Category: Projects and Implementation

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Co-Creation Is More Than Asking for Input

Co-creation is often described as a way of bringing people into the development of an idea, project, service, or initiative. Instead of designing something entirely from the outside, we invite people with relevant experience to contribute their knowledge and perspectives.

That matters in sustainability. People connected to change often know things that are difficult to see from a strategy document, project plan, or external analysis. They understand routines, constraints, relationships, pressures, histories, and practical possibilities from inside the situations where change is expected to happen.

But inviting people to contribute does not automatically make a process co-created. A workshop can collect useful perspectives while leaving the fundamental direction unchanged. A consultation can happen after the important decisions have already been made. Feedback can improve an existing idea without giving participants influence over the assumptions or problem definition behind it.

These forms of participation can still be valuable. The problem arises when we call them co-creation without being clear about what participants can actually shape.

Input becomes co-creation when it can change the work.

That change may concern a proposed solution, but it can also go deeper. Participation may reveal that the problem has been framed too narrowly, that an important relationship has been overlooked, or that something which looks workable from one position is difficult to sustain from another. Co-creation therefore involves more than gathering knowledge. It requires keeping enough of the process open for relevant knowledge and experience to affect what happens next.

From Participation to Co-Creation

Participation and co-creation are closely related, but they ask different questions.

In an earlier urbanhydro® Insight, I argued that participation becomes meaningful when people are not simply invited to speak but have a credible possibility of influencing what follows. Co-creation adds another layer: if participants have influence, what is that influence actually allowed to shape?

It may concern relatively contained design choices, or it may extend to questions about purpose, problem definition, priorities, implementation, or direction. Different situations require different forms and degrees of involvement.

Research uses several related terms in this field, including co-creation, co-design, co-development, and knowledge co-production. They overlap, but they are not interchangeable. I use co-creation here as a broad, practice-oriented term for developing understanding and possible responses with people whose knowledge, experience, decisions, or actions matter to what is being created.

This does not require unlimited openness. Organisations still operate within legislation, budgets, mandates, professional responsibilities, strategic commitments, and decisions that may already have been taken. Expertise remains important.

What co-creation does require is clarity about those boundaries. Participants need to understand why they are being involved, what remains genuinely open, what is fixed, who ultimately decides, and how their contribution can affect the process.

The relevant question is therefore not simply whether people participated, but whether the structure of participation created a meaningful relationship between contribution and influence.

Not Every Form of Co-Creation Is the Same

It is tempting to turn co-creation into another best-practice formula: involve people early, facilitate well, test ideas, collect feedback, and iterate. These are useful principles, but there is no single form of co-creation that fits every sustainability challenge.

Different forms of knowledge co-production serve different purposes. Some processes are primarily concerned with developing shared understanding. Others bring together scientific, professional, policy, organisational, or local knowledge around a particular decision. Some aim to develop a concrete intervention, while others focus more on reframing an issue or building relationships that make later action possible.

The appropriate form therefore depends on the situation. A technical decision may require expert authority combined with focused participation rather than broad co-design. A local initiative may depend heavily on knowledge, relationships, and legitimacy within a particular place. An organisational change may require participation across functions because decisions taken in one part of the organisation create consequences in another.

Evidence from environmental governance also cautions against assuming that participation automatically improves outcomes. Process design, context, participant selection, institutional conditions, and the relationship between participation and actual decision-making all matter.

The goal should therefore not be maximum co-creation. It should be an appropriate relationship between the issue, the knowledge required, the people involved, the decisions that remain open, and the conditions under which the resulting practice will have to work.

Keeping the Problem Open Long Enough

One of the most important possibilities in co-creation appears before a solution has been fully formed.

Projects often move quickly from identifying a problem to developing a response. The problem seems clear, an attractive solution emerges, a plan develops around it, resources are allocated, and increasingly polished language gives the project momentum. Momentum can be useful, but it becomes problematic when confidence in the response grows faster than understanding of the situation.

This is particularly relevant in sustainability work. Sustainability challenges involve interconnected social, ecological, organisational, economic, and institutional conditions. An intervention that appears sensible from one perspective may create additional work, dependencies, or unintended consequences elsewhere. A technically strong solution may rely on capacities or decision-making authority that do not exist where it is supposed to operate.

The issue is therefore not only that designers sometimes misunderstand users. Sometimes the initial definition of the problem itself needs to change.

Co-creation can expose this while there is still room to respond. Someone close to everyday practice may reveal that what looked like a motivation problem is actually a conflict between priorities. Another participant may show that a seemingly simple change depends on a decision made elsewhere in the organisation.

The point is not that lived experience should automatically override professional or scientific expertise. The value lies in allowing different forms of knowledge to encounter one another before the problem and response become too fixed.

This also changes how we understand the people involved. Design language often speaks about users, which is useful in many contexts. Sustainability work, however, frequently involves people who are more than recipients of something being designed. They may implement, interpret, coordinate, adapt, resist, or take responsibility for what follows.

Seeing people primarily as users asks whether an intervention fits them. Seeing them as participants also asks what their position can teach us about the situation itself. The question becomes not only whether something will work for people, but what people can help us understand about what “working” would mean here.

Co-creation moves from input to influence when participation can shape what is developed and what happens next.

Co-Creation as Iterative Learning

Keeping a process open does not mean remaining indefinitely in discussion. Co-creation becomes more useful when interpretations and possible responses encounter practice.

An idea can appear clear in discussion and become much less clear when someone tries to use it. A proposed process may seem simple until it meets an ordinary working day. A sustainability initiative may appear realistic until it encounters limited time, existing routines, competing priorities, or unclear responsibility. Drafts, prototypes, pilots, and small-scale experiments make these assumptions visible by giving participants something concrete to experience, question, and learn from.

The point of testing is not to defend the original idea, but to learn while it can still change.

This creates a different relationship between design and implementation. Implementation is no longer only the stage where a finished idea is transferred into practice. Early enactment can become part of how the idea itself is understood and developed.

The useful questions after a test therefore go beyond whether it “worked.” Where did the proposed practice fit existing conditions, and where did it not? What was understood differently than expected? What demanded more time or coordination? Which conditions supported action, and which constrained it?

Tension can provide similar information. Participants may disagree because they hold different values or interests, but disagreement may also reveal costs, dependencies, unclear responsibilities, or different experiences of the same proposed change. Trying to remove these tensions too quickly can erase useful information.

Facilitation can instead help examine whether disagreement concerns values, interpretation, resources, responsibility, practical feasibility, or the distribution of consequences and influence. Its role is therefore not simply to make participation run smoothly, but to create enough structure for different forms of knowledge to meet while assumptions remain open to examination and the work retains direction.

Research on co-developed professional learning in sustainability-oriented education provides a useful example of this iterative relationship. In Mathie and colleagues’ work, participants contribute not only through discussion but through a process in which dialogue, experience, reflection, feedback, enactment, and evaluation inform subsequent development. The significance is not the educational setting itself, but the underlying relationship between participation and iteration: experience is allowed to alter the process rather than merely evaluate a finished intervention. The work also connects professional learning to leadership and institutional development, illustrating how learning can extend beyond individual participants into the conditions surrounding practice.

That broader principle travels well: co-creation becomes stronger when participation, action, reflection, and adjustment remain connected.

Co-Creation, Agency, and Responsibility

Co-creation also raises a more difficult question about responsibility.

When people genuinely help shape an initiative, it can be reasonable for responsibility to become more shared. Participants are no longer merely responding to a finished decision; they may have contributed to understanding the problem and developing the response.

But participation cannot, by itself, justify shifting responsibility. Someone may contribute ideas while having no control over resources. Employees may help develop a new practice but remain dependent on management decisions about time, staffing, budgets, or priorities. A team may be asked to take ownership of implementation without being able to alter the organisational conditions that repeatedly undermine it.

In these situations, describing responsibility as shared can hide an important asymmetry.

Agency should not be assumed simply because somebody participated.

This reflects a broader tenet in my work. People act from within relationships, organisations, institutions, material conditions, and distributions of power. Their possibilities for action are shaped by access to decisions, resources, knowledge, time, support, and the ability to adjust when circumstances change.

Meaningful co-creation therefore requires attention not only to whether participants can influence development, but also to what becomes possible afterwards. Who has authority to make the resulting change? Are the necessary resources available? Does someone carry responsibility without the mandate required to act? Can the practice be adjusted when experience shows that something needs to change? Is there support for carrying the work beyond the participatory process?

These questions protect against a subtle form of responsibility shifting in which organisations invite participation, describe the resulting initiative as shared, and then expect people to carry outcomes whose determining conditions remain outside their influence.

People do not need equal power over everything for co-creation to be meaningful. But differences in power, responsibility, and possibility should be made visible rather than hidden behind the language of participation.

Co-Creation Under Real Conditions

This is where co-creation connects directly with my work at urbanhydro® and with the space between sustainability ambition and everyday practice.

Its practical value is not simply that more voices enter the process. It is that the process can become better able to understand the situation it is trying to change. That involves examining both the emerging idea and the conditions around it: what we are trying to create, what problem we believe we are addressing, whose knowledge is missing, what has already been decided, what remains open, and which assumptions should be tested before further commitments are made.

As the work moves into practice, attention shifts towards what can be tried, what is being learned, which conditions support movement, where friction repeatedly appears, and what participants can influence themselves versus what requires action elsewhere.

I examine these questions through five conditions: frames, learning, influence, adaptation, and support.

Frames shape what is possible and what is fixed. Learning allows experience to revise understanding. Influence determines whether participation can affect relevant decisions. Adaptation makes it possible for learning to change what happens next. Support connects ambition with the time, relationships, resources, and organisational backing required to carry action forward.

Co-creation can strengthen these conditions, but it also depends on them. A process cannot remain genuinely iterative if there is no room to adapt. Participation cannot become consequential when all important decisions are closed. People cannot sustain a new practice indefinitely without time, resources, mandate, or support.

There are practical limits as well. Meaningful co-development takes time, facilitation, coordination, and often sustained relationships. It may require financial resources and institutional backing rather than a single workshop. Co-creation is therefore not automatically appropriate for every decision or every stage of a project, and recognising those limits makes the concept more useful.

Sometimes co-creation improves an existing idea. Sometimes it simplifies it or reveals that different organisational conditions are needed before it can work. Sometimes it changes the direction of the project itself. And sometimes the most responsible result is discovering that the original idea should not proceed.

A More Workable Understanding of Co-Creation

Co-creation is not the absence of leadership, expertise, boundaries, or decisions. Nor is it a guarantee of consensus or better outcomes. It is a way of keeping relevant parts of a problem and response open long enough for different forms of knowledge and experience to affect their development.

At its best, co-creation connects participation with influence, experience with learning, testing with adaptation, and responsibility with realistic possibilities for agency. It allows ideas to encounter the situations on which they depend before those ideas become too difficult to change.

This matters particularly in sustainability, where solutions rarely move intact from strategy into everyday practice. They meet existing systems, relationships, routines, priorities, capacities, histories, and constraints. People interpret them, negotiate them, adjust them, resist them, support them, or find ways to make them workable.

A co-creative approach takes that reality seriously from the beginning. It does not assume that people closest to a situation have every answer, nor that expertise from outside the situation is sufficient on its own. Instead, it creates a relationship between different forms of knowledge and allows that relationship to continue through testing and learning.

That requires more than asking for input. It requires enough influence for participation to matter, enough openness for learning to alter the work, and enough organisational capacity for what is learned to affect what happens next.

The real test of co-creation is not whether people were invited into the process, but whether their participation could meaningfully shape what became possible.

Sources and Further Reading

Carrick, J., Bell, D., Fitzsimmons, C., Gray, T., & Stewart, G. (2023). Principles and practical criteria for effective participatory environmental planning and decision-making. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 66(14), 2854–2877. https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2022.2086857

Chambers, J. M., Wyborn, C., Ryan, M. E., et al. (2021). Six modes of co-production for sustainability. Nature Sustainability, 4, 983–996. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00755-x

Mathie, R. G. P., Eikeland, I., Sinnes, A. T., & Wals, A. E. J. (2026). Co-developing professional learning practices in support of a whole school approach to sustainability-oriented education. Environmental Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2025.2606805

Newig, J., Jager, N. W., Challies, E., & Kochskämper, E. (2023). Does stakeholder participation improve environmental governance? Evidence from a meta-analysis of 305 case studies. Global Environmental Change, 82, 102705. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102705

Norström, A. V., Cvitanovic, C., Löf, M. F., West, S., Wyborn, C., Balvanera, P., et al. (2020). Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability research. Nature Sustainability, 3, 182–190. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0448-2

Sanders, E. B.-N., & Stappers, P. J. (2008). Co-creation and the new landscapes of design. CoDesign, 4(1), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710880701875068

Wyborn, C., Datta, A., Montana, J., Ryan, M., Leith, P., Chaffin, B., Miller, C., & van Kerkhoff, L. (2019). Co-Producing Sustainability: Reordering the Governance of Science, Policy, and Practice. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 44, 319–346. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-101718-033103

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Implementation Is Not Just Execution

Why sustainability work needs structure, learning, coordination, and adaptation

Good ideas rarely fail at the moment they are conceived. They lose strength in the transition from intention to practice. A strategy may be clear on paper. A workshop may generate genuine energy. A project plan may present a convincing sequence of actions. People may agree on the problem, support the ambition, and feel ready to begin.

Then the work meets reality.

Time becomes scarce. Responsibilities overlap. Communication fragments. Existing routines compete with new priorities. Resources prove tighter than expected. People interpret the same goal differently. Decisions take longer, momentum weakens, and the connection between the original ambition and everyday work begins to fade. This is where sustainability work is truly tested.

Implementation is often treated as the final stage of a project: first we develop the idea, then we create the strategy, and finally someone implements it. But implementation is not what happens after the thinking has finished. It is where the thinking is tested, challenged, and refined. It is where assumptions become visible, ideas are translated into practice, and people discover whether a proposed change can survive the realities of everyday organisational life.

The question is therefore not only whether an idea is good. The real test is whether people can understand it, make it workable, coordinate action around it, and sustain it when initial enthusiasm meets everyday reality.

When Good Ideas Lose Momentum

Many sustainability initiatives begin with genuine commitment. A problem has been recognised. There is a desire to act. Funding may have been secured, a partnership established, or a strategy approved. A group of people may be willing to contribute their knowledge and energy.

At the beginning, momentum can feel almost automatic. The purpose appears clear, meetings are active, the language is ambitious, and people are optimistic about what the initiative could achieve. Gradually, however, the pressures of practice begin to appear.

Roles remain undefined.

Meetings become less focused.

Decisions are postponed.

Important information stays within individual teams.

Participants are unsure what is expected of them.

The project becomes dependent on a small number of committed people.

New tasks are added without older responsibilities being removed.

Eventually, the initiative may still exist formally, but its energy has changed. What began as a meaningful effort becomes another task competing for attention. This does not necessarily mean the original idea was wrong. It may mean that the conditions needed to carry the idea were never sufficiently developed. Good intentions cannot compensate indefinitely for unclear responsibility, weak coordination, limited resources, or a lack of connection to everyday practice.

Implementation as a Learning Process

Implementation is not simply the act of following a plan. It is the process of learning what the plan needs to become when it meets reality. This distinction changes how challenges are interpreted. When implementation is understood only as execution, any departure from the original plan can appear to be a failure. Delays suggest poor management. Questions are interpreted as resistance. Adjustments look like a lack of preparation.  But when implementation is treated as a learning process, practical difficulties become sources of information.

A delay may reveal that an important resource is missing.

Resistance may indicate that the purpose has not been made sufficiently clear.

Confusion may point to weak communication or uncertain responsibilities.

A failed test may expose an assumption that should have been examined earlier.

Low participation may reveal that people cannot see how the initiative connects to their work.

A practical obstacle may indicate that the process requires redesign rather than additional pressure. This does not mean abandoning structure whenever a problem appears. It means creating a structure capable of learning. The purpose of implementation is not to defend the original plan against reality. It is to use reality to improve the work without losing sight of its purpose.

Beyond the Linear Plan

Projects are often organised through a familiar sequence:

This sequence is useful. It creates direction, supports coordination, and helps people organise complex work. The difficulty arises when the sequence is mistaken for a description of how change actually happens.

Real implementation is rarely linear.

People interpret objectives differently. Institutional conditions change. New stakeholders become involved. Resources shift. Unexpected tensions emerge. Some activities work better than anticipated, while others create very little movement. What seemed straightforward during planning often becomes more complex once people begin acting.

A plan can therefore support implementation, but it cannot remove uncertainty.

Problems arise when following the plan becomes more important than learning from the work. A sustainability plan should not become a cage. It should function as a structure for movement. It should help people act, observe, learn, and adjust. It should provide enough direction to prevent fragmentation, but enough flexibility to respond to new information.

This is structured flexibility. Without structure, implementation becomes scattered. Without flexibility, it becomes rigid. Effective implementation requires both.

Translating Ambition into Practice

Sustainability ambitions are often expressed through broad concepts such as transformation, resilience, inclusion, circularity, participation, responsibility, or long-term value. These concepts can provide direction, but they do not automatically explain what people should do differently. Implementation therefore requires translation.

A goal must be translated into roles, routines, decisions, communication, resources, milestones, and follow-up. Without this translation, sustainability remains too abstract to guide everyday action. People may agree with the ambition but remain uncertain about what it means for their own work.

They may support the strategy but not know which decisions need to change.

They may want to contribute but be unable to see where their contribution fits.

They may attend meetings without understanding how the discussion connects to their responsibilities. Implementation becomes more workable when practical questions are answered:

What does this ambition mean in this specific context?

What are we trying to change?

Who is responsible for which part of the work?

What needs to happen first?

What can be tested now?

Which resources are actually available?

What must be postponed, reduced, or removed?

What would meaningful progress look like?

How will we know whether the work is moving in the right direction?

These questions do not make the ambition smaller – they make it possible to act on. A more adaptive understanding of implementation can be represented as a continuing cycle rather than a fixed sequence.

Coordination Is Part of the Change

Implementation depends heavily on coordination, yet coordination is often underestimated. It may be described as administration: arranging meetings, updating documents, sharing information, or keeping track of deadlines. But coordination is more than task management. It is the work of keeping purpose, people, information, resources, decisions, and next steps connected over time.

This is particularly important in sustainability work because projects often cross organisational and professional boundaries. A single initiative may involve different departments, organisations, disciplines, public authorities, businesses, educators, citizens, students, or civil society groups. Each participant may bring a different language, mandate, timescale, and understanding of success. These differences can strengthen a project, but they also create friction.

Without coordination, people may work in parallel without connecting their efforts. Decisions may be made without involving those expected to carry them out. Important information may remain within one part of the system. Responsibility may be assumed rather than clarified. Energy is then lost not because people oppose the project, but because no one is holding the process together. Good coordination maintains coherence.

It keeps the purpose visible.

It clarifies what has been decided.

It shows what has changed.

It makes the next step concrete.

It creates continuity between meetings.

It helps people understand how their contribution connects to the wider direction.

Coordination is often almost invisible when it works well. When it is absent, everyone notices.

Test Before You Scale

One of the most effective ways to strengthen implementation is to test an idea before expanding it. Sustainability projects often carry considerable ambition. People want broad change, long-term impact, and visible results. That ambition is necessary, but it can also create pressure to develop too much too quickly.

A programme may be expanded before anyone knows whether it works under everyday conditions.

A process may be designed in detail before the people affected by it have had an opportunity to respond.

A solution may be presented as finished before its basic assumptions have been tested.

Small-scale testing creates an alternative, showing whether an idea is understandable, relevant, realistic, and workable. It can identify where instructions are unclear, where the process is too demanding, where responsibilities are missing, or where participants see possibilities the designers had not considered.

Testing turns abstract discussion into practical learning. People can respond to something they have experienced rather than something they have only imagined. This also makes participation more meaningful – participants are no longer being asked only whether they support a general ambition. They can contribute to improving a concrete activity, process, or solution.

Testing is not evidence of weak ambition – it is evidence that the project respects reality.

The aim is not to test indefinitely but to learn early enough for the learning to influence what happens next.

Feedback Must Be Built into the Work

Implementation requires feedback throughout the process, not only during the final evaluation. Waiting until the end may produce useful documentation, but it does not necessarily help the people who are still trying to make the project work.

Ongoing feedback connects action with learning.

It allows difficulties to be identified while there is still time to respond. It shows whether people understand the purpose, whether activities are producing movement, and whether the work is creating unintended burdens or exclusions. But feedback must be usable. If it is too vague, people cannot act on it.

If it arrives too late, the opportunity for adjustment may have passed.

If it is collected but never acknowledged, trust declines.

If it focuses only on success, important learning is hidden. Useful implementation feedback asks practical questions:

What is currently working?

What remains unclear?

What is taking more time or energy than expected?

Who is missing from the process?

What are people actually doing differently?

Which barriers are appearing?

What should be adjusted before the next stage?

What should remain unchanged?

These questions help prevent projects from continuing along an ineffective path simply because that path was included in the original plan.

The objective is not constant change – it is intelligent adjustment.

Implementation Also Requires Energy

Structure alone does not move a project forward; implementation also depends on energy.

Energy comes from relevance, ownership, relationships, visible progress, and a shared understanding of why the work matters. Without it, even a well-organised project can become mechanical. People may attend meetings, complete assigned tasks, and follow procedures while becoming progressively less connected to the purpose of the work.

This matters in sustainability projects because the challenges are often complex, long-term, and emotionally demanding. Progress can be difficult to see, and the distance between an individual action and a wider outcome may feel considerable. People therefore need more than instructions – they need to understand why their contribution matters, where progress is possible, and how their work connects to something larger. This does not mean that every project must feel inspiring at every moment. Implementation inevitably involves routine, compromise, and periods of uncertainty. It means that motivation should be treated as a practical condition rather than a personal bonus.

Where is there commitment?

Where is there frustration?

Where is there initiative?

Where is there confusion?

Where is there fatigue?

Where are people already creating movement?

These signals indicate whether the project is genuinely being carried by people or merely being administered around them.

Making Implementation More Workable

This is an important focus in my work through urbanhydro.

I support people and organisations in moving from sustainability ambition towards grounded practice through facilitation, learning design, consultancy, project implementation support, and structured process development. The objective is not to make complex change appear simple. It is to make the work more understandable, coordinated, and workable. That often begins by examining the conditions surrounding implementation:

What are we trying to move from intention into practice?

Which assumptions are built into the current plan?

Who will need to carry the work in their everyday roles?

Which resources are genuinely available?

What should be tested before it is expanded?

Where is stronger coordination required?

What feedback will help guide the next step?

What must remain fixed, and what can be adapted?

These questions allow a project to become more realistic without becoming less ambitious. They help reduce the distance between what is promised and what can actually be carried, maintained, and developed over time.

Where Sustainability Becomes Real

Implementation is not just execution. It is where sustainability work becomes accountable to reality—where ideas encounter people, routines, resources, institutional conditions, competing priorities, and uncertainty. It is where plans must become practices, and where learning must continue after the strategy has been approved.

Effective implementation requires direction without rigidity, planning without the illusion of control, participation without endless openness, and feedback without constant reaction. It depends on coordination, energy, practical translation, and the ability to adapt without losing purpose.

Ideas matter. Strategies matter. Plans matter. But implementation is where we discover whether people can actually carry them forward. Sustainable change does not emerge from forcing reality to conform to a perfect plan. It develops when people have the conditions, relationships, structures, and practical opportunities needed to test, learn, coordinate, adjust, and continue.

That is how ambition becomes practice—and how change begins to take root.