Final Report Summary - COLLECTIVE (Emerging communities for collective innovation: ICT operational tool and supporting methodologies for SME associations) Executive summary: Information and communication technologies (ICT) have dramatically reduced the cost of accessing great ideas from any nook and yard of the world. Virtually no company should innovate on its own, and an expansion of ways and partners to collaborate with has emerged. Yet, whilst Internet technologies are increasingly being applied by large companies in all business functions, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face significant barriers in the adoption of web-tools and e-business strategies. As a matter of fact, organisational processes, structures, and values can shorten the innovation circuit. Given these challenges, an innovation strategy embracing the concepts of collective intelligence and openness may enable organisations to overcome these hurdles. We refer to this approach as collective innovation and define it as a connected, open, and collaborative process that generates, develops, prioritises, and executes new trends, ideas and products. Collective innovation can be facilitated within a community by which employees of the SME, either non-IT experts or web users will be able to connect to the iCommunity agorà and participate in the open and web-based Research and development (R&D) laboratory in the different areas of foresight, creativity and design. Companies, particularly SMEs, wishing to adopt a collective innovation approach have not yet developed specific operational tools and well-assessed methodologies. COLLECTIVE connects new areas of research with the aim to advance practices tailored to SMEs necessities and capabilities. In particular COLLECTIVE aims to address the following SME innovation needs: (i) facilitate SMEs' access to cognitive diversity and connect them with other SMEs and end users in order to foster collaboration for innovation; (ii) assist SMEs in being aware of the possibilities to access to hidden / remote knowledge in order to learn, build and develop social innovation capital; (iii) help SMEs to identify future, emergent technological and economic trends / discontinuities by developing network-based approaches to early perception of 'weak signals'; (iv) manage creativity in the area of new products and services development in order to foster new product or service ideas; (v) improve the design process in order to gather suggestions from a wider perspective and co-develop products and / or services; (vi) help SMEs to reduce market risks associated with investments in R&D and innovation by developing distributed networks of external intelligence. COLLECTIVE wanted to nourish the innovation ecosystem. In fact, it can be defined as 'one platform, many communities for many outputs (trends-ideas-products)', based on 3 key-concepts: (1) Communities: constituted by distributed and loosely connected networks of users, producers, dealers, partners, customers, and, more in general, by the stakeholders of the innovation process. (2) Self-organisation: generation of innovative ideas, the development of new product and the diffusion of innovations are carried out in parallel by self-organising communities of actors. (3) Cognitive diversity: the key aspect that will define success or failure in discontinuous innovation projects is the amount of cognitive diversity that networks (or group of firms) will be able to form and manage. Specifically, COLLECTIVE objectives were to define: (i) semantic and technological tools to support the iCommunity platform; (ii) best current methodological assets to foster innovation (foresight, creativity and design); (iii) communities' characteristics and configurations (structure, roles, composition mix) for each innovation phase; (iv) conditions for a bottom-up emergence and evolutionary development of the communities; (v) purposeful modularisation procedures as a knowledge tool enabling the collective and distributed development of new products, services or business models; (vi) different web-tools to support the process of innovation, such as wikies, forums, idea and knowledge management repositories, etc. Thus, COLLECTIVE aimed to increase: (i) The effectiveness of the innovation process: the iCommunity platform will be a complete ecosystem where organisations will be able to access cutting-edge methodologies and techniques, as well as to catalyse communities that will support the development of innovative outputs. (ii) The efficiency of the innovation process: SMEs often lack adequate resources to carry out R&D and innovation activities. Through the iCommunity platform, SMEs can leverage external knowledge and speed up the completion of their innovation process, reducing at same time the related costs. Furthermore, collaborations can dramatically reduce the time to market and the possibility of generating disruptive innovations. Project context and objectives: The COLLECTIVE project, which was funded under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), promotes the development of conditions for the creation of communities supporting each phase of the innovation process by providing SME associations with an ICT operational platform named iCOMMUNITY. ICT have dramatically reduced the cost of accessing great ideas from any nook and yard of the world. Virtually no company should innovate on its own, and an expansion of ways and partners to collaborate with has emerged. Yet whilst internet technologies are increasingly being applied by large companies in all business functions SMEs face significant barriers in the adoption of web-tools and e-business strategies. As a matter of fact, organisational processes, structures, and values can shorten the innovation circuit. Given these challenges, an innovation strategy embracing the concepts of collective intelligence and openness may enable organisations to overcome these hurdles. We refer to this approach as collective innovation and define it as a connected, open, and collaborative process that generates, develops, prioritises, and executes new trends, ideas and products. Collective innovation can be facilitated within a community by which employees of the SME, either non-information-technology (IT) experts or web users will be able to connect to the iCommunity agorà and participate in the open and web-based R&D laboratory in the different areas of foresight, creativity and design. Companies, particularly SMEs, wishing to adopt a collective innovation approach have not yet developed specific operational tools and well-assessed methodologies. COLLECTIVE connects new areas of research with the aim to advance practices tailored to SMEs necessities and capabilities. In particular COLLECTIVE aims at addressing the following SME innovation needs: (i) facilitate SMEs' access to cognitive diversity and connect them with other SMEs and end users in order to foster collaboration for innovation; (ii) assist SMEs in being aware of the possibilities to access to hidden/remote knowledge in order to learn, build and develop social innovation capital; (iii) help SMEs to identify future, emergent technological and economic trends / discontinuities by developing network-based approaches to early perception of 'weak signals'; (iv) manage creativity in the area of new products and services development in order to foster new product or service ideas; (v) improve the design process in order to gather suggestions from a wider perspective and co-develop products and / or services; (vi) help SMEs to reduce market risks associated with investments in R&D and innovation by developing distributed networks of external intelligence. COLLECTIVE wants to nourish the innovation ecosystem. In fact, it can be defined as 'one platform, many communities for many outputs (trends-ideas-products)', based on 3 key-concepts: (1) Communities: constituted by distributed and loosely connected networks of users, producers, dealers, partners, customers, and, more in general, by the stakeholders of the innovation process. (2) Self-organisation: generation of innovative ideas, the development of new product and the diffusion of innovations are carried out in parallel by self-organising communities of actors. (3) Cognitive diversity: the key aspect that will define success or failure in discontinuous innovation projects is the amount of cognitive diversity that networks (or group of firms) will be able to form and manage. Specifically, COLLECTIVE objectives were to define: (i) semantic and technological tools to support the iCommunity platform; (ii) best current methodological assets to foster innovation (foresight, creativity and design); (iii) communities' characteristics and configurations (structure, roles, composition mix) for each innovation phase; (iv) conditions for a bottom-up emergence and evolutionary development of the communities; (v) purposeful modularisation procedures as a knowledge tool enabling the collective and distributed development of new products, services or business models; (vi) different web-tools to support the process of innovation, such as wikies, forums, idea and knowledge management repositories, etc. Thus, COLLECTIVE aims to increase: (i) The effectiveness of the innovation process: the iCommunity platform will be a complete ecosystem where organisations will be able to access cutting-edge methodologies and techniques, as well as to catalyse communities that will support the development of innovative outputs. (ii) The efficiency of the innovation process: SMEs often lack adequate resources to carry out R&D and innovation activities. Through the iCommunity platform, SMEs can leverage external knowledge and speed up the completion of their innovation process, reducing at same time the related costs. iCOMMUNITY platform will enhance SME specific innovative abilities in: (i) using different tools and methodologies for new trend foresight, new idea generation, and design implementation; (ii) generating new trends, concepts and models about products and processes; (iii) creating self-organised communities which support development of new products and their business models. Project results: COLLECTIVE project develops conditions for the creation of communities (bottom-up approach) supporting each phase of the innovation process, by providing SME associations with an ICT operational platform named iCOMMUNITY. It is deemed to be a powerful instrument, a new AGORÁ for collective intelligence and emerging communities, able to facilitate the innovation process, to foster collaboration among SMEs and to trigger structured proactive actions. iCOMMUNITY platform enhances SMEs specific innovative abilities in: (i) using different tools and methodologies for new trend foresight, new idea generation, and design implementation; (ii) generating new trends, concepts and models about products and processes; (iii) creating self-organised communities which support development of new products and their business models. The main final results of the web-based software application (iCommunity platform) in which open innovation driven processes are: (1) iCommunity platform: the platform - structured as an innovation house - is composed by 10 rooms which are: (a) My Identity Room, wherein the user can create her / his own iCommunity profile; (b) My Project Room, where she can develop collaborative innovation projects; (c) My Problem Room, where solve problems in different modalities; (d) My Network Room, where manage network of contacts; (e) My Knowledge Room, where manage knowledge resources; (f) My Tool Room, where use many innovation tools; (g) My IP Room where manage intellectual property and right (IPR) issues; (h) My Business Room, where manage business activities; (i) My Reputation Room where check reputation and rewards; and (j) My Monitor Room where monitor the ongoing activities in each room; (2) IPR document templates, applications and disclaimers available in the platform for protecting new innovation projects and sensible information of SMEs; (3) social tools (e.g. networks, web 2.0-like apps, etc.) available for improving interactions, involvements among project partners and dissemination of results; (4) semantic engine (among other features, personalised recommendations, user feedback mechanisms, adaptable user profiles); (5) user validation and testing; (6) usability study. Besides the list of outputs from the COLLECTIVE project indicated in the description of work (DoW) - see project deliverables - the project consortium dedicated further effort in grouping the specific results and simplify the framework of the exploitable products. The products of the COLLECTIVE project can be summarised in three main groups: (1) platform, the overall family of software applications integrated in an uniform environment; (2) a set of tools (as both a module and an 'extension point' of the platform), the single software application integrated in the platform; (3) soft knowledge, knowledge and competences about the project topics developed by the partners - especially tailored to the SMEs and the web environment. Further possible results are fostering of brands and marks promotion. PLATFORM The platform itself can be subdivided in seven sub-products: (a) models (concept, requirements, design, users stories); (b) source code; (c) semantic engine and semantic services; (d) graphic user interface (GUI); (e) rooms, innovation processes, workflows; (f) concept of 'extensional navigation' (history of user working session, learning from user experience, history-sensitive recommendation); (g) concept of extensible and modular platform (application programming interface (API), plug-in, widgets); (h) the platform itself as a whole is a sub-product. Models One of the most important sub-products produced in the context of the platform is a family of models for describing the concept, the requirements, the design artifacts, and the user stories (typical usage scenarios). A model, in general, is a simplification of the modelled subject, at a specific level of abstraction, which captures only the essential elements from a particular perspective. For example, use cases and user stories are models (the first one graphical, the second mainly textual) that describe the platform in terms of user interactions, goals, and exchange of information / value in a business context. There are two very important types of models produced during the analysis and development of the platform: - a conceptual model, based on the definition of a proper ontology, - a technical, domain-oriented model, referenced as domain model in the rest of this document, which is a collection of unified modelling language (UML) diagrams for the requirements, the architecture and the overall software system. Both models address the concepts of innovation, targeting their specific representations to research and technological development (RTD) and ICT stakeholders, respectively. More specifically, it has been necessary to find a 'common' language to glue innovation RTD performers with ICT RTD performers. For a methodological point of view, in building these models (and the overall platform) the consortium left a more traditional development process, which is based on a first phase of analysis and design strictly followed by an implementation one (waterfall lifecycle). Due to the need for flexibility inherent into the activities of modelling, implementing, and testing innovation processes and solutions, the consortium made two methodological choices to shape the continuum of the conceptualisation-modelling-development process of the iCommunity platform (main expected output from the COLLECTIVE project): - iterative and incremental approach in the development process, - domain-driven design approach. Indeed, the RTD performers are working on characterising the UML model of each platform section, which consists primarily of class, sequence, and activity diagrams. This modelling activity led to the definition of the conceptual scheme of the platform, where the core concept and their relationships (i.e. what is a project, collaboration, a tool, etc.) have been defined. This conceptual model represents a sort of meta-model in relation to the domain model described with UML notations. More specifically, the idea is that almost every entity in the conceptual model will have refinements in the domain model. This can be fulfilled establishing a formal relationship between conceptual and domain entities (e.g. by means of inheritance used to derive a domain entity from a conceptual one). By doing this, the consortium has been able to express every important operation in term of both models, which are then exploited as the basis for producing the implementation code. In conclusion, the availability of the platform models help every stakeholder involved in the project to keep separate the essential concepts from the specific implementations, having a formal representation of such concepts that enables future re-implementations or extensions/integrations with a minimal effort. Source code In order to re-implement, extend, or integrate the platform in other environment, the source code of the software system developed during the project has been made available. Semantic engine and semantic services One of the most important (software) modules characterising the platform is the semantic engine and the set of semantic services built around it. The semantic engine provides the concept of user profile, which is a semantically rich description of the user interests, skills, competences, activities, and resources. The user profile is exploited by the platform in order to provide recommendations to the user concerning all the aspects forming the user profile. These recommendations are gathered and delivered by a specific component of the semantic engine module: the recommendation system. The recommendation system automatically suggest to the users interesting and personalised resources needed to reach the user's goals, in order to increase the productivity and to know about new business opportunities. A system based on semantic web technologies will be used to let the user receive resources (which represents a foreground knowledge) by using an automatically extracted and semantically rich description of their relevant concepts (which represents the background knowledge). Examples of resources are web magazine articles, iCommunity projects and users of the platform with specific skills which could be involved in a project. GUI The GUI is an obvious artifact of a software system. In the context of the platform, this component is important because enables and / or facilitates some operations concerning innovation processes. For example, it supports the concept of extensional navigations which is described in detail in Section 2.1.5. With the combination of extensional navigation and semantic services, the platform learns some typical user's behaviours, provides the ability of easily access the history of action performed in a specific timeframe in a convenient manner, and finally helps the user to complete recurrent tasks, suggesting repetitive actions and operations that were performed in the past in similar circumstances by the same user. Rooms, innovation processes, workflows Rooms and innovation house Rooms are a partial and thematic view on the domain supporting SMEs' innovation. Each of them presents a core set of functionalities and resources that can be accessed and managed by the platform members. iCommunity platform can be compared to an 'innovation house' where every room has a specific core value in supporting the user to manage innovation activities and projects. Since the rooms are thematic and driven by a clear scope, the whole iCommunity has been designed as a multi-scope platform, in order to provide to the users a comfortable environment in which they can be active also when they are not developing a new product / services. Thus rooms enable a meaningful incremental, flexible and modular way of organising SMEs' innovation processes. 'Incremental' because the user can exploit the 'innovation house' step by step, accessing only a part of the platform, and gradually discovering additional useful functionalities. 'Flexible' because the exploration of the house can be free, driven by current and specific user needs and goals. 'Modular' because the house is designed composed of separate components (rooms) connected together. Clear divisions (in terms of general scope, distinctive functionalities and resources) exist between rooms. Moreover, the platform has been built basing on a modular architecture of the innovation layer domain: the platform's concept foresees to replace or add room (module or component), avoiding to affect the rest of the system. The innovation houses as well as the rooms' architectures support many typologies of users and distinctive roles; this will impact both on the platform's business model configuration and will enable different opportunities to exploit the platform. Innovation workflows Building block approach for the modular modelling of the innovation process (reconfigurable workflow): The system allows the user to choose between the selection of existing templates and building of reconfigurable workflows. In the first case, the user can select and be guided by one or more pre-configured and fixed templates of activity workflow, that are already available in the platform. In the second case, the user can build his own activity workflows, and select the activity building blocks that one needs for achieving the innovation objectives. In this way, the activity workflows are not fixed, but instead, they are customisable in order to better match the requirements of the users. Concept of extensional navigation (under construction feature) Many platforms enable a temporal navigation of the system. This means that the user can visits and explore the system and its sections at different time instants: what you see depends on the instant time set as pivot for exploring the system. Moreover iCommunity platform would enable also an extensional, i.e. contextual and contents related, navigation of the system. Considering iCommunity platform as innovation house, the user can visit and explore the house and its rooms only by means of filtered 'active' views that depend on the contents and actions previously performed in the system: what you see depends on the key conceptual elements of the innovation house set as pivot for exploring the system. Key conceptual elements of the innovation house are agents, resources, networks, goals, projects, problems, etc. Moreover, these elements are the pivot for the user's navigation basing on the history of user working session. For example, passing from My project room, where we are managing a specific innovation project to My network room would imply the access to the project related network as first option for the user, instead of the whole users contacts network. Besides, passing from My project room to My problem room should imply the visualisation of the project related problems as first option suggested by the system. Another interesting way to navigate the system is to set agents as pivot. In this modality, two kind of exploration of the platform will be enabled. Exploration of 'owned' innovation house, and 'not owned' (i.e. others user) innovation houses, accessing only public or authorised contents, 'visiting' the non-restricted innovation environments curated by other platform's users. Extensional navigation will be coupled with semantic services: this would allow the platform to learn some typical user's behaviours, providing the ability of easily access the history of action performed in a specific timeframe in a convenient manner. The major benefit should consist in helping the user to complete recurrent tasks, suggesting repetitive actions and operations that were performed in the past in similar circumstances by the same user; connectly, the extensional navigation lets the user focus and deal with only the contents and resources that at that moment are relevant and interesting with his goals and actions within the platform. In this way iCommunity platform avoids overload of information and resources, simplifying and enriching the user experience. Concept of extensible and modular platform The iCommunity platform has been designed with some principles in mind. In particular, the software system needs to be extensible in order to facilitate the introduction of new functionalities, and modular in order to encourage the reusability of single modules / applications. The platform will be extensible and modular in relation to the innovation processes: as already pointed out, the platform will support all the three main phases of an innovation process. The phase of foresight, to anticipate and understand future trends, the phase of concept, in which creativity techniques play an important role to deploy new ideas, and the phase of design, in which new products / services are defined and implemented. Each phase can be carried on through specific and dedicated innovation activities (building block) modelled and implemented as alternative core sub-functional elements of the innovation process. In the creativity domain, for example, useful building block to collect in a workflow can be 'generation of idea', 'ideas selection and evaluation', etc. In this way, iCommunity wants to be the platform where SMEs can be sustained in innovating through the collaboration and the use of tools and resources tailored to their needs and requirements. The platform will be extensible and modular in relation to the innovation tools: iCommunity, aiming to become a succesful business ecosystem, has been designed as a platform open to third parties tools and applications (supply-side users) and project, contents and collaboration networks (demand-side users). Moreover third parties will be allowed to submit their tools for supporting the SMEs' innovation process (open toolstore for innovation). Tools categories have been modelled as productive factors (hardware), applications (software), methodologies and techniques (brainware), and professional services (humanware) supporting innovation activities. Platform The platform itself as a whole is a unique Project product and the most relevant one. All the components above mentioned will express their best potential, if the entire iCommunity platform will be considered. Tools Innovation management tools can be defined as tools which support the performance of applications, activities and actions such as trend identification, idea generation, and design of new products / services. They also promote and enable knowledge sharing processes. The tools have been defined as: (i) information web-based tools already available in the web; (ii) an adaptation of methods to the web context. These tools are a module of the platform, i.e. they can be used in a stand-alone modality. Moreover, they can be considered also an 'extension point' of the platform, i.e. further developers can add further tools and therefore enable an extension of the platform itself. Soft knowledge With 'hard knowledge' we intend the part of what people know that can be articulated, while the part of what people know that cannot be articulated we will term 'soft knowledge'. Hard knowledge as being 'codifiable' and soft knowledge as that which is less quantifiable and cannot be so easily captured and stored. In COLLECTIVE project, soft knowledge is all the scientific and research knowledge that can be used by the SME enterprise architecture growth (SMEAGs) and SMEs in order to improve their strategy and processes and / or to perform consultancy activities. Especially, we mean Knowledge and competences about the project topics developed by the partners - especially tailored to the SMEs and the web environment: i.e. open innovation, innovation (collaborative) processes as well as innovation tools and applications, innovation communities, web-platform business modelling, incentives and motivations. Acquired know-how about iCommunity platform from the user experience and the use experience: This 'soft knowledge' will concern the description and explanation of iCommunity platform and its major utilities and features, both at a basic and at an advanced level, in order to manage iCommunity innovation projects and communities. Potential impact: The iCommunity platform will let SMEs and SME associations to: (i) identify future emergent technological and economic trends / discontinuities by developing network-based approaches to early detect 'weak signals'; (ii) manage distributed intelligence and creativity in the process of new product development in order to individuate new product ideas and related business models; and (iii) design new modular products in a collaborative way reducing the market risk since relevant inputs and feedback from customers and end users will be constantly 'embedded' in the design process. The benefits for the SMEs will be: (i) facilitate connection with different SMEs and end-users in order to foster collaboration for innovation; (ii) help to identify future emergent technological and economic trends by developing network-based approaches; (iii) manage creativity in the area of new product / service development; (iv) compare suggestions, co-develop a product or a service, and study the related business models; (v) create a business ecosystem supporting design, manufacture and distribution of products; (vi) reduce the market risks associated with investment in innovation and R&D by developing distributed networks of external intelligence. Finally, channelling the networking capabilities of SMEAGs partners of COLLECTIVE (mainly Chambers of Commerce) will produce a positive impact transversal to many industrial sectors. In fact, the platform brings together the experience of actors operating in the same industrial sector, but also collects the know-how, experience and best practices developed in different industrial contexts. This is one of the major characteristics through which the project responds to the expected impacts of the present call, and goes even beyond them by implementing a new, exploratory approach to the solution of common problems related to knowledge exchange. For this reason, project results will be profitably used by different actors in diverse sectors. However, some industrial sectors can particularly take advantage from the iCommunity platform. These industrial sectors have been identified according to the following criteria: (i) possibility to design products modularly; (ii) presence of different and complementary competencies and knowledge for designing products; (iii) degree of innovation in product concept; (iv) possibility to exploit the new products in different applications. All in all, the project can substantially foster the collaboration in international entrepreneurial networks and support SMEs in the proactive definition and implementation of effective business and product strategies: this can dramatically reduce the time to market and the possibility of generating disruptive innovations. Anyway, since the innovation process is intrinsically complex and not fully predictable, it is hard to define accurately the economic impact of the project in a precise way. However, the project consortium estimates that potential beneficiaries of such platform could be distributed across 5 European countries, in cross-cutting industries, with a potential target of 100 000 SMEs. Some outlooks for the future are encouraging, like the estimations illustrated in the 2011 report of the Boston Consulting Group, that for example show how 2010 was the turning point for the Italian Internet Economy, with: - increase of 16 % of online users, - increase of 15 % of online advertising, - increase of 14 % of products / service e-commerce, - increase of 11 % of registered domains, - pointing out that for having an Internet economy fully developed: (i) SMEs need to 'move' online; (ii) mobile commerce in all its forms, applications, and geo-referencing offers important business opportunities; (iii) consumers education is a foundation for growth. However, it is reasonable to estimate that such a collaborative innovation platform may be perceived moderately and with caution at the beginning. In fact, as reported in a recent KPMG report on Enterprise 2.0 only a minority of organisations workforce can be considered active Web 2.0 users in their day-to-day jobs, with collective intelligence and prediction markets being even less used among the existing Web 2.0 technologies. As illustrated in the KPMG report, 'cultural barriers thwart the adoption of new applications. Conservative attitudes make organisations reluctant to embrace an open-standard platform that gives outsiders unprecedented visibility into the inner workings of the enterprise. Given that Web 2.0 holds the potential for increased productivity, more effective collaboration, and enhanced problem-solving capacity, it seems likely that many companies will want to at least try to incorporate Web 2.0 into their businesses. The challenge will be to do so in a way that delivers maximum benefits while protecting the enterprise and its assets'. Dissemination of the project Many dissemination activities were carried out by the partners of the consortium. The dissemination activities are accomplished exploiting different channels, each one with a precise target identified by the partner consortium (dissemination public events, scientific conferences, scientific papers, Articles / press releases, television / web programme appearances, blogs, partners' websites, Google ranking). A brief summary of the global dissemination activities are subsequently presented. (1) Participation to events: the COLLECTIVE project has been presented during the networking sessions: over 2 000 participants and at least 50 speakers about innovation have been reached in these events for a first contact with the COLLECTIVE project. (2) Workshops and focus groups: (a) 7 workshops-focus groups have been organised; (b) 8 European countries have been impacted; (c) 5 project partners organised the workshops-focus groups; (d) 6 industrial associations and chambers of commerce have participated (e) more than 10 industrial sectors have been impacted; (f) 75 entrepreneurs from 46 organisations, 5 innovation experts have been contacted for these initiatives, as well as active participants in the activities of the focus groups; (g) more than 50 brainstorming hours spent in collaboration among the participants. (3) The COLLECTIVE consortium has organised or at least directly participated in some events with the possibility to present some contributions about innovation themes, in particular referring to COLLECTIVE project. 4 countries (France, Spain, Italy, Poland) are the main countries that have been impacted, thanks to the actions of partners such as Uniud, CCIAA MI-Innovhub, Campus, CTCR, APAI, Uniroma1. (4) Organisation of the final project dissemination event as Final Session of the Annual PIN-SME (Pan European Ict & Ebusiness Network For SME) general assembly in Brussels. (5) Visits to firms / organisations and interviews: 13 visits and more than 20 interviews. (6) Scientific papers: from the results of the research activities performed during the project, 32 scientific papers and publications have been drafted. (7) Articles / press release: at least 3 articles have been published in some press releases in Spain and in Italy. (8) Project website (see http://www.collective-project.eu online) constantly updated. Besides, direct dissemination activities, NETWORKING ACTIVITY has been further performed. The synthetic quantitative results were the following: (1) 6 cross-fertilisation with other projects, and initiatives; (2) exhibitions bringing project materials; (3) synergies have been launched with some further industrial associations and large enterprises in Italy, as well as some contacts have been established with some technology parks, innovation centres, financing bodies (amongst others, Area Science park, Infocamere, Unione Industriali Pordenone, Italian Product Development Managers association, Banca Intesa San Paolo, H-Farm, Polo Lionello Bonfanti). Exploitation of the project Main exploitation proposition Preliminary points: - A possible way to promote the services and to create a 'critical mass' of users is that the SMEAG partners begin to network with other SMEAGs: this could lead to a first group of SMEAG 'pioneers' (each should invest a certain set of resources) who could offer the platform services to their associates. - In fact, the first necessary exploitation step is to attract a sufficient number of users, otherwise the business model will never be self-sustaining. Before 2014, further resources are needed to perform further validation activities and refinements in order to complete the product preparation to the market. -SMEAGs and SMEs will be owner of the platform and together with UNIUD (project coordinator) are interested in exploiting the project results and all the exploitable foregrounds. CGPME finally decided to pay off. This mean that CGPME will not be involve in the management of the platform and we will not be beneficiary of its potential revenues. Its share should be redistributed among the other SME organisations in exchange for a free access to the platform for its members. In any case, CGPME will guarantee promotional support to the iCommunity launch through its contacts' networks. After 2014, the exploitation scenario considered by the partners is the setting up of a new start-up whose launch would be supported by adequate resources and funding provided by the partners in order to sustain investments in the deployment phase. Specific agreements on how to constitute the start up as well as partner rights are one of the main tasks of the project and will be discussed during its execution. The partners agree to give in outsourcing the management of the platform, by licensing to an already established company or by creating a NewCo that will manage the platform. According to the above indications, the 'Joint Ownership Agreement' is the best option available for a succesful exploitation of results. However at this stage, it is hard for the SMEs associations, who are the real owners of the IP generated within the project, to define concretely the commercial benefits deriving from the platform. This is due to the fact that the platform is not available yet and it has not been fully tested by companies. All partners agree on the extreme importance of this tool and have decided to wait until it will be completed and tested. With the testing, the associations will be in fact in the position to evaluate its real value and determine the cost model for its use towards the beneficiary companies, elaborating also the licensing solutions. Ongoing initiatives and potential stakeholders Follow-up demonstration activity: Some consortium partners presented a project proposal for financing under the FP7 Capacities programme - collaborative project: Demonstration Activity FP7 Call for Proposals: FP7-SME-2013. The Proposal No 605517 named 'The Innovation House: the evolution of the COLLECTIVE web-platform supporting open innovation for the European enterprises'- Acronym: INNOVHOUSE. This will involve 7 European organisations (mostly part SMEs) for 2 years and has been budgeted EUR 1 000 000. Dissemination follow-up action: 'CENTRAL COMMUNITY' project: Some consortium partners started a new initiative financed by the European Union (EU) European regional development fund under the Central Europe FP. Through this 2-year action, organisations from Central Europe area - leaded by Chambers of Commerce of Milan, Innovhub - aim at customise iCommunity platform for the Life Science sector following further requirements suggested by innovation actors in this domain. iCommunity will be customised to the needs of Central Europe industry environment and will focus on a sectorial cluster: life sciences, which includes not only biotechnology, biochemistry, molecular biology, etc. but also those sectors where innovation in life sciences can be most easily applied, such as bioeconomy, health, drugs and food production, cosmetics and environment. These sectors are becoming important for Central Europe countries and this is why collaboration and interaction among actors in the different areas is to be facilitated through innovative ICT tools. The CENTRALCOMMUNITY project aims to pilot and test the platform in real conditions in the context of Central European innovation players to support eco-sustainable innovation. This initiative will last until December 2014 involving almost 1.8 million euro budget for 9 project partners. Network synergies iCommunity can exploit the network synergies and the catchment areas of SMEs Associations created in COLLECTIVE (5 European countries) and CENTRAL COMMUNITY project (3 European countries) in order to better and faster disseminate the project results. In particular the network of possible stakeholders is composed by the SME Association involved in the COLLECTIVE project and specifically: Chamber of Commerce of Milan (ITALY), Economic Chamber of Macedonia (FYROM), Association of Polish Aviation Industry (POLAND), Confederation Generale Des Petites And Moyennes Entreprises (FRANCE), Footwear Technology Centre of la Rioja (SPAIN). Other possible stakeholders are the CENTRAL COMMUNITY project partners, such as The Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information, Theodore Puskas Foundation (Hungary), Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia), MedicalMountains AG (and the related Chamber of commerce and industry Schwarzwald-Baar-Heuberg) (Germany). During the lives of the projects, synergies have been launched with some further industrial associations and large enterprises in Italy, as well as some contacts have been established with some technology parks, innovation centres, financing bodies (amongst others, Area Science park, Infocamere, Unione Industriali Pordenone, Italian Product Development Managers association, Banca Intesa San Paolo, H-Farm, Polo Lionello Bonfanti). Non-disclosure agreements and / or technical meetings, as well as testing sessions have been spent in the last 24 months with some important large enterprises / international organisations such as SAES GETTERS -from the field of electronic components manufacturing, LOGOTEL - in the field of community of practice management. As concerns the testing and prototyping, the development of technical standards, the identification of potential users and partners, the search of financial sources for commercialisation, we can rely on the collaboration with Trento RISE which is very interested in testing the platform of Open Innovation available in the project. Not only Trento RISE will evaluate its use for internal purposes, but will also invite all start-ups and companies in the Region to use it as a means towards open innovation and collaboration. Indeed, Trento RISE believes that the iCommunity platform is based on a solid concept and makes use of technologies (in particular, semantic technologies) on which Trentino Alto Adige has a lot of expertise and has made a lot of experience. In the same way, full and interested support has been guaranteed by 'Pan-European ICT and e-Business network for SME' (PIN-SME) during the final project dissemination event held in Brussels PIN-SME premises. Valid collaboration about IPR management themes has been built with MITO Technologies. List of websites: http://www.collective-project.eu Related documents Final Report - COLLECTIVE (Emerging communities for collective innovation: ICT operational tool and supporting methodologies for SME associations)
