The emerging institutionalisation of knowledge co-production in sustainability research

Co-production of knowledge in science-policy interfaces has received increased attention as a way of addressing grand societal challenges with the hope that it will create a base for enacting transformative change. We explore the development and outputs of projects funded by the Strategic Research Council of Finland, which has had the aim of generating strategic knowledge through interactions with stakeholders. We examine how producers and users of knowledge understand co-production as revealed by a researcher survey and stakeholder interviews in relation to different domains in the institutionalisation process. Our results show advanced, emerging and explorative levels of institutionalisation of knowledge co-production practices and highlight the differences between needs-based and transformative approaches to co-production. We conclude that to succeed, efforts to institutionalise knowledge co-production should recognise several societal domains from governance to resources and culture. Advanced institutionalisation for the co-production of transformative knowledge can significantly strengthen the potential of sustainability research.