Solutions Insight

Towards Entrepreneurial Innovation Ecosystem in Montenegro

The European Commission expert panel applied the entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem model developed by IFI in expert advice in Montenegro. In this assignment, Totti Könnölä, CEO if IFI, was the rapporteur of the panel that was set up to provide external advice and operational recommendations on how the country could develop its entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem.

The expert panel provided advice on the necessary legislative changes, the design of a functional entrepreneurial innovation and startup support ecosystem model and the necessary funding schemes for startups and other actors of the ecosystem.

For more information

The Commission project website
The final report available here for free

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

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

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.

Innovation, purchases and employment

Juan Mulet, the member of IFI Innovation Council writes in Cinco Dias, one of the leading economic daily papers in Spain on how innovation, purchase and employment are, or should be, connected.

The 1987 Nobel Prize for Economics, Robert Solow, proved that the four fifths of the United States economic growth of the first half of the past century, were the consequence of having improved the way in which the production factors were combined. Back in the days it was called a technical change, nowadays we would call it “innovation in its broadest sense”, or, as the economist prefer “total productivity of the factors” (TPF). Only the remaining fifth of the mentioned growth, was attributable to the increase in the use of capital and labour. According to the OECD, between 1985 and 2010, the contribution to the (TPF) to the GDP growth between 1985 and 2010 was of 72% in Germany, of 63% in South Korea and a 52% in France. This percentage represented only a 13% in Spain. It is obvious that our economy hasn´t experience the improvement in the use of capital and labour, one of its main ways and opportunities to grow…

Read the full article in Spanish.