDialog, her work involves ensuring that the collaboration between different parties in a construction process works. Being able to collaborate is essential, as a single person seldom has the solution to a problem. Collaboration not only contributes to better solutions, but also provides added value in everyday life: If we talk more to each other, work becomes both easier and more enjoyable.

There is no mistaking on Emma Björkenstam’s commitment to and interest in creating interfaces between researchers and companies. Collaboration has been a common thread throughout Emma’s professional life and is part of everything she takes on. Her current role at ByggDialog involves creating the conditions for a safe process, which everyone has the chance to influence. Keeping to schedules is as important as ensuring employees’ wellbeing. Frequently, these projects are complex: dialogue and collaboration are prerequisites for simplifying the construction process. This approach is based on the research of one of the founders, Anna Rhodin, on the need to ensure that everyone’s perspectives and knowledge are systematically drawn on in the development and implementation of construction projects. ByggDialog’s method is thus in itself an example of taking up research results and using them in practice.

Well, this is who I am as a person. I work all over the place. Now I even work in a company that focuses on collaboration. I believe that everyone’s knowledge is needed. When it comes in at the right level and you have some kind of shared vision – we get a better product.

That Emma works all over the place is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that her car is her mobile office, always on the road. Here she alternates between telephone meetings and audiobooks. Her pragmatic approach to most things permeates her ability to find time for both work and relaxation – nothing seems particularly complicated and, according to Emma, most things can be solved, as long as you focus on the task and do it together!

Networks of researchers create gradual learning

One way of collaborating is through industrial research schools co-funded by the Knowledge Foundation. The returns of these are often greater than individual thesis projects, and Emma stresses that she herself has benefited greatly from the network of researchers created through the research schools. This creates opportunities to continuously discuss questions and develop knowledge that does not necessarily pertain to a doctoral student’s project. Emma describes this as “gradual learning” – learning that takes place over time and depends on everyone involved wanting to develop and share knowledge with each other.

 

" The research community and the industrial doctoral students’ supervisors are fantastic sounding boards. So I spend a lot of time promoting benefits along the way. The network, knowledge sharing, and dialogue are the most important. The doctoral student becomes something of an internal consultant.
Emma Björkenstam

It is impossible to wait for a doctoral student to finish; it takes far too long and other things may happen in the meantime causing the project to be delayed or take different paths than planned. It is therefore important that companies learn to understand the benefits of an ongoing doctoral project.

Companies must realise that they can benefit from networking with other companies, be able to absorb knowledge from other fields, and think that other PhD students might be working on something interesting. But it’s not that obvious; it takes work to get companies to really understand and make use of the opportunity.

Alternating knowledge development

It is important to realise that research projects differ, Emma reminds us. Some can be directly applied, while others may not have a direct bearing on practice in terms of results or conclusions. The exchange is instead more ongoing and involves offering different perspectives. Doctoral students are trained to solve complex problems, to develop a different way of looking at the world. 

" Doing research is asking questions. An industrial PhD student may take a few years to build up their knowledge in a field.
Emma Björkenstam

Companies, which are often used to a faster pace, therefore need to be reminded that research is a long-term project when they encounter academia. But, Emma continues, doctoral students also need to understand what things look like in practice, in real life. Co-working courses involving both researchers and company representatives give doctoral students the opportunity to understand what the reality is, what one has to deal with. 

It takes time to establish a close relationship between academia and industry in order to be able to alternate and achieve mutual exchange. As with so many other things, this does not happen by itself, and Emma describes how she has repeatedly had to highlight the importance of also considering the companies’ perspectives when developing research schools. Today she can see that effort bearing fruit and describes the development of an unusually close and productive collaboration. As a representative of the companies in the research school, Emma works closely with the programme director, who is a researcher: “We both participate, which reflects the collaboration and its balance – it has symbolic value, after all.”

Cutting-edge research

During our conversation, Emma often returns to the importance of the temporal perspective in collaboration. She also feels that everything is moving faster today and gives several examples of areas where it is difficult to keep up, and which thereby create a particularly challenging situation for industrial doctoral students. Sustainability issues and AI/digitisation are examples. When things are moving fast, it becomes even more important to listen to each other, to interact. 

It further involves teaching doctoral students to share their work along the way. Emma explains that companies are almost always interested in learning more from PhD students – what they are working on at the moment and what is happening in the project. This can sometimes pose a challenge, as doctoral students may feel that they cannot talk about their work until it is completed. Yet the companies do not need all the details; they are more interested in the research question and doctoral students’ thoughts on it in brief. Emma says this reveals the gap in perceptions between what is considered relevant knowledge and what constitutes a contribution.

But there’s an art to talking about something before you’re done. As practitioners, we don’t always understand the work when the researcher is done if it becomes too complex. In the research school, we therefore make an effort to support doctoral students to share their work along the way and also discuss it in simpler terms.

The benefits and value of the industrial research school do not end when the thesis is completed. Emma has several examples of doctoral graduates who have chosen to stay in the business world and become important resources in continuing to develop organisations. This creates real benefits in the long term. Understanding doctoral students as part of a larger network also means that the knowledge exchange is broader and more far-reaching. It becomes a kind of training for the whole organisation, Emma explains. 

You get highly educated employees with a different perspective on solving problems. As a doctoral student, you are after all trained and become an expert on solving complex problems, on questioning approaches and results. They learn to ask questions. Why? What is the point? They can be a bit difficult, but it’s all good.

The important role of the mentor

With her long experience of being a mentor and a manager, Emma says her role involves supporting doctoral students, but also other mentors. She explains that being responsible for a doctoral student is no different from being responsible for other employees.

" As a PhD student, you are in a special situation and you may sometimes feel lost, not knowing the way forward and burdened with the responsibility to deliver. It’s a special situation, and I understand it. This is probably the challenge I spend the most time on.
Emma Björkenstam

According to Emma, it is about ensuring that doctoral students have the necessary conditions to carry out the demanding work which doctoral projects often are. From the companies’ perspective, it is important to be aware of this and to be patient. Doctoral students must be given space to find their way. At the same time, it is important that doctoral students have insight into and contact with the company – that they attend meetings and are involved in the work. PhD students cannot just “deliver” – they need to get a feel for the company to understand what they are part of and what they represent.

It is important that industrial doctoral students meet their employers. You can’t leave for university in Luleå and then return to the company after six years with no relationship; you don’t know who the recipient is, you don’t know the context.

Speaking several languages

Perhaps an industrial doctoral student may be described as having a kind of “double identity”, where one half is the researcher and the other the entrepreneur. Yet it varies greatly from person to person, says Emma. It is all about personality. Some people like the investigative part more, while others think that “it’s fantastic to start delivering”.

To some extent, doctoral students have to learn to manage expectations and requirements in both worlds. They also gain insight into the context in which the results will be received and therefore already during their doctoral projects understand how companies can benefit from their research. As a mentor, Emma always reiterates the importance of doctoral students learning to communicate and adapt their communication to the recipient, to become professionally multilingual. This is also part of the process, of co-creation. Producing valuable knowledge does not matter if you cannot communicate it.

Being multilingual also symbolises the challenges of collaboration and the industrial research schools more broadly: it takes time and requires quite a lot of patience, but the returns are all the greater. Emma believes that this is precisely why industrial research schools provide fruitful platforms for collaboration – they offer opportunities to actually create the conditions for academia and business to do good things together.

The impact will be greater, working will be more fun, and the end result will be better. And everyone’s happy because you understand why it’s done the way it is; you know what it meant and how to nurture it afterwards.

Emma herself is living proof of the capacity to handle multiple languages and understand various worlds. Perhaps it is precisely her professional multilingualism, her ability to speak to several different actors in a complex construction process, that allows Emma to move so seemingly effortlessly between various contexts and build bridges between academia and practice – a good basis for not only achieving results but also having fun along the way!

This text is translated from Swedish. Original text: Maria Grafström and Anna Jonsson. Photos: Sebastian Borg.

Read more in the book "The Nuances of Knowledge"

This article is part of the book “The Nuances of Knowledge – Stories About Collaboration”. The book is based on inspiring interviews with nine remarkable people who have managed to break down barriers between research and practice.