Final Report Summary - INFU (Innovation futures in Europe: A foresight exercise on emerging patterns of innovation. Visions, scenarios and implications for policy and practice)
Executive summary:
The INFU project studies newly emerging innovation patterns. Several new ways of organising innovation activities such as open innovation or?community innovation? are currently emerging in economy and society. While these have been discussed intensively in recent years, there is little systematic exploration of their potential for different sectors and areas and the implications for economy and society. For the first time, a foresight project has been conducted to analyse and discuss the emergence and diffusion of new innovation patterns and their implications for European policy.
The INFU project employs various methods such as scanning weak signals, organising expert panels, conducting interviews, and building and visualising of scenarios in order to construct plausible, relevant long-term development paths of future innovation landscapes.
The INFU project started by identifying emerging signals of change in current innovation patterns. These signals were identified through a review of academic literature on innovation and by scanning various media such as newspapers, magazines and the Internet. The aim was to identify newly emerging apparent and visible innovation patterns that have not yet reached the mainstream and may have disruptive impacts for industry, the economy, and society in the future. The resulting collection of signals of change are innovative examples of how private and public organisations organise and manage innovation in Europe and around the globe.
Based on our collection of signals of change the team developed 20 visions of new innovation patterns (innovation visions). Each vision describes how one or several similar signals could indicate a change in the process of creating, developing, and disseminating innovations in the future. The team conducted interviews with experts from industry and academia and organised an online-survey to discuss and assess the innovation visions. Based on this work eight consolidated key visions were elaborated in mini-panels by self-organised expert groups across Europe. The small focus groups identified and discussed relevant drivers and barriers of these visions.
The innovation visions were then confronted with different possible socio-economic framework conditions and global mega-trends in order to finally synthesise consistent scenarios which integrate micro, meso and macro elements of possible innovation futures with particular emphasis on changes in the nature and content of research. Five scenarios depict comprehensive, consistent, and plausible images of possible future European innovation landscapes.
The analysis of the various innovation visions allowed to synthesise specific key characteristics describing the innovation patterns which offer new challenges for policy, economy and society. These dimensions of change are:
1. The position of markets as the main mediator between innovation demand and supply is losing importance (Mediation and coordination).
2. Citizens and customers seem to play a more relevant role in innovation, both in deciding upon and contributing to innovation priorities and processes (participation).
3. Solving societal problems is also becoming an important driving force to innovate, for both companies and individuals (motivation).
4. Software will play an ever-increasing role in innovation and more innovation steps may become automatised (automatisation).
4. New innovation enabling infrastructures (e.g. shared fab-labs, co-working spaces) will emerge alongside new innovation formats (infrastructure).
5. The very meaning of being innovative is shifting and creativity may become a key aspect in any professional activities (perception of creativity).
6. Innovation will change its spatial patterns and become both more local and more global at the same time (spatial shift).
7. In order to address the grand challenges, innovation patterns fostering system transitions towards sustainability rather than isolated product development become more important (systemic sustainability Innovation).
New innovation patterns may have diverse impacts which include, amongst others, new innovation schemes for production patterns (distribution and location of production), as well as environmental impact of new innovation patterns, and implications of new innovation forms for regulatory framework conditions.
Project context and objectives:
While there is much research investigating specific forms of innovation such as open innovation, user-driven innovation, community innovation or social innovation there has been little systematic exploration of possible future innovation landscapes and their implications. INFU explores new patterns and structures of innovation, their potential for different sectors and its implications for economy and society. An analysis and assessment of different innovation patterns allows the design of policies and measures in order to benefit from the potential challenges arising from these changes.
In order to address these needs, the INFU project pursues the following objectives:
- scanning of signals indicating changing innovation patterns with a potentially disruptive impact for European S&T in the long run;
- systematic exploration of relevant and plausible future innovation landscapes through participative scenario building;
- assessment of scenario implications for the content of academic and industrial research, and key policy goals such as sustainability;
- deriving strategic options and guidelines for European research policy and relevant multipliers;
- initiation of an interdisciplinary, boundary-spanning stakeholder and expert debate on new innovation patterns.
Project results:
There a number of indications that the way economic actors interact in order to transform knowledge into new products and services is currently undergoing substantial changes. While a few radical visions have been taking up these signals and are predicting disruptive change for economy and society there is little systematic exploration of possible future innovation landscapes and their implications for economy and society. However, in order for research and other policies to be prepared for challenges arising from these changes and to be able to benefit from them, a more solid understanding of possible innovation futures and their implications for society is needed.
The INFU project addresses newly emerging innovation patterns. Several new ways of organising innovation activities such as ?open innovation or community innovation are currently emerging in economy and society. While these have been discussed intensively in recent years, there is little systematic exploration of their potential for different sectors and areas and the implications for economy and society. For the first time, a foresight project is conducted to analyse and discuss the emergence and diffusion of new innovation patterns and their implications for European policy. A more solid understanding of possible innovation futures and their implications for society is needed for research and other policies to be prepared for and to be able to benefit from the potential challenges arising from these changes. The discussion of new innovation patterns has raised great attention in the last few years, for instance, in spring 2009, the International society of professional innovation management (ISPIM) organised its annual conference in Vienna under the key topic of 'The future of innovation'. The innovation convention organised more recently in Brussels (December 2011) discussed a number of topics around the question how changing innovation patterns may impact the European innovation landscape.
Innovation pattern is defined in the project as underlying principle how the innovation process is organised which also includes new perceptions about innovation, the involvement of new actors and the generation of new interpretations in society. The INFU research team has thus a broad understanding of innovation as encompassing the economic, social and public domains. We are interested in how the process of the creation, development and introduction of innovations is changing and so concentrate on the process of ?innovating innovation.
The INFU project is a foresight project employing various methods such as scanning signals, organising expert panels, conducting interviews, and building and visualising of scenarios in order to construct plausible, relevant long-term scenarios of future innovation landscapes. Foresight activities emphasise the systematic exploration of future dynamics and the importance of interaction between actors from different constituencies in the respective innovation system. Foresight is a method of prospective analysis and informed decision-making that includes long- to mid-term considerations of likely, possible, or even just thinkable futures (Miles, 2008). Foresight hence does not want to prescribe the future but aims to initiate a critical debate about possible future developments.
The INFU project started by identifying emerging signals of change in current innovation patterns. These signals were identified through a review of academic literature on innovation and by scanning various media such as newspapers, magazines and the Internet. The aim was to identify newly emerging apparent and visible innovation patterns, which have not yet reached the mainstream and may have disruptive impacts for industry, economy, and society in the future. The collection of signals of change is an innovative examples of how private and public organisations organise innovation in Europe and around the globe.
Based on the collection of signals of change, 20 visions of new innovation patterns (innovation visions) have been developed. These visions were elaborated from the signals by means of signal amplification (a process in which the signals are radicalised or generalised). Each vision describes how one or several similar signals could indicate a change in the process of creating, developing and disseminating innovations in the future. These visions were formulated in a creative way by amplifying and combining some of the signals in order to develop coherent and sometimes provocative pictures of possible future innovation practices. Thereby, the team transferred an idea already applied to other sectors or generalised a signal considered to become a mainstream innovation practice. To provoke discussion some visions were brought to an extreme. In addition, the team conducted interviews with experts from industry and academia and organised an online-survey to discuss and assess the innovation visions.
On the base of the assessments, eight critical nodes of change in innovation patterns were identified. Based on this selection, experts and stakeholders across Europe were gathered in small focus groups to create visions of future innovation patterns around these critical aspects of change and debate relevant drivers and barriers of these visions (see also map for the location of panels). Eight consolidated visions (nodes of change) which are clusters of similar visions were elaborated in mini-panels by self-organised expert groups.
These visions were then confronted with different possible socio-economic framework conditions and global mega-trends to finally synthesise consistent scenarios which integrate micro, meso and macro elements of possible innovation futures with particular emphasis on changes in the nature and content of research. New innovation patterns may have diverse impacts which include, amongst others implications of new innovation schemes for production patterns (distribution and location of production), environmental impact of new innovation patterns, and implications of new innovation forms for regulatory framework conditions. Based on moderated group discussions implications with respect to key societal challenges and policy goals were discussed.
The analysis of the various innovation visions allowed to synthesise specific key characteristics describing the innovation patterns which offer new challenges for policy, economy and society. These so called dimensions of change are:
1. The position of markets as the main mediator between innovation demand and supply is losing importance (mediation and coordination).
2. Citizens and customers seem to play a more relevant role in innovation, both in deciding upon and contributing to innovation priorities and processes (participation).
3. Solving societal problems is also becoming an important driving force to innovate, for both companies and individuals (motivation).
4. Software will play an ever-increasing role in innovation and more innovation steps may become automatised (automatisation).
5. New innovation enabling infrastructures (e.g. shared fab-labs, co-working spaces) will emerge alongside new innovation formats (infrastructure).
6. The very meaning of being innovative is shifting and creativity may become a key aspect in any professional activities (perception of creativity).
7. Innovation will change its spatial patterns and become both more local and more global at the same time (Spatial shift).
8. In order to address the grand challenges, innovation patterns fostering system transitions towards sustainability rather than isolated product development become more important (systemic sustainability Innovation).
Potential impact:
The analysis of the various innovation visions allowed us to synthesise specific key characteristics describing the innovation patterns. Based on an assessment of opportunities and risks along eight dimensions of change, we discussed implications for policy and indicated new directions for research and innovation policy. A brief analysis of current policy strategies at the European level and the OCED shows in this context that in general open innovation, the emerging global innovation landscape, Intellectual property rights (IPR), and grand challenges have gained the most attention within current policy debates related to new forms of innovation.
From the findings of the INFU project main challenges for policy-making have been synthesised. They are in line with some of the most recent European Union (EU) and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy documents, and therefore underpin and extend their guiding principles and policy conclusions. However, we also offer lessons for policy which go beyond these topics. In particular, the necessity to provide new forms of infrastructure, the increasing role of software with its significant positive, but also negative potentials, and the need to use new indicators (considering the importance of value-driven innovations) reveal new directions for policy-making. Moreover, in order to ensure that progress towards grand challenges is made, in many fields real transformation at a system level is required which goes beyond isolated development by individual actors. This means, for example, that social and ecological criteria are considered during the entire innovation process and coordination among many actors from the economy, science, policy and civil society is required, exceeding superficial consultation. In many cases a system integrator has to be established.
Education and innovation are closely tight together. Education policy will receive an important domain in the future. Future education concepts will have to recognise the changing nature of innovation in order to enable young people to contribute to and benefit from the new innovation patterns.
The conclusions for policy have been discussed mainly at the European level. New innovation patterns, however, also require policy reactions at the national and regional level but also on a global scale.
INFU has taken specific communication and dissemination activities. The emphasis on the proper visualisation of the scenarios was a crucial component of INFU which facilitates the dissemination of results. A key task was the development of a short movie which presents the visions in an attractive way. In addition, a second video was developed which presents the findings of the mini-panel visions and also gives some indication for the different impacts of various innovation vision. The videos can be downloaded on the project homepage; it raised a lot of attention and helped to conduct the work. Dissemination and communication activities were done during the whole project. For instance, a link to the video was also sent to members of the cabinet of the Directorate general (DG) 'Research' and the open innovation unit at DG 'Information society and media' (INFSO). The project was also discussed with Analisa Primi which deals with the initiative 'New forms of innovation' at the OECD.
In addition, particularly the experts involved during the mini-panels served as facilitators to communicate the results of the INFU.
Newsletters and information has been spread over the internet by the partners as well; amongst other for instance via the International society for professional innovation management network (ISPIM).
Four policy briefs have been produced summarising the main findings of the project.
List of websites: www.innovation-futures.org
The INFU project studies newly emerging innovation patterns. Several new ways of organising innovation activities such as open innovation or?community innovation? are currently emerging in economy and society. While these have been discussed intensively in recent years, there is little systematic exploration of their potential for different sectors and areas and the implications for economy and society. For the first time, a foresight project has been conducted to analyse and discuss the emergence and diffusion of new innovation patterns and their implications for European policy.
The INFU project employs various methods such as scanning weak signals, organising expert panels, conducting interviews, and building and visualising of scenarios in order to construct plausible, relevant long-term development paths of future innovation landscapes.
The INFU project started by identifying emerging signals of change in current innovation patterns. These signals were identified through a review of academic literature on innovation and by scanning various media such as newspapers, magazines and the Internet. The aim was to identify newly emerging apparent and visible innovation patterns that have not yet reached the mainstream and may have disruptive impacts for industry, the economy, and society in the future. The resulting collection of signals of change are innovative examples of how private and public organisations organise and manage innovation in Europe and around the globe.
Based on our collection of signals of change the team developed 20 visions of new innovation patterns (innovation visions). Each vision describes how one or several similar signals could indicate a change in the process of creating, developing, and disseminating innovations in the future. The team conducted interviews with experts from industry and academia and organised an online-survey to discuss and assess the innovation visions. Based on this work eight consolidated key visions were elaborated in mini-panels by self-organised expert groups across Europe. The small focus groups identified and discussed relevant drivers and barriers of these visions.
The innovation visions were then confronted with different possible socio-economic framework conditions and global mega-trends in order to finally synthesise consistent scenarios which integrate micro, meso and macro elements of possible innovation futures with particular emphasis on changes in the nature and content of research. Five scenarios depict comprehensive, consistent, and plausible images of possible future European innovation landscapes.
The analysis of the various innovation visions allowed to synthesise specific key characteristics describing the innovation patterns which offer new challenges for policy, economy and society. These dimensions of change are:
1. The position of markets as the main mediator between innovation demand and supply is losing importance (Mediation and coordination).
2. Citizens and customers seem to play a more relevant role in innovation, both in deciding upon and contributing to innovation priorities and processes (participation).
3. Solving societal problems is also becoming an important driving force to innovate, for both companies and individuals (motivation).
4. Software will play an ever-increasing role in innovation and more innovation steps may become automatised (automatisation).
4. New innovation enabling infrastructures (e.g. shared fab-labs, co-working spaces) will emerge alongside new innovation formats (infrastructure).
5. The very meaning of being innovative is shifting and creativity may become a key aspect in any professional activities (perception of creativity).
6. Innovation will change its spatial patterns and become both more local and more global at the same time (spatial shift).
7. In order to address the grand challenges, innovation patterns fostering system transitions towards sustainability rather than isolated product development become more important (systemic sustainability Innovation).
New innovation patterns may have diverse impacts which include, amongst others, new innovation schemes for production patterns (distribution and location of production), as well as environmental impact of new innovation patterns, and implications of new innovation forms for regulatory framework conditions.
Project context and objectives:
While there is much research investigating specific forms of innovation such as open innovation, user-driven innovation, community innovation or social innovation there has been little systematic exploration of possible future innovation landscapes and their implications. INFU explores new patterns and structures of innovation, their potential for different sectors and its implications for economy and society. An analysis and assessment of different innovation patterns allows the design of policies and measures in order to benefit from the potential challenges arising from these changes.
In order to address these needs, the INFU project pursues the following objectives:
- scanning of signals indicating changing innovation patterns with a potentially disruptive impact for European S&T in the long run;
- systematic exploration of relevant and plausible future innovation landscapes through participative scenario building;
- assessment of scenario implications for the content of academic and industrial research, and key policy goals such as sustainability;
- deriving strategic options and guidelines for European research policy and relevant multipliers;
- initiation of an interdisciplinary, boundary-spanning stakeholder and expert debate on new innovation patterns.
Project results:
There a number of indications that the way economic actors interact in order to transform knowledge into new products and services is currently undergoing substantial changes. While a few radical visions have been taking up these signals and are predicting disruptive change for economy and society there is little systematic exploration of possible future innovation landscapes and their implications for economy and society. However, in order for research and other policies to be prepared for challenges arising from these changes and to be able to benefit from them, a more solid understanding of possible innovation futures and their implications for society is needed.
The INFU project addresses newly emerging innovation patterns. Several new ways of organising innovation activities such as ?open innovation or community innovation are currently emerging in economy and society. While these have been discussed intensively in recent years, there is little systematic exploration of their potential for different sectors and areas and the implications for economy and society. For the first time, a foresight project is conducted to analyse and discuss the emergence and diffusion of new innovation patterns and their implications for European policy. A more solid understanding of possible innovation futures and their implications for society is needed for research and other policies to be prepared for and to be able to benefit from the potential challenges arising from these changes. The discussion of new innovation patterns has raised great attention in the last few years, for instance, in spring 2009, the International society of professional innovation management (ISPIM) organised its annual conference in Vienna under the key topic of 'The future of innovation'. The innovation convention organised more recently in Brussels (December 2011) discussed a number of topics around the question how changing innovation patterns may impact the European innovation landscape.
Innovation pattern is defined in the project as underlying principle how the innovation process is organised which also includes new perceptions about innovation, the involvement of new actors and the generation of new interpretations in society. The INFU research team has thus a broad understanding of innovation as encompassing the economic, social and public domains. We are interested in how the process of the creation, development and introduction of innovations is changing and so concentrate on the process of ?innovating innovation.
The INFU project is a foresight project employing various methods such as scanning signals, organising expert panels, conducting interviews, and building and visualising of scenarios in order to construct plausible, relevant long-term scenarios of future innovation landscapes. Foresight activities emphasise the systematic exploration of future dynamics and the importance of interaction between actors from different constituencies in the respective innovation system. Foresight is a method of prospective analysis and informed decision-making that includes long- to mid-term considerations of likely, possible, or even just thinkable futures (Miles, 2008). Foresight hence does not want to prescribe the future but aims to initiate a critical debate about possible future developments.
The INFU project started by identifying emerging signals of change in current innovation patterns. These signals were identified through a review of academic literature on innovation and by scanning various media such as newspapers, magazines and the Internet. The aim was to identify newly emerging apparent and visible innovation patterns, which have not yet reached the mainstream and may have disruptive impacts for industry, economy, and society in the future. The collection of signals of change is an innovative examples of how private and public organisations organise innovation in Europe and around the globe.
Based on the collection of signals of change, 20 visions of new innovation patterns (innovation visions) have been developed. These visions were elaborated from the signals by means of signal amplification (a process in which the signals are radicalised or generalised). Each vision describes how one or several similar signals could indicate a change in the process of creating, developing and disseminating innovations in the future. These visions were formulated in a creative way by amplifying and combining some of the signals in order to develop coherent and sometimes provocative pictures of possible future innovation practices. Thereby, the team transferred an idea already applied to other sectors or generalised a signal considered to become a mainstream innovation practice. To provoke discussion some visions were brought to an extreme. In addition, the team conducted interviews with experts from industry and academia and organised an online-survey to discuss and assess the innovation visions.
On the base of the assessments, eight critical nodes of change in innovation patterns were identified. Based on this selection, experts and stakeholders across Europe were gathered in small focus groups to create visions of future innovation patterns around these critical aspects of change and debate relevant drivers and barriers of these visions (see also map for the location of panels). Eight consolidated visions (nodes of change) which are clusters of similar visions were elaborated in mini-panels by self-organised expert groups.
These visions were then confronted with different possible socio-economic framework conditions and global mega-trends to finally synthesise consistent scenarios which integrate micro, meso and macro elements of possible innovation futures with particular emphasis on changes in the nature and content of research. New innovation patterns may have diverse impacts which include, amongst others implications of new innovation schemes for production patterns (distribution and location of production), environmental impact of new innovation patterns, and implications of new innovation forms for regulatory framework conditions. Based on moderated group discussions implications with respect to key societal challenges and policy goals were discussed.
The analysis of the various innovation visions allowed to synthesise specific key characteristics describing the innovation patterns which offer new challenges for policy, economy and society. These so called dimensions of change are:
1. The position of markets as the main mediator between innovation demand and supply is losing importance (mediation and coordination).
2. Citizens and customers seem to play a more relevant role in innovation, both in deciding upon and contributing to innovation priorities and processes (participation).
3. Solving societal problems is also becoming an important driving force to innovate, for both companies and individuals (motivation).
4. Software will play an ever-increasing role in innovation and more innovation steps may become automatised (automatisation).
5. New innovation enabling infrastructures (e.g. shared fab-labs, co-working spaces) will emerge alongside new innovation formats (infrastructure).
6. The very meaning of being innovative is shifting and creativity may become a key aspect in any professional activities (perception of creativity).
7. Innovation will change its spatial patterns and become both more local and more global at the same time (Spatial shift).
8. In order to address the grand challenges, innovation patterns fostering system transitions towards sustainability rather than isolated product development become more important (systemic sustainability Innovation).
Potential impact:
The analysis of the various innovation visions allowed us to synthesise specific key characteristics describing the innovation patterns. Based on an assessment of opportunities and risks along eight dimensions of change, we discussed implications for policy and indicated new directions for research and innovation policy. A brief analysis of current policy strategies at the European level and the OCED shows in this context that in general open innovation, the emerging global innovation landscape, Intellectual property rights (IPR), and grand challenges have gained the most attention within current policy debates related to new forms of innovation.
From the findings of the INFU project main challenges for policy-making have been synthesised. They are in line with some of the most recent European Union (EU) and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy documents, and therefore underpin and extend their guiding principles and policy conclusions. However, we also offer lessons for policy which go beyond these topics. In particular, the necessity to provide new forms of infrastructure, the increasing role of software with its significant positive, but also negative potentials, and the need to use new indicators (considering the importance of value-driven innovations) reveal new directions for policy-making. Moreover, in order to ensure that progress towards grand challenges is made, in many fields real transformation at a system level is required which goes beyond isolated development by individual actors. This means, for example, that social and ecological criteria are considered during the entire innovation process and coordination among many actors from the economy, science, policy and civil society is required, exceeding superficial consultation. In many cases a system integrator has to be established.
Education and innovation are closely tight together. Education policy will receive an important domain in the future. Future education concepts will have to recognise the changing nature of innovation in order to enable young people to contribute to and benefit from the new innovation patterns.
The conclusions for policy have been discussed mainly at the European level. New innovation patterns, however, also require policy reactions at the national and regional level but also on a global scale.
INFU has taken specific communication and dissemination activities. The emphasis on the proper visualisation of the scenarios was a crucial component of INFU which facilitates the dissemination of results. A key task was the development of a short movie which presents the visions in an attractive way. In addition, a second video was developed which presents the findings of the mini-panel visions and also gives some indication for the different impacts of various innovation vision. The videos can be downloaded on the project homepage; it raised a lot of attention and helped to conduct the work. Dissemination and communication activities were done during the whole project. For instance, a link to the video was also sent to members of the cabinet of the Directorate general (DG) 'Research' and the open innovation unit at DG 'Information society and media' (INFSO). The project was also discussed with Analisa Primi which deals with the initiative 'New forms of innovation' at the OECD.
In addition, particularly the experts involved during the mini-panels served as facilitators to communicate the results of the INFU.
Newsletters and information has been spread over the internet by the partners as well; amongst other for instance via the International society for professional innovation management network (ISPIM).
Four policy briefs have been produced summarising the main findings of the project.
List of websites: www.innovation-futures.org