Solutions Alignment

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.

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.

image© @ClaraNavarroCol

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

IFI Spring Statement on Innovation and Entrepreneurship

TO THE ATTENTION OF THE PRESIDENTS OF

EUROPEAN COUNCIL, EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND EUROPEAN COMMISSION

This statement builds on the findings derived from the discussions involving High Level Advisory Board members of Insight Foresight Institute (IFI) on its regional, national and international activities, in particular the CEPS Task Force on ‘People, places and policies: Promoting systemic innovation and a stronger entrepreneurial culture in Europe’ of which results were presented recently in the European Parliament.

Evidence shows that apart from few top innovative regions, the Old Continent is lagging behind in innovation and entrepreneurship. While Europe has emerged as a major consumer of digital platform services, it has generated relatively few global platform companies and other breakthroughs. The cultural diversity of Europe entails great potential for innovation. However, releasing it requires overcoming market fragmentation and severe path dependencies both in business, policy and academia.

Empowering culture change for disruptive innovation

Innovation and entrepreneurship are ultimately about people. Whereas entrepreneurs drive new businesses and growth, intrapreneurs in business and institutions are just as important for the renewal of established firms and organisations. Not only engineers and scientists but also all sorts of professionals can champion innovation by bringing in social and user perspectives.

Crossing boundaries for vibrant ecosystems

Entrepreneurship is a contact sport that requires a supportive innovation ecosystem, able to encourage entrepreneurs and investors. Europeans need to take proactive stand in developing scale-up culture, digital economy and knowledge in action both in physical and virtual places.

Not only business and academic stakeholders, but also policy should thrive experimentation and learning. This requires strong, flexible and adaptive institutions at all levels of government and departing from favouring incumbent business models. Besides coordinating infrastructure deployment, orchestrating education efforts and funding basic research, public institutions should facilitate private sector efforts towards tackling societal challenges, taking a more prospective, systemic and transformative approach that crosses sector, disciplinary and geographical boundaries. EU institutions can also lead by example.

Streamlining governance structures for innovation in Europe

Considering that the EU Framework Programmes have contributed little to breakthrough innovations, the upcoming creation of the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the mid-term review of Horizon 2020, are important opportunities to adopt more effective and mission-oriented approaches. It is time to develop an overarching and forward-looking institutional framework with the necessary stability over the coming decades.

The EIC is welcome to the extent that it will become a real game changer: otherwise another EU agency dedicated to innovation would probably add to the current confusion and complexity. Further coordination of framework conditions and specific measures to accompany and nurture scale-ups are urgently needed. Even if the mandate is made narrow (scale-ups and breakthroughs), this does not mean that for every sub-goal of innovation policy there should be a corresponding EU agency.

There should be one major European platform for each societal challenge, with active cooperation across platforms. They could tackle proactively research and innovation in a multi-stakeholder fashion, engaging in forward looking agenda setting and incorporating also measures to address systematically the regulatory and market barriers. Ideally, these platforms would merge previous instruments. Indeed, societal challenges are a new terrain for European action where fragmentation can be avoided.

On the one hand, it is ever more urgent to ensure the right framework conditions for innovation namely by streamlining research and innovation investments and by unifying market and regulatory conditions across Europe. On the other hand, a business and investment logic is needed in delivering next generation policies.

IFI, a new-to-the-world ‘think and do tank’, encourages the European Commission, Parliament and Council to consider the above as part of the European semester and consider a paradigmatic shift for innovation and entrepreneurship in Europe.

In Madrid, June 2, 2016.

Kurt Deketelaere, Member of the IFI High Level Advisory Board

Ken Guy, Member of the IFI High Level Advisory Board

John Kao, Member of the IFI High Level Advisory Board

Ben Martin, Member of the IFI High Level Advisory Board

Charles Wesner, Member of the IFI High Level Advisory Board

José Manuel Leceta, Chairman

Totti Könnölä, Managing Director

Mario Mahr, Director of Strategy

Francisco Jariego, Director of Technology

Download the statement: IFI Spring Statement

Building Regional Foresight Capability in Chile

The co-founder of IFI, Totti Könnölä co-authored the European Foresight Platform brief on the foresight programme, of which overall objective was to enhance innovation-driven sustainable economic development of the Antofagasta region in Chile. The main purposes of the foresight
were to:

improve the foresight capability in the region, especially for the partner organisations,
enhance collaboration between the industry, government and research organisations and
support the creation of a strategic research agenda for the region on a topic chosen by the partner organisations.

Building Regional Foresight Capability in Chile (pdf)