Collaborative and Open Innovation – Governance of Innovation Systems
In a globalised knowledge economy innovation processes are changing substantially. More and more (in particular multinational) enterprises develop and implement collaborative and open innovation strategies due to increasing complexity of Research, Technological Development and Innovation (RTDI), growing global competition and increasing pressure to bring quickly products and services onto the market etc. The change in business innovation strategies poses considerable challenges for regional, national and European RTDI policies and the governance of respective innovation systems.
Collaborative and Open Innovation – challenge and opportunity for businesses
Following a collaborative and open innovation strategy means to open internal innovation processes and to benefit from collaborating with external partners. Accordingly, enterprises look - in addition to internal sources - for external ideas to find innovative solutions, support external commercialisation of internal inventions, e.g. through licensing, and to form strategic RTDI partnerships or networks with innovative partners. In some cases businesses even build a specific ‘business ecosystem’, where they co-evolve their capabilities around a new innovation and jointly design in a kind of ‘mass customization’ new products and services to satisfy individual customer needs. In this context, the ability of the firms to develop and coordinate effective strategic alliances and networks sharing a common vision and joining their forces is decisive for success or failure of the knowledge generation and its transfer into new products and services.
SEZ supports businesses to develop and implement forward-looking collaborative and open innovation strategies. In close partnership with the businesses SEZ identifies current and future technology needs, scans the international environment for existing technologies and potential partners and prepares the ground for technology cooperations or EU-funded projects in the European Research Area. In this context, SEZ applies different strategic intelligence tools and techniques such as innovation audits, environmental scanning, technology watch and assessment, technology scouting, technology roadmapping, etc.
Governance of Innovation Systems – challenge and opportunity for RTDI policies
The strategic use of the business environment to increase internal innovative capacity challenges traditional RTDI policies. Policy-makers at regional, national and European level are called to develop the building blocks for a 21st century governance of innovation, viz. appropriate institutional set-ups, procedures and practices for agenda setting, prioritisation, implementation and policy learning. This implies a broader understanding of, and a new approach to, RTDI policies, i.e. considering the systemic nature of research and innovation and their complex interactions with other policy fields and societal issues; and developing flexible decision-making tools and mechanisms which facilitate horizontal coordination and support cross-sectional linkages and networks. This broader understanding of innovation systems and related RTDI policies implies the need to develop multi-actor, multi-disciplinary and multi-level policy-making.
The application of Strategic Policy Intelligence (SPI) tools can improve the impact and economic return on innovation support measures by providing a common strategic knowledge base for better decisions and ensuring more synergies and effectiveness by supporting consensus building based on mutual trust, and mobilising the commitment of stakeholders and decision-makers. Thus, SPI tools augment traditional regional RTDI policy instruments by generating a creative atmosphere and a seedbed for ongoing learning processes; and they contribute to sustainable regional development through the successful re-orientation of innovation systems. In this respect, SEZ advises the policy-makers on how to improve the design and implementation of RTDI policies, programmes and related RDTI investment strategies by applying and combining SPI tools in the whole policy cycle. SEZ supports multi-actor, multi-disciplinary and multi-level policy-making facilitating the integration of European, national and regional RTDI policies in the European Research Area.