Making innovation relatable

This article shares my ongoing research journey around the Baltic sea project I am developing. At this stage, I am identifying people, perspectives, and situations that may later become documentary film episodes and foundation for interdisciplinary collaboration framework. The process itself illustrates something central to my work - how shared understanding is built in practice, and why it matters for innovation to move forward.

The Baltic Sea is often discussed in technical, environmental, or policy terms. These perspectives are necessary, but they do not capture the full picture. They rarely reflect the realities of those for whom the sea is not an object of management, but a source of livelihood, local economy, and cultural continuity. When these lived dimensions are left out, understanding remains partial — and so do the solutions.

Innovative practices around the sea do not stall because of a lack of data or good intentions. They stall when meaning is fragmented across groups that experience the same system or challenge in fundamentally different ways.

My involvement with the Baltic Sea began several years ago, when I co-developed a country-scale initiative connected to a large-scale mission focused on water innovation. Working with institutions, researchers, industries, and the public, 

I saw how quickly complexity emerged. Everyone involved cared. Everyone had expertise. But alignment was difficult to often to reach. 

What became clear early on was how much engagement depended on sensemaking. Small changes mattered more than expected - how an initiative was introduced to a specific group, whether long-term implications were made clear, whether people could recognise their own role in the broader effort. The content did not change. Understanding did.

The environmental situation itself is well documented. The Baltic sea is a semi-enclosed, slow-renewing sea, which means pollution remains for decades. Fish stocks such as cod and herring have collapsed in many areas, directly affecting livelihoods. Coastal communities face economic pressure and a gradual erosion of cultural practices tied to the sea. These are known facts. What is less visible is how differently they are interpreted depending on where one stands in the system.

When that work ended, I continued attending Baltic sea events. Over time, a pattern became clear. The rooms and online meetups were filled with policymakers, NGOs, and institutional actors. What was often missing were people whose everyday lives are directly affected by the sea — fishermen, local residents, small-scale operators, families living along the coast, and researchers deeply connected to the work. In some contexts, this separation is understandable. Not every conversation needs everyone in the room. But when innovation is framed as systemic and holistic, leaving these perspectives out creates blind spots.

This is where my research journey around my own project began. I started seeking out those voices directly. I met fishermen, researchers, community members, and practitioners in Finland, Latvia, Sweden, and Germany. Each conversation revealed not just personal stories, but different interpretations of the same challenges, priorities, and ways forward. 

One conversation with a fish researcher stood out. What struck me was not only the scientific insight, but how disconnected that knowledge often remains from public understanding and industry decision-making. The issue was not resistance or denial. It was that the meaning of the research had not travelled in a way others could work with.

This is where storytelling can serve as an  educational method.  When experiences from different parts of a system are made visible and placed next to each other, several practical things happen.  Stakeholders gain a clearer understanding of how their actions affect others. Long-term value becomes easier to articulate instead of being assumed. 

In innovation work, this kind of sensemaking creates tangible benefits -  decisions are made with fewer hidden assumptions, collaboration across sectors becomes more realistic, resistance is reduced because expectations and practical solution implementations become clearet. 

The Baltic sea project work is one example, but the mechanism applies far beyond. Whether the context is health, technology, or organisational change, innovation depends on people being able to place new ideas within their own reality. Without that, even strong solutions remain abstract and tend to stall. 

This is why I focus on lived experience as an educatinal dimension for innovation sense-making. When people can see themselves, their work, and their constraints reflected in an initiative, innovation stops being something that happens elsewhere. It becomes something that can be acted on.