Value-creating digitization of the planning and building permit process : insights from an innovation ecosystem perspective

Abstract: Sweden should be internationally leading in taking advantage of the opportunities offered by digitalization. Though several industries report successes, the community-building sector is far behind. The Swedish government has initiated several assignments to enable and push the digitalization of the community-building process forward. The process that has been analogous, time-consuming, fragmented and resulted in a loss of valuable information, shall become digital, uniform, and cohesive, as well as facilitate decision-making, collaboration, information- and knowledge flows. This thesis has been limited to studying the planning and building permit process, a central part of the community-building process, from an innovation ecosystem perspective. The purpose has been to understand how actors collaborate to realize the goal of a digital community-building process. It includes understanding also how actors work and relate to digitalization internally in their organization, how they interact with others, what roles they take, as well as what values, challenges, and success factors they identify. Literature- and document studies have been completed to understand innovation ecosystems, digitalization in the sector and how the innovation ecosystem perspective can be used to understand the digitization of the planning and building permit process. Interviews have been held with eight different actors who in various ways are significant for the digitization of the process. The result clarifies that the actors have reached different digital maturity. While some have taken on a leadership role, are innovative and explore opportunities, others are waiting to see which direction the sector takes and are open to adapting to the results of other actors' exploring and innovations. Moreover, the history of a long collaboration has served as a foundation for the actors' work with digitalization and proved crucial for achieving the goal of a cohesive digital process. The results have also clarified that actors have different knowledge and specializations that consequently established dependence on other actors and affect each actor's capacity for action. Furthermore, several identified challenges of legal, economic, and political character, need to be solved for the process to be digitized. Challenges also relate to some of the digital technology that is implemented neither meets legal requirements nor the requirements of the actors. Simultaneously digitalization requires new working methods and new knowledge among employees. The central identified values are efficiency, and the increased collective understanding and knowledge visual models enable. It can also result in higher quality and consensus on decisions and detailed plans, as well as new opportunities for evaluation, analysis, and optimization, and hopefully enable more sustainable development.