A Multi-Stakeholder Co-Design Approach to Making Strategies for Community Development Harnessing Emerging Technologies

Abstract

Emerging technologies will be key drivers of the global economy in the upcoming decades and fundamentally shape how people live and work in the future world. It is imperative that local communities can, based on their respective realities, identify priorities and make effective strategies to direct the community development harnessing emerging technologies. This work studies the case of Kingsville, a medium-sized city in South Texas without a technology-intensive current economy or a technology-attracting cultural tradition. Kingsville2050 initiative has been launched to generate future-oriented, out-of-box-thinking ideas and to build innovation capacity within the community. The first and foremost problem is how to reach synergy among community stakeholders and link them to selected emerging technologies with the best fit. This work proposes a workshop design using multi-stakeholder co-design approach to making community development strategies that aim to take full advantage of emergent technologies. During a workshop, which is typically a one-day event, stakeholders from different backgrounds discuss and present their opinions on the challenges of bridging the gap between community realities and emergent technologies. Following the co-design methodology, the workshop planning process also integrates other tools, i.e., design-thinking and strategic visualization, to promote the emergence of creative solutions to address the above challenges. These proposed solutions can later be a valuable reference for policymakers, city planners, educators, local businesses, and other stakeholders.