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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.

Transformative governance of personal health ecosystems

Invited speech of Dr. Totti Könnölä, CEO inf Insight Foresight Institute in the scientific conference ‘Bioengineering for Healthy Ageing. Adding Life to Years’ November 9th 2017, CosmoCaixa Barcelona.

Future personal health ecosystems encompass various areas of application such as chronic disease management, life-style management, independent living and emergency services. Such future systems assist in the provision of continuous, quality controlled and personalised health services to empowered individuals regardless of location and provide a horizontal development area across variety of patients, clinical specialties, technology fields and health services. Hence, the development of such ecosystems requires transformative governance that enable coordination and federation of diverse stakeholders.

Transformative governance of personal health ecosystems from Totti Könnölä

Corporative Innovation in Spain: Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Venturing

Insight Foresight Institute has prepared a research on corporate innovation in Spain in connection with the E2I2 Forum (Education, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Investment) coordinated by the Royal Academy of Engineering. The project consisted of: i) a study of the literature on intrapreneurship, innovation and corporate entrepreneurship, iii) verification of the data with public material, and iv) the final report.
There are several ways to approach entrepreneurship in corporations in Spain:
1. Do not carry out these activities: 9 companies of those consulted. Fundamentally in the Media sector and in the project oriented companies.
2. Intrapreneurship promotion: 17 companies consulted. Fundamentally based on employee ideas competitions.
3. Encourage external entrepreneurship: 16 companies consulted. Investment in new companies, customer cooperation, external ideas competitions, event sponsorship.
Based on the quantitative indicators consulted, it has been verified that some differences in the concrete dimensions that have been interesting to highlight (Image 1):
• Companies focused on the development and sale of products / services in front of companies focused on client projects (turnkey, tenders, etc …).
• Companies with corporate headquarters in Spain against subsidiaries of foreign companies.

Figure 1. Distribution of companies interviewed according to type of sales and location of corporate headquarters.
The behavior regarding entrepreneurship, ideas management and innovation offers some nuances according to the quadrant that is observed (Image 2).

Figure 2. Positioning of the interviewed companies regarding their activities of ideas management, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Barriers perceived in companies to innovate can be grouped into external barriers, such as: (i) low entrepreneurial culture at country level; (ii) deficiencies in the education system and knowledge generation; (iii) poor public support and regulatory constraints; and (iv) difficulties in the financing of these activities, and internal barriers such as (i) Enterprise culture and vertical structures. Excessive internal bureaucracy; (ii) Financial bias in decision-making. Lack of innovation indicators and iii) Operational problems: Selection of non-entrepreneurial personnel and unchanging processes.
It can be concluded that there is great predisposition to entrepreneurship and innovation but little radical and disruptive innovation. Companies have specific units of high level corporate innovation, but also innovation in vertical units. The importance of ecosystem management is recognized. Intrapreneurship activities are carried out without specific remuneration in most cases. If it occurs, in kind and promotion. There is a broad interest in indicators: i) Process: efficiency and effectiveness of projects, ii) Strategic: most used, iii) Financial: main interest. Limitations by traceability.
To know the concrete results of the study, send us an email: info@if-institute.org

Policy Experimentation for Pan-European Entrepreneurial Innovation Ecosystems

José Manuel Leceta, General Manager of Red.es, and Totti Könnölä, CEO of Insight Foresight Institute write on their experiences on the EIT. The article was presented in the seminar  “Growth ecosystems as a tool in the new industrial and innovation policy” organised by by SITRA and Ministry of Economy and Employment of Finland.

Established economies face major challenges in renewing their industrial basis, apparent in Europe that is struggling over decades in turning research into innovation. Policy experimentation in the periphery of government and power structures may offer opportunities for radically new policy and governance models and practices. Herein, the ‘European Institute of Innovation and Technology’ (EIT) is a relatively new policy experiment for entrepreneurial innovation. Created in 2008, the EIT operates through socalled ‘Knowledge and Innovation Communities’ (KICs) which integrate partners from the Knowledge Triangle of higher education, research and business, encompassing bottomup ‘co-creation’ of novel innovation models for Pan-European entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems. While the high political profile of the EIT has constrained partly its freedom to experiment, European-wide networked excellence approach and business logic in managing KICs has created new insights on experimental governance models to be explored further. Building on action research case study the paper codifies some of these developments and opens up an avenue for further work on the experimental governance of Pan-European entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems.

Link to the complete document

EUROPEAN INSTITUTE OF INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY: POLICY EXPERIMENTATION FOR PAN-EUROPEAN INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS from Totti Könnölä

IFI in the Finnish policy research seminar: Growth ecosystems as an innovation policy tool

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation TEKES and the Finnish Innovation Fund SITRA organised in autumn 2016 an international workshop to compile international research data on developing ecosystems. Totti Könnölä, CEO of Insight Foresight Institute, presented the paper “Co-creating Pan-European Innovation Ecosystems: reflections from the EIT”.

Competition in the global economy has increasingly become a battle between various networks or ecosystems. Companies can often no longer be competitive just using their own know-how. Instead, and in addition to their own competitive advantages, they need the benefits offered by strong partners. Such partners may include other companies and public sector or civil society organisations. Various business incubators, business accelerators and organisations specialising in promoting the use of various technologies may have an important role as platforms for testing, developing and distributing new ideas.

See all the papers presented in the seminar. 

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