Kenneth Hansen

Cand. mag., PhD External lecturer Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies Roskilde University E-mail: keha@ruc.dk

I’m a communication professional working as university teacher, part time researcher, project developer, consultant, and freelance journalist. I have worked with Information and communication tehcnology (ICT), knowledge managment, project management, innovation, organizational theory, complexity theory, Corporate Social Responsibility, critical theory and political economy.

My latest writings are about “meaningfull experiences” – I published a book about this issue in 2011 – and my lectures often deal with a combination of value management and experience design (“værdibaseret oplevelsesdesign”, “oplevelsesbaseret værdiledelse”). A constant focus is on ethics, which I see as a reflective process between norms and emotions that constantly creates and recreates values.

A selection of my publications can be found at my website.

My interest in Orecomm is focused on the combination of experience economy and design, communication for development, ICT and complexity theory. This combination reflects an interest in facilitating communication for development by enlarging the traditional view to include new media and experience design.

I have for example participated in the project “Digidi Ghana” funded by The Danish International Development Assistance, Danida, and supported by the World Bank in Ghana. Digidi (Digital Distribution, http://www.digidi.org), is a global co-operative society, established in Copenhagen in 2003. It is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that has successfully established a global digital distribution net, through which shareholders can sell digital cultural products in more than 60 online shops all over the world. It is currently owned by approximately 1100 participants coming from a wide array of fields in the global experience economy. Each participant holds an equal share.

Digidi Ghana is an attempt to develop this idea into a global fair trade concept within a development agenda. In Ghana, as in other developing countries, mass production and global distribution of digital cultural products is an often overwhelmingly complex and expensive affair which requires substantial investment beforehand. By instead distributing these products through the Internet, a Ghanaian artist for example, can receive up to 85 % of the income from the sale, since there are no unnecessary intermediate stages between producer and consumer. The establishment of such a new fair trade concept, with its use of advanced digital media in an unusual context is, however, a highly complex and challenging task. Among many things it involves unusual partnerships, intensive and very special experience based PR-work, powerful negotiation skills, and, above all, the skill to navigate immediately and powerfully in an environment in total flux. A paper about this case can be found here.

Recently I have been to Minas Gerais  in Brazil where I have tried to develop a workshop in entrepreneurship. I also made two reports, one about the worlds worst company, “Vale” which incredible behavior is absolutely destructive for people, nature and the developing experience economy. This report can be viewed here (in Danish): Den jernhårde oplevelse. The second report is about a small entrepreneur in the new Brazilian experience economy. The videoreport can be viewed here (also in Danish): Cynthia og pão de queijo-fabrikken.

In general I like to work with project development and often write about experiments, examples and cases. I’m almost always involved in the ongoing development of a handful of other projects. I try to update as much as possible on my website.