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Transforming Innovation Ecosystems

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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…

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Image: Gitty Images / Cinco Dias

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.

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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

SMEs, Innovation and Industrialisation for Europe 2030

The ‘deep dive’ workshop for the EURO-CASE Innovation Platform was organised by the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain (RAI), with José Manuel Sanjurjo as chair and Francisco Jariego, member of the Innovation Council of IFI, in colaboration with Totti Könnölä, CEO of IFI, in Madrid on January 30-31, 2017. The workshop focused on ‘SMEs, innovation and industrialisation’. The work built on the background discussion paper and the results of the Euro-CASE survey. This provided a basis for the integrated analysis on industrial innovation towards the year 2030 through industrial platform ecosystems that engage value networks of industrial providers, customers but also research and technology organisations (RTOs), Universities, startups and other SMEs as well as investors, public sector agencies and regulators. Particular attention was given to the future role of SMEs and the barriers to scale-up. Also recommendations were drawn to provide inputs to European policy-making.

You may request the full report by email: info@if-institute.org