Open Innovation 2.0 Yearbook 2013 - European Commission - Europa

96 O P E N I N N O V A T I O N 2 0 1 3
The EUE research programme is using cutting-edge
techniques for spatial data acquisition. These are
applied to, and combined with, concepts for a digital
ubiquitous ecosystem in Espoo City T3 area. The target
application will be a mobile and virtual smart city
model with geospatial virtual knowledge elements.
Specific attention will be paid to aspects of usability
and innovative visualisation for various user needs.
By capturing the city’s geometry and characteristics
through laser scanning, the resulting model can
be applied in an information modelling process to
conduct different kinds of analysis. The virtual —
possibly, photorealistic — models used as the basis
for the regional information model create a virtual
city, geometrically accurate and visually close-toidentical
with the real one. This enables city planning,
built environment and real estate management
professionals, as well as decision-makers
and citizens, to use the model for diverse purposes.
An integral part of the ongoing RDI process is
the Meshmoon online virtual reality hosting system,
which is based on on-demand cloud-hosting
technology and the open source realXtend Tundra
software.
The EUE programme’s initial results have also made
diverse issues and challenges explicit. It is clear
that one of the key challenges now is orchestration.
Innovation in networks cannot always be managed:
often orchestration — the process of creating conditions
and support infrastructure whereby innovation
can emerge and be sustained — is required.
Many innovation management processes in organisations
are reasonably well understood and documented,
while the processes of orchestrating open
innovation networks and innovation ecosystems
are neither well documented nor understood adequately.
The processes involved in creating, supporting
and maintaining a regional innovation
ecosystem in which diverse actor groups participate
— large industries and SMEs, local municipality
bodies, knowledge institutions with diverse
researchers working in a range of different fields
of expertise, and many other actors — are often
complicated, sometimes complex, and need to be
developed in situ as the ecosystem itself emerges.
Orchestration is not the same as
management
As in many large innovation programmes, participating
actors have the ambition to collaboratively
create innovative products and services which can
be applied locally and compete in global markets.
In practice, however, participants tend to focus on
their own tasks, sectors, organisations and disciplines,
working to optimise their own work, often with
inadequate attention for the work of network partners
(in other work packages, and elsewhere in the
ecosystem), who, on the surface, seem to be dealing
with different issues altogether. The deeper the focus,
the more difficult it is for results-oriented researchers
and business interests to develop the trust, respect,
and mutual understanding needed to overcome the
effects of their working silos: inadequate communication,
insufficient connection, ineffective search facilities.
Typical problems encountered are that the entire
ecosystem suffers from their inability to find answers
to questions that their network partners have already
answered, and that the wheel is too often reinvented.
All can benefit from support infrastructure and facilitation
that enhances the required sharing of knowledge,
resources and results. This is the primary task
of good orchestration.
Orchestration is not the same as management.
In an innovation ecosystem, it is not possible to
manage many aspects of the innovation process.
Orchestration is needed; this relates to both:
1. the capacity to create conditions where the
diverse parties can work together with the right
balance of inner and outer focus and, thus, reinforcing
both their own work and benefiting the
ecosystem as a whole; and
2. the provision of supporting service infrastructure
to help sustain effective operation within
the system.
One needs to know how to organise the right methods,
tools and facilitation processes to help projects
and partners achieve their objectives. The methods
may range from tools and technologies for creative
problem-solving, user-centred co-creation, building
synergies and breaking silos, to finding ways to deal
with resistance to change and create breakthroughs
in stuck situations. In addition, a systemic learning
infrastructure is needed to ensure effective learning,
and to facilitate entrepreneurial learning — the rapid
application of lessons learned within the ecosystem
so that projects and players can systematically
benefit from each other’s experience and expertise.
Processes for benchmarking (accessing and applying
relevant and inspiring lessons and good practice
from diverse sources around the world) and benchlearning
(a collaborative, symmetric learning process
based on peer-to-peer exchange) are also essential.
Modernising the triple helix means engaging in
a transformation process for the systemic development
of regional innovation ecosystem. Orchestration
activities should be developed up to the level of
smart orchestration, which implies: