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Module 7: Building your Open Innovation ecosystem |
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Evangelia Chatzikonstantinou, Panagiotis Kallianis, Stylianos Portokalidis, Maria Symeonidou |
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Open Innovation Ecosystem Managing to build an Open Innovation ecosystem, is certainly an important opportunity for SMEs in the agri-food sector to extend their value as businesses. The Open Innovation strategy will help them on this process via many ways. Following this strategy means that it will assist in developing IT skills and improving the digitalization of a business by using the opportunities given from Open Data and Big Data. Apart from that, the most important aspect to be prioritized is Networking Development. Through networking, one can extend their collaborations, exchange innovative ideas with other SMEs and co-operate with public actors, such as chambers, municipalities, universities etc. Furthermore, Open Innovation strategy will assist in selecting the appropriate partners for entering wider markets and being more competitive, by doing strategic choices for every issue and by taking advantage of every opportunity given. |
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Upon completing this module, you should be able to: |
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Building a network
It is necessary for SMEs to build their own network for the following reason: Searching for and deciding on who to collaborate with and create an effective network can be difficult for SMEs, who may have limited sources of information and lack of financial resources to gather information compared to larger firms, who can often afford professional intelligence processes for scanning and monitoring their technological environments. Due to these difficulties, SMEs are likely to build deep and lasting ties only once they manage to organise a network.
In order to find a proper partner, a collaboration model which emphasizes the role of intermediaries in supporting an SMEs’ ability to make a collaboration network and eventually work together more effectively is needed. An intermediary can help SMEs maximize their chances of introducing and applying innovation and increase their likelihood of success in developing new products and services. Recognizing the potential value of such a role, several policies and programs have been developed to support SMEs’ innovation, with public authorities adopting the role of the intermediary.
The role of an intermediary is characterized by three direct activities. Firstly, the purpose of the network database is to identify appropriate collaborative partners. By collecting information of technologies, markets and competitors, an intermediary creates and maintains a relevant database, and shares the information to support SMEs’ search processes. Secondly, a lot of support may be needed at the network building stage, where an intermediary can help this process by supporting technology transfer to improve strategic technology management. Finally, network management is another important role for an intermediary in supporting the actual process of collaboration.[16]
While SMEs prefer collaborating with other firms for technology development (where there is no danger of technology exposure), they turn to universities and research centers of other firms for strategic alliances relatively. The reason seems to be that SMEs usually adopt acquisition strategies when they need quick access to the technology involved and/or where the technology developed by other firms offers the best option and they do not have enough R&D capabilities or experiences for the technology considering their limited resources. On the other hand, where SMEs plan longer-term technology development in strategic alliance situations, collaborations with universities and research centers focusing on more fundamental research are more likely to be indicated.
In general, intermediary activities can be classified into four categories:
- The first category is collaboration research to discover effective ways to facilitate collaboration,
- the second is to support the construction of collaboration structures by collecting data about members, training staff, designing geographical clusters, making connections with international collaboration partners, etc.
- The third one is to provide consulting services during collaboration, regarding the match between SMEs, SWOT analysis, process innovation, conflict resolution, advice on law/tax/accountancy, etc.; and
- the fourth is to open markets for SMEs, which has been the area that causes SMEs the most difficulties in their attempts to successfully commercialize and diffuse their innovative technologies.[17]
The intermediated networking model creates transaction costs but provides more benefits if it is well-organized and operated properly. How to construct a successful network is also a significant process. For a successful collaboration, network firms must understand each other and each other’s needs. Moreover, while networking supports a consulting service to evaluate suitability, as more SMEs join the association, a more systematic evaluation process will be needed, involving not just lists of SMEs, but also data on various aspects of their operations – including their strengths and weaknesses, and their capacity, vision and characteristics – to be used as criteria for organizing the best networks.
It is also important to mention that, if firms use too many sources of external knowledge for their innovative activities, negative returns might set in. These outcomes can be applied to networking and thus careful consideration is needed when networks are organized.[18]
When the procedure of creating a local network has started, it is decisive to unite different stakeholders at once (formal and informal relations, industry, entrepreneurs, research institutes, universities, public sector, joint ventures, collaborations) in order to bring people together and solve problems, talk about problems faced in projects etc.[19]
Stakeholder participation in local development strategies design the LEADER+ (CLLD – Community Lead Local Development) model. This type of model was designed to operate based on two principles, a) decision making taking place as close as possible to the site of implementation (the principle of subsidiarity) and b) hierarchical decision-making structures being replaced by mechanisms involving representatives from a wide range of governmental and non-governmental groups (principle of partnership). LAGs (Local Action Groups) as local public-private partnerships among entrepreneurs, local authorities, rural associations, groups of citizens, voluntary organizations etc. the result is new organizational structures, such as area-based, cross-sectoral partnerships that have attracted substantial academic and policy interest. At the heart of the concept of the area-based partnership is the idea that the territorial integration, the bringing together of different sectors and interests, is critical to achieving a more socially inclusive approach to rural development. Stakeholder groups are usually not homogenous entities.[20]
On top of that, CLLD (Community-Led Local Development) was designed to help ‘’rural actors consider the long-term potential for their local region and has proven an effective and efficient tool in the delivery of development policies.’’ One of the aims is to encourage local communities to plan integrated bottom-up strategies in circumstances where there is a need to respond to local challenges. In particular, CLLD relies on the integration of stakeholders’ knowledge into local development strategies. These workshops promote cooperative attitude among the participants, creating valuable networking opportunities for the participants.[21]
Public actors (e.g., governments, chambers of commerce and industry etc.) should be an intermediary that provides a supportive role for collaboration between parties during various stages of the innovation process. They become “network promoters”, “regional development facilitators” and “consultancy intermediaries”. Despite the common agreement between university, industry and administration that the collaboration is relevant for knowledge-based sustainable development, evidence shows that in practice it is highly limited.[22]
In fact, most enterprises in agri-food sector are not used to collaborate with universities in the right way or they are not used to this collaboration generally, in order to gain knowledge. However, it is well-known that communication with universities provides companies access to knowledge and scientific resources often out of reach with their internal resources and capabilities, improved productivity and improvement in the internal skills and capabilities. This kind of communication enables not only improving industrial production, but allows smaller companies to compete with large corporations, by accessing and applying external base of knowledge and expertise. Beyond new products development, companies along communication develop their internal knowledge base, skills and capabilities leading to improved productivity.[23] This means, that they become more competitive through their new innovative ideas, their new research ways, and their new soft skills gained in this university-companies collaboration.
One more important point is that they should make plan of regional innovation policies in order to improve local/regional entrepreneurship. These policies can be developed via collaboration with regional government. Regional innovation policies could lead to smart specialization strategies. Usages of network infrastructures and internet-based applications allow for new forms of collaboration among local governments, research institutions, universities, companies and citizens within the context of Open Innovation. Approaches, such as Living Labs, involve users in combination with all the other stakeholders to stimulate the emergence of breakthrough ideas in order to bridge the gap technology push and application pull. On the other hand, there is the indirect public policy, which focuses on network-facilitating activities, such as financing of science parks, incubation centers, business network initiatives and technology intermediaries.[24]
Last but not least, university-companies communication and collaboration in the scope of innovation can be developed via publishing and printed media (academic literature, tools for companies), direct interaction communication tools (formal and informal personal interactions e.g. meetings, conferences, social networks, social media, websites, email), intermediaries (non-profit organizations, technology transfer offices, governmental organizations etc.)[25] If all these referred ways would be used properly, SMEs in agri-food sector will have the great opportunity to have access in crucial information for their innovation chances, and a great opportunity to collaborate with entities (universities, governments, other firms, stakeholders etc.), from whom will learn a lot and gain a lot.