Outreach Activation

The Revolution of Circular Economy

The AEC-Quality Community celebrated on February 9 its first plenary meeting of 2017. The plenary session was attended by Totti Könnölä, Managing Director & Co-founder of Insight Foresight Institute. During his keynote, Totti Könnölä reviewed the characteristics of the so-called ‘Circular Economy’ which, he said, allows the development of new ways of innovating and changing the business. In his opinion, Industry 4.0, digital transformation, Internet of Things and other technological advances offer new opportunities for circular economy.

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La revolución de la Economía Circular from Totti Könnölä

The European car industry has to catch up

Francisco Jariego, a member of the Innovation Council of IFI, and Totti Könnölä, CEO of Insight Foresight Institute (IFI), write in Cinco Días (one of the leading economic journals in Spain) about the transformation in the automotive industry driven by technological advances and the platform economy.

Smartphones have opened the possibility of sharing vehicles in a simple way. Uber and others have developed platforms that connect drivers and passengers, making it possible to find a driver or share a car with just a one click. These companies are pushing for a change in the patterns of private car use, which will have important consequences.

The electric vehicle is reaching the levels of autonomy and cost that make it competitive with the vehicles of internal combustion. Tesla has strongly encouraged the development of this type of vehicle with a huge investment in the production of electric batteries and a coordinated bet on the development of solar energy.

The autonomous vehicle begins to be accepted as a real possibility in a not too distant future. After years of investing in the technologies that will make a driverless vehicle possible, what began as a highly speculative bet from Google (a moonshot) is, since late 2016, a new business unit, Waymo, under the umbrella of Alphabet.

Read the full article in CincoDias in Spanish.

IFI attends the IV National Congress of Entrepreneurial Scientists

Our Member of IFI Innovation Council, Juan Mulet participates in the panel ‘Innovation 6.0’ in the IV National Congress of Entrepreneurial Scientists in Barcelona, 24-25 February 2017. The event represents an inflexion point of entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems in our country.

Its goal is to encourage the creation of scientific and technological based companies, to promote the figure of the scientific entrepreneur, to create synergies between the different agents involved in the sector and to inspire the coming generations, in charge of building the future knowledge society.

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IFI in the Innovation Panel of the VI General Conference of the Spanish Foundations Association

Our Managing Director, Totti Könnölä attended the innovation panel of the the VI General Conference of the Spanish Foundations Association, which was held the 23^rd of November of 2016 in the headquarters of the Barrie Foundation in A Coruña, in the framework of the 50^th commemorative act of this Galician entity.

Totti made a bet on innovation during his intervention on the round table. “To innovate is, in the last instance, about betting on people”, he suggested. His discourse addressed the challenge of entrepreneurship, innovation, ambition and collaboration. He gave much importance to the last point, and he got to say that “at the end that its not just institutions which collaborate but rather individual persons, and sometimes bonds of complicity are created”, as occurred in a case from his native country, Finland, where the Government “obliged” first companies and the academic world to collaborate for obtaining public funds and, although at first the relationship was “artificial”, little by little links were created between persons which led to effective collaboration. In addition, he indicated that innovation is not just undertaken by the business field, but also science, politics and society. However, he added that “entrepreneurship requires an ecosystem” and that, it is necessary to cooperate and “work hand in hand to advance”. He reflected that in the path of innovation there are risks that have to be accepted and that sometimes also serious difficulties arise; “innovative entrepreneurship is a journey, it always comes with uncertainties, but it has its rewards”. So he encouraged everyone to “have ambition” in their projects.

California for Europe

A reflection of the almost finished year: at the same time that the Cotec Foundation for Innovation celebrated its “the must” spring event, near Seseña a tyre bonfire was burning full flame. Those lost tyres could have become a business opportunity, an important service for our community and to the environment. Since the 70s the MIT professor Nichols Ashford, and more recently, Andrea Renda, from the CEPS European think tank, find evidence that an adequate regulation can create innovation, particularly to face the grand societal challenges. On the contrary, an inappropriate regulation can not only worsen the emerging opportunities, but prevent the potential innovators, professionals and entrepreneurs to innovate at all.

But as institutions are bearers of history, people are the wheels of the future. For example, the European Commission, has put into practice the so called innovation deals, using as a reference the previous Dutch experiences. It is refreshing to see an economic commissioner taking control over a directorate-general, usually ruled by the scientific logic. This combination of regulation and risk taking must be completed with a clear performance-oriented goal, because if something positive can be extracted from this crisis, is precisely the invitation for all of us, individuals and institutions, to rethink our previous stance, and go further than the established.

However, if all the innovations are novelties, not every novelty is innovation. In Spain, we embraced the United Kingdom model and the Business Innovation and Skills, but its application to the Economy hasn´t been able so far to achieve a new social agreement for innovation and science. The investment for our Spanish model of R&D+innovation will have another four years’ opportunity. No one will be able to say that two terms in office aren´t enough, and that they didn´t have the opportunity to think about the non-achieved objectives and how to get back on track. As Oscar Wilde said: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book, books are well written or badly written”…

Read to the full article in Spanish in Cinco Días