Open Innovation 2.0 Yearbook 2013 - European Commission - Europa

The Open Innovation Lab: innovationenabling
capabilities for third parties
If we come back to the motivation of the FI PPP in
general, and FI-WARE in particular, we are obliged
to make a critical analysis of how feasible it is that
the joint effort of major stakeholders in Europe
ends up in increased competitiveness of European
companies in ICT, as well as in domains like transport,
energy or smart cities, to name a few.
There are some elements that will have a clear
impact on this goal.
• Benefits and competitive advantage of the
results with respect to existing solutions in
the market: the first condition for Europe is
that the technical outcomes of this initiative
are excellent and can be considered attractive
by the different targeted communities.
° FI-WARE has carried out a deep analysis of
the market and has defined the value proposition
of the expected outcomes. The technical
roadmap does not only address current
bottlenecks at technical level, but also
the needs and requirements of the Usage
Areas, as immediate users of the solutions.
• Conditions under which results can be used:
this leads us to the critical point of openness.
Open and interoperable solutions are a must to
succeed in the current environment. Furthermore,
licences and pricing schemas have to be very
clear, as well as any dependence that may arise
when using these components, including sustainability.
All this differentiates this initiative from
usual R & D projects funded by the EC so far,
since it gives priority to market adoption and the
usage of results. It implies the clear definition of
terms and conditions as well as business models,
going further than ever in the commercialisation
of results.
° Each of the GEs specified by FI-WARE is
accompanied by clear information on terms
and conditions. This is ongoing work for which
user feedback will be extremely valuable.
• Sometimes, technical added value is not
enough to convince others. The aforementioned
GEs and the ecosystem could be conceptually
relevant as an engine to promote innovation,
but besides the commitment of the leaders
(companies involved from the very beginning in
FI-WARE) there is a clear dependency on the
community of supporters, including collaborators/contributors
and users.
° Involvement of users in early phases
appears to be of utmost importance.
Besides an intense marketing campaign,
a closer relationship with third parties will
be needed. The instrument that has been
defined by FI-WARE to achieve such relationship
is the Open Innovation Lab.
The Open Innovation Lab is, as the name says,
a ‘place’ where any organisation interested in the
Future Internet will have access to all of the results
of the FI-WARE initiative and will have the mechanisms
to test the technology, provide feedback and
actively participate in the subsequent versions of
the technological framework. Interested parties will
receive guidance and will be provided with incentives
to make use of the FI-WARE GEs.
From a technical point of view, the Open Innovation
Lab will be the FI-WARE Testbed, but open to
third parties (anyone who has an interest without
any restriction of being a partner of any project or
programme whatsoever). The technical facilities
will be accompanied by the necessary tools and
mechanisms to facilitate setting up and running
experiments as well as to better understand the
possibilities of the technology to foster innovation
in different business environments.
The FI-WARE Testbed is a complete FI-WARE
Instance, meaning that it will comprise reference
implementations of the all the GEs defined in the
FI-WARE Architecture.
The FI-WARE Testbed’s main basic infrastructure
will be hosted by a centralised dedicated data centre
following industrial principles of operations,
where FI-WARE partners could be involved as well
as external organisations; negotiations will always
be driven by the benefits of the approach for the
users and external parties, providing maximum
guarantee for service provision.
In the course of the coming months, it is expected
that the Testbed will benefit, as needed, from external
facilities such as those provided by FIRE ( 2 ), in
an attempt to take advantage of other research
activities supported by the EC. Figure 3 illustrates
the basic topology of the FI-WARE Testbed with the
envisaged relationships to other experimentation
platforms. 1
( 2 ) FIRE is an initiative at EU level that intends to create
a multidisciplinary research environment for investigating
and experimentally validating highly innovative ideas for
new networking and service paradigms. FIRE promotes the
concept of experiment-driven research, combining academic
research with the wide-scale testing and experimentation
that is required for industry. FIRE works to create a European
Experimental Facility, which is constructed by gradually connecting
and federating existing and upcoming test beds for
Future Internet technologies.
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