Finland - Jyvaskyla Region - Final Self-Evaluation Report.pdf

2. Collaboration and division of work between the HEIs and the regional stakeholders. Boththe University of Jyväskylä and Jyväskylä Polytechnic are engaged in active collaboration withregional stakeholders, involving firms, supporting services/agencies and intermediateorganizations. The collaboration with the stakeholders operates in a recursive manner. Thefunctions of the HEIs generate new needs among the stakeholders, and vice versa, processesadapted by the stakeholders change the expectations and needs confronted by the HEIs. Thecollaboration often takes the form of mutual projects or it is based on a financial relationship.Thus, the collaboration is mainly based on single operations instead of comprehensive mutualagreements or strategies. This causes inefficient use of the potential opportunities of contributingto the regional innovation system. In addition, lack of comprehensive agreements also causesconflicts of strategies and uncertainty regarding the roles of different players in the regionalinnovation system. Inefficient use of opportunities, conflicts of strategies and uncertaintyconcerning division of work result in overlapping activities, inefficient use of resources,weakening of the development ethos and missing of synergy benefits. Clarification of roles andtasks of different actors and improvement of the transparency of strategies and operations areneeded in the Jyväskylä region to enhance the HEIs contribution to the regional innovationsystem. A particularly urgent question is where the interface between HEIs and intermediateorganizations should be set in the innovation chain, and how to ensure a seamless innovationprocess through the collaboration of the different innovation system agents. Deepening thecollaboration between the HEIs and their regional stakeholders is one of the key objectives ofthe new joint regional strategy of the University and Polytechnic:“The division of labour between the HEIs and regional intermediate organizations will beclarified according to the changing legislation and goals set for the HEIs.” (Regional strategy ofthe Central Finland’s HEIs 2005-2009.)3. Failures of the innovation environment. The region of Jyväskylä forms strong know-howclusters in certain lines of activities (such as sport and health sciences, education and energy),based mainly on education and basic research activities of the public sector, including the HEIs.However, these clusters of know-how have not generated business activities and employment inthe region in an expected way. From the viewpoint of regional development, the efforts of basicresearch and education are partly leaking away. To improve the HEI input in these pools ofknow-how in the regional innovation system, contributing applied research and supportingactions of commercialization are needed. The whole innovation chain from basic research andidentification of potential ideas to functional business operations should be assured. One weaklink in the chain may cause collapse of the whole promising structure. A strong innovationprocess requires seamless collaboration between actors. The HEIs and the intermediateorganizations of the innovation system should integrate their efforts still more efficiently toavoid possible gaps in the innovation processes. From the point of view of entrepreneurship, thebuilding of know-how clusters should be based on the existing entrepreneurial activity of theregion instead of being separate. This would enable the firms to benefit from the increase ofknow-how and its transfer from the very beginning. If entrepreneurship were more pronouncedin the strategic focus of the innovation process it would contribute to a more market andcustomer -oriented approach. The joint regional strategy of the HEIs encourages thedevelopment of concrete measures to promote the innovation process in the region:“New operational modes will be developed by launching concrete pilot projects which aim toeffectively combine the university research, polytechnic R&D, networks of intermediateorganizations and growth firms of different industries. This would allow research-basedknowledge to transform into business and transfer of information on the practical needs of theregional actors to the HEIs.” (Regional strategy of the Central Finland’s HEIs 2005-2009.)4. Horizontal innovations. Globalization sets new challenges for regional innovation systems,particularly in the case of small open regions like Jyväskylä. To be globally competitive, toplevel know-how based on strong research and development activity is required. For a smallregion this usually means specialization and efficient use of strengths available in the region. Inthe case of the Jyväskylä region the innovation system also needs a new edge. The innovation61