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You are here: Home / Archives for Ecosystems / Policymakers

Systemic visions and experimentation – corner stones for ‘missions’

As a response to the Commission public consultation on the report of Professor Mariana Mazzucato on ‘Mission-Oriented Research and Innovation in the European Union – A problem solving approach to fuel innovation-led growth‘ Insight Foresight Institute remits the following suggestions for wider consideration on the implementation of the mission-oriented innovation policy in Europe.

‘Criteria for how EU research and innovation missions should be selected.’

EU R&I missions should be bold, inspirational with wide societal relevance and cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral and cross-actor efforts. It may be worth considering also the areas where EU has the greatest potential to contribute based on its capacities and competitive strengths.

The mission, while being a broad statement, also holds the risk of being too abstract to be targeted, measurable and time-bound. Furthermore, the notion of multiple bottom up solutions may counter to the expectation of realistic actions since if it is known to be realistic then why would multiple paths be needed. Ultimately the missions being bold they also entail the risk and uncertainty, for instance suggesting difficulties in setting the right time-bound criteria at the outset. The visions as such would better avoid also artificial limits for improvement. For instance, in case of reducing carbon emissions, the mission could well target going even beyond carbon neutral.

For mission-oriented policies to be truly systemic the missions would be better framed with systemic visions encompassing multiple-dimensions on the future techno-institutional and socio-economic systems. The experimentation of the alternative pathways would still be guided by such systemic visions and help identify complementarities and synergies of diverse efforts. In particular, without such systemic visions, there exists a risk of repeating the issues confronted in earlier efforts like in case of the European partnerships that tended to result to the broad networks of rather fragmented projects.

Defining the mission around a single criterion like a carbon neutral city or plastic free ocean holds the risk of losing some focus on other relevant criteria for development, consider for instance the hailed diesel engines as a low carbon solution that led to the rise of other serious air emissions. The very idea of sustainable development is to simultaneous explore win-win-win solutions across economic, social and ecological challenges.

‘Implementation of research and innovation missions’

The extensive inclusion of actors from a diverse group of European countries, including central and peripheral countries and regions can be an invaluable asset. However, national and regional stakeholders may too often have competing agendas that reduce the focus to serving neither and risk not addressing the needs of the largest constituency of society. Therefore, the intensity of the engagement of different stakeholders is better driven by their competencies and specific purpose of each mission. It is important that the best talents find their way to contribute the missions. Any calls for proposals of R&I projects may leave some high potential talents excluded. Here the good practices of ERC might be worth a consideration. Missions could also seek closer coordination with international organizations and other third countries.

An impartial appraisal of the progress and the impact as well as the flexible management are the key for effective missions. The implementation of EU R&I missions should be flexible, with pro-active management and building in-house capabilities and through a portfolio of instruments to foster bottom up solutions. The timelines and milestones set in the outset are better revised based on the improved understanding attained along the implementation phases of ambitious missions entailing uncertainties.

‘Citizens should be consulted on the choice of missions’

A broad consultation may benefit the exploration and definition of possible missions to better address societal needs and avoid bias over any single actor. However, this may become demanding from a methodological point of view (whom to consult, by which channels, using which methods) and turn out to be time-consuming, especially to thoroughly process the opinions and suggestions collected, and thus rather expensive.

Furthermore, framing a mission may require considerable technical and context specific understanding which reduces the value or suitability of public consultation or referendum for purpose of the selection or priority setting of missions. This would assume that the citizens have been educated sufficiently to understand the issues and the challenges related to the mission. Missions might be proposed to be a subject of public consultation even in situations where the citizens may not be related to due to lack of direct experience or the benefits of the mission being too far in the future.

Hence, the views of stakeholders and diverse set of citizens might be best integrated in early exploratory phases (e.g. via foresight) rather than in the later phases of the policy cycle when the mission has been largely defined and the consultation may merely seek for ‘approval’. One way for developing citizen insight on issues is the use of living labs and new methods of user-centred design for feedback. This process may facilitate a broad cross section of individuals from society.

 ‘Ideas for EU research and innovation missions’

  • Smart Energy Systems. Europe can lead the transition towards distributed and smart energy systems for enhancing sustainable production, distribution and storage of energy.
  • Cradle to Cradle Economy. The EU should become world leader in sustainability transition following the cradle to cradle design principles and learning from the experimentation across different sectors.
  • Intelligent Reforestation. European forest management could gain momentum with new sustainable smart solutions for reforestation as means to fight desertification and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
  • Beyond Jobs. Europe should lead a new way to understand that jobs are only a means. Social innovation is urgently needed to develop alternatives to jobs as the only way to gain access to wealth.
  • Digital Democracy. Europe can lead exploiting the capabilities of technology to create an open and engaged society while making the most of “collective intelligence”. Democracy should be understood as a better way to solve certain complex social problems than markets or hierarchies.

Foresight: Capture the value in the innovation ecosystem

In response to the new business reality of the world VUCA (comes from the words in English: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), companies develop their activities, increasingly, in networks of collaborators and develop their own ecosystems to be able to innovate. an agile and connected way. These networks and ecosystems also open opportunities to improve foresight and technological intelligence both to identify and connect new signals and to interpret their relevance.

Technology foresight encompasses tools from automated technological surveillance to online collaboration for strategic management and analysis that enable much more informed decision-making. It also facilitates the innovation process of organizations, in the sense of offering information enriched with aspects that not only come from the domain or domains of the technology itself, but also from external factors such as competition, the environment, etc. This intelligence allows the informed and creative development of new solutions to the market.

Insight Foresight Institute is facing this challenge by offering executive and in-house training programs. The activities are developed in ‘partnership’ with our collaborators and clients, such as:

  • Foundations
  • Business schools and universities
  • Business
  • Public administrations.

Our approach is to support companies and their experts to develop their intelligence and innovation activities, and make the most of the ecosystem.

Attendants

  • Managers and managers of development, innovation, information and technology.
  • All those with interest in the application of technological intelligence in their ecosystem.

Objectives

Eminently practical training program to:

  • Know the basic elements and usefulness of technological intelligence for digital transformation.
  • Know and share experiences, how to value the ecosystem through technological tools and knowledge of various actors.
  • Inform the different actors of innovation ecosystems of the great potential and impact of intelligence tools for decision-making in their organizations.
  • Develod ideas and creative plans for new solutions to the market.
  • Plan actions that can be carried out to offer intelligence services in the ecosystem network.

Concept

  • Seminars (face-to-face classes). Exhibition of theoretical concepts.
  • Know and pilot the methods and tools.
  • Online co-creation. Work on the online platform with the tools, case studies and support material, in order to co-create strategic plans.
  • Personalized and confidential.

As a general rule we recommend 4 modules distributed over 4 weeks. Each module consists of 1 day of classroom (seminar / workshop) of 6 hours, which is accompanied by work activities, both individual and group, supported by online platform (4 hours / module / week).

It is advisable to leave several days between the modules that allow:

  • Learning through reading and exercises
  • Involvement of colleagues and organization

We are also flexible to co-design the program to specific circumstances.

Contents

(Week 1) Horizon scanning in the ecosystem. In the first week of the course will be carried out the detection and management of ideas or (early) signs of innovation in the sector in question.

(Week 2) Anticipate in the ecosystem. Using the ideas obtained in the first week, a prospective exercise will be carried out to identify success scenarios, which will be completed with roadmaps of the solutions found for their implementation.

(Week 3) Act in the ecosystem. With the selected solutions, a deep and specific analysis will be carried out to identify markets, partners and final concretion of action plans.

(Week 4) Take to practice. In this session, each participant (organization) will present their results (with the possibility of carrying it out in private tutoring sessions that members of your organization can attend), for the evaluation of their execution.

Participants will have the possibility to hire a follow-up service, after the training, in order to facilitate the development of their solutions and / or intelligence systems.

For more information: info@if-institute.org

Also know about other IFI courses.

 

Is it possible to achieve smart specialization?

Juan Mulet Melia, a member of the Innovation Council of IFI, and Totti Könnölä, CEO of the Insight Foresight Institute (IFI), write in Cinco Días, one of the leading economic journals in Spain, to promote smart specialization in the regions.

The aim of any policy to promote innovation is to make more innovative companies, and those that already are, to address innovations that generate greater added value. An innovative company sees innovation as one of its operations in pure business logic. However, companies that are not innovative consider that it does not compensate them to assume the inherent risk of any innovation. For this reason, innovation policies will only be effective when they are able to reduce the technological, commercial, organizational or financial risk acceptable.
Two are the ways in which policies to promote innovation are usually pursued. One, of general application, is financial aid, which must be sufficient to make the risk acceptable to a company that feels averse to innovation. The safest way to waste public money is to design financial policies for innovation with scarce resources.
The second path is to facilitate access to the technologies needed to develop innovations. If there are already sources of adequate technology, this path will be less expensive, but only reduce the technological risk, leaving intact commercial, organizational and financial…

Link to full article

Image: Gitty Images / Cinco Dias

Foresight Methods and Practice: Lessons Learned from International Foresight Exercises

Totti Könnölä, CEO of IFI attended the Foresight Methodology Workshop of the Mineral Intelligence Capacity Analysis Project (H2020) organised by La Palma Research Centre in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain between 10 and 11 May, 2017.

 

 

Foresight Methods and Practice: Lessons Learned from International Foresight Exercises from Totti Könnölä

 

 

IFI at the Conference on “New Innovation models in the European Industry”

The Center for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI) and Zabala Innovation Consulting have organized on June 1, 2017 in the Hall of the Center for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI) the Conference “New Innovation Models in the European Industry”. The event aimed to showcase the most relevant systems and innovation models of European industry. Totti Könnölä, CEO of the Insight Foresight Institute, talked about innovation ecosystems.

The conference has been organized as part of the European project “Industrial Innovation in Transition” which aims to analyze on the one hand the best and most advanced practices of innovation that are giving in European industry, and by others and the administrations are providing appropriate policies and solutions to support companies in the adoption and use of practice names.

The event is aimed at any organization interested in learning new models of innovation.

Link to the report

Link to full program

Innovación Corporativa en España: Enfoque en Ecosistemas y plataformas from Totti Könnölä
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