IKEA’s innovation lab Space10 is an open house for Indian innovators to collaborate

• Business Insider visits Space10 – IKEA’s innovation lab in Delhi.
• Simon Caspersen, co-founder of Space10 speaks about why the lab is popping up in Delhi for six months but hopes to stay on for more.
• In Copenhagen, they are currently running multiple themes – solar energy, open fabrication (open source design), natural interfaces and Artificial Intelligence and shared living.

IKEA’s innovation lab Space10 made its way into India to work on solutions that can help combat real problems for real people.

Nestled in the Dhan Mill compound in Chattarpur, Delhi, the Space10 office is a spacious enough to host public programmes with an open lab environment for researchers, innovators and experts.

We caught up with Simon Caspersen, co-founder of Space10 as he spoke about why the lab is popping up in Delhi for six months but hopes to stay on longer.

“We have come to learn from India, gain new perspectives and collaborate with Indian experts, creatives and specialists in multiple fields and together experiment, and prototype new solutions, that can enable a better everyday life for people and planet,” said Caspersen.

As a research and design lab, Space10 explores the challenges that the human race faces and hunt for solutions. It was based out of Copenhagen for four years now, they have had short stints in New York, Nairobi, London, Shanghai and Singapore. But this is the first time they have set up a big space in another country for six months.

“In Delhi, we are going to be open for six months and then we will evaluate. We have an open lab where we will collaborate with people to develop our projects. In Copenhagen, we keep the team as small as possible but when we look at our projects sometimes there are 700 people working across projects,” said Caspersen.

They will also host public programmes where partners can discuss issues under one roof. They also help bring together a network for people from different projects.

In Copenhagen, they are currently running themes like – solar energy, open fabrication (open source design), natural interfaces and Artificial Intelligence and shared living where they are rethinking the way future cities are going to be designed, built and financed. They are also going to work with Indian researchers for the same issues.

“In India, we are doing a research project on electricity. We are exploring the barriers of electricity access in India,” said Caspersen.

Being completely funded by IKEA, Space10 works for them and helps influence their future business plans.