Högskolan i Skövde

This paper wrestles with how to manage prominent global transition challenges on local and regional scales to co-create a better world. It introduces an approach to managing navigation in wicked problems by expanding maneuverability to increase capacities to drive transformation in multi-actor decision spaces in the context of complex societal challenges. This demands a transdisciplinary engineering approach, where we propose using the concept of relational interfaces to enhance understanding across boundaries in shared problem spaces, providing a foundation for co-creation and collaboration over knowledge domains to enable transformational momentum and navigational capacity. A multiplicity of pressing issues on the global canvas urges action on local and regional scales. This paper draws on cases from regional healthcare system development, under demographic and resource-driven pressures in the Global North, and from regional energy transition planning, where diverse stakeholders require improved coordination for co-creation in the face of cultural, economic, and institutional disparities. Wicked problems often blind actors to their full scope unless addressed collaboratively. This paper emphasizes the need to surface the knowledge and experience of actors through visualizations and digital models, to foster openness and co-creation. Through enhanced understanding of how parts interact within the holistic system across silos, this is enabling actors to manage interfaces between contributions. The conclusions from the empirical cases show the potential of the identification and management of these interfaces to unlock profound change, fostering collaborative solutions to persistent societal challenges — a step toward co-creating a better world and a vital calling for future transdisciplinary engineers.