Open Space is an organisational development format developed by Harrison Owen that allows several working groups to develop different ideas on a broad and complex, defined key topic within a short period of time.

The organisational issues surrounding scientific cooperation with China represent a complex topic and the target groups addressed are scientific actors in Bavaria.

In the search for answers and solutions regarding the options for shaping scientific cooperation with scientific actors from the People's Republic of China, the participants contribute their own questions, perspectives and experiences, which they believe are important and interesting to address within the framework of the key topic.

This pool of ideas, concerns, questions, concerns and/or wishes is jointly modelled into topics or ‘translated’ into topics. In the next step, the participants are encouraged to form working groups according to their individual interests and to work on the respective topics/problems/questions and projects.

Each participant can join a group according to their personal interest or area of specialisation. Switching between groups during the working phase is also possible and even encouraged. Each participant only stays with a group for as long as they can contribute to it.

The results from the working group units are translated into further concrete projects and actions and documented.

Note on the application of the open-space methodology as part of the China Hub project: The 2023 kick-off event was carried out entirely using the open-space methodology in order to first determine the initial needs and requirements. In subsequent events, the open-space methodology is no longer applied with the same intensity in some cases - in order to be able to respond even better to more advanced and in-depth topics - and we refer to these as “networking events”.