The overall objective of the TourismID project, was to use the experience, the tools, the capacity and the partners’ knowledge in order to create a framework – guide for designing “Design Driven Innovation Support Schemes for the Tourism Sector enterprises” by using Twining Advanced methodology.
This Guide, the “Design Options Paper” will serve as a Handbook for the innovation agencies concerned with designing and/ or implementing innovation programmes for SMEs, in order to develop similar “enterprise – friendly support schemes” tailored made for tourism sector .
To start with, what is innovation and why is it so important for the Tourism Sector enterprises? And why is tourism such a sector that the need to focus on was identified by this project’s consortium?
Tourism is an economic activity capable of generating growth and employment in the EU, while contributing to development and economic and social integration, particularly of rural and mountain areas, coastal regions and islands, outlying and outermost regions or those undergoing convergence. With some 1.8 million businesses, primarily SMEs, employing approximately 5.2 % of the total workforce (approximately 9.7 million jobs, with a significant proportion of young people), the European tourism industry generates over 5 % of EU GDP, a figure which is steadily rising. Tourism therefore represents the third largest socioeconomic activity in the EU after the trade and distribution and construction sectors.
At the same time, consortium partners had identified that the importance of innovation was long underestimated in service activities. In contrast to the radical innovations vital to growth in manufacturing sectors, innovations in services and tourism were secondary and capital-scarce, and for this reason they were excluded from the scope of government interest and action. Innovation in tourism industry does not feature as a high priority amongst tourism SMEs and investment in innovation by this group is notably low across the EU due to a number of behavioral, financial and operational barriers.
But how can innovation agencies that are in place for helping Tourism sector’s SMEs, really address the above mentioned issues?
During the last years, the particular importance of design as a key discipline and activity to bring ideas to the market has been recognized in the Innovation Union -Europe's 2020 flagship initiative. In line with the commitment taken in the Innovation Union, the EC has launched in 2011 the European Design Innovation Initiative (EDII) to exploit the full potential of design for innovation and to reinforce the link between design, innovation and competitiveness.
Using all the above evidence and their past collaboration on design-led activities, the three partner organisations –the Business and Cultural Development Centre, the Cardiff Metropolitan University and the Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture have decided to combine their forces, knowledge and expertise on different aspects of the same issue, in order to come up with a guide, that will be used by other, similar innovation agencies to come up with Design Driven Innovation Support Schemes, that fully serves their respective target groups.
The overall objectives of the project were:
1. Establish a Peer Learning Working Group that will work closely, exchanging expertise and knowledge in order to overcome the common challenge,
2. Gather information such as cases and best practice of both design policies and tourism business examples to build the evidence base for advocacy.
3. Gather insights from stakeholders by organising regional/national and European -wide workshops, in order to assure that all stakeholders’ views and needs are covered by the output of the action, the Design Options Paper
TOURISM ID partners believes that the DOP is of high-value, and suggest all innovation agencies staff to use it as a Guide, in order to better design supporting schemes that promote design-driven innovation in the tourism sector’s SMEs.
