Profile
Ida’s research lies at the intersection between service design innovation, design-driven entrepreneurship and social change. She is passionate about the role of service design in enabling, activating, and sustaining entrepreneurial activities towards social innovation and sustainability. Her research focuses on user-centred methodologies within service ecosystems for entrepreneurship, exploring how service design tools, methods and approaches contribute towards resilient strategies, especially in times of socio-economic transformation. Her current research examines strategies used by innovative regenerative ventures to navigate entrepreneurial ecosystems, as well as identifying challenges and opportunities for developing regenerative service ecosystems.
Ida is a Fellow of Academy for Higher Education and a visiting lecturer at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design (MA Innovation Management).
Academic background
Ida completed her BA in Product Design at Academy of Fine Arts, Sarajevo. She founded an interior design studio, supporting local clients with retail design (such as boutique jewellers and organic food shops). After working as a senior designer for a luxury packaging company and an assistant to the general director of the ARS AEVI Museum of Contemporary Art, she was awarded a full scholarship (as a top international student) and moved to Milan, Italy.
She earned an honours double master’s degree (MSc Product Service System Design and Eco Design) at Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino. During this time, she co-founded a startup ‘TocToc’ – a collaborative service system that enables exchange of goods/services within neighbourhoods, boosting social innovation within smart cities. This project was awarded several incubation, accelerator and social innovation awards, including a 100k grant from the Ministry of Education to design and develop the product-service-system.
During her PhD in Products, Services and Strategic Design at Politecnico di Milano, she researched socio-economic crises and investigated how service design contributes to proposing new service systems towards social innovation and sustainability. During her studies, she was awarded a research fellowship at the DAC research centre at CSM, University of Arts London. As part the DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) research lab, amongst other projects, she contributed to the ‘Transnational Network for Social Innovation Incubation’ project by developing scaling methodologies to support social innovation.
Research
Current/past research and collaborations
‘Becoming Regenerative’ research project (2024-2027)
The B-Regen (£1M AHRC/ESRC funded) project explores how design can catalyse radical regenerative practices, examining the creative and entrepreneurial processes and how art and design education can co-shape regenerative innovation. One of the project’s aims is to investigate how regenerative ventures can transcend existing systems of profit maximisation and unsustainable extraction towards more regenerative ecosystems that serve communities and revitalise the planet. As a Co-Investigator, Ida is exploring how regenerative ventures emerge and evolve within diverse contexts across UK, Netherlands, and Japan. Her key focus is on examining strategies used by innovative regenerative ventures to navigate entrepreneurial ecosystems, as well as identifying challenges and opportunities for developing regenerative service ecosystems.
‘SAIS’ Southern Africa Innovation Support Programme (2018-2023)
The SAIS (£50k funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Finland) is a regional initiative that supports the growth of new businesses through strengthening innovation ecosystems and promotion of cross-border collaboration in Southern Africa. As a Co-Investigator, Ida was involved in the development of methodology for building impact case studies, as well as delivery of training programs in Pretoria. She contributed to the development of new frameworks which were delivered to participating project coordinators over the course of 5 years, to be transferred to project partners in local communities across Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia. The resulting research outputs enable innovation intermediaries to assess impact for future venture development with the mission to catalyse new businesses and foster the culture of local and regional entrepreneurship.
Current PhD Supervision / Completed PhDs
Chiara Orefice (TBC)
“The Role of Events in Service Ecosystem Design – A Value Creation Perspective.”
This research aims to study how service design can create value by shaping social structures and institutional arrangements within service ecosystems and how events can act as prototyping opportunities.
Dr Yasemin Canik (2017 – 2022)
“Managing User Knowledge Across Boundaries: The Case for Software Start-ups to Adopt User-centred Design.”
The research aims to identify how software start-ups with limited resources can innovate their products by adopting user-centred design processes, methods and tools to benefit from user knowledge in resource-efficient, sustainable and less-biased ways.
Dr Auri Evokari (2018 – 2024)
“Design Innovation for Entrepreneurship Ecosystems — Fostering Start-up Culture in Southern Africa.”
The research aims to understand the local start-up culture in Namibia, South Africa and Zambia, as well as the practices that foster it, to design an actionable model for facilitating entrepreneurship ecosystems in Southern Africa.
Interests and activities
Ida is actively involved in co-design facilitation, design thinking talks, start-up mentorship and is a member of judging panels for tech pitching events across London. She is a regular collaborator with the ‘Techcelerate’ programme at Imperial College London, where she delivers masterclasses on Service Design for Entrepreneurship, supporting engineers in developing their ventures. She contributed to organising Global Sustainability and Service Design Jams for both academia and industry during her time in Milan.
As part of her efforts in promoting service design innovation, Ida regularly peer-reviews design and sustainability journals and is continuously promoting her research agenda on The Value of Design-driven Entrepreneurship by guest editing special issues in design journals, initiating new tracks on this topic at prestigious design conferences. She recently delivered a keynote on the topic entitled “Design for Resilient Economies” as part of the New Normal Speaker Series hosted by Prof. Muratovksi, Director of the Ullman School of Design, University of Cincinnati.
She is a member of the Design Research Society, Service Design Network, and DESIS family.