To address the challenge of MEETING project, the Consortium followed a methodology articulated in three main steps, completing the following activities:
1. Good practices review
During the first phase of the project, the partners collected best practices of open innovation initiatives aimed at fostering collaboration between SMEs and innovative startups. The analysis was focused on the “ecosystem level”: partners looked for projects supported and implemented by actors external to the enterprises belonging to the innovation ecosystems. A first joint workshop was organised to peer-review the material collected and to isolate the main key elements useful to provide indications for the designing of an innovative support program of open innovation.
2. New initiatives co-design
During the second part of the project, the partners worked collaboratively on the designing of an innovation support initiative aimed at fostering collaboration between SMEs and innovative start-ups. A dedicated online workshop was organised, during which the partners worked collaboratively brainstorming on the main ingredients which should compose a successful open innovation initiative in line with project MEETING objectives. The result produced by the activity has been the structure of an “Open Innovation Path” able to make traditional SMEs and startups develop innovative collaboration projects.
3. Validation and lesson learning
During the third phase of the project, the partners worked on the validation and refinishing of the innovation support initiative model. During the third workshop of project MEETING, the partners presented the model to an audience of external guests, representing different stakeholders of innovation ecosystems of Italy, France, and Croatia. The guests provided a set of suggestions about the elements of the model to drop, add, keep, or improve, and showed an overall interest for the models proposed and for the path started by project MEETING. The result of this activity was used to refine the “Open Innovation Path”. During the last two months of the project, the Consortium ran a series of validation activities, aimed at measuring the interest of the stakeholders towards the result of the project.
The results of the validation activities, as well as the insights and the suggestions provided by the stakeholders, have been inserted in the Design Options Paper (DOP). The document condenses the project results, providing a practical guide for all the innovation agencies interested in the topic addressed by MEETING. The document will be published and disseminated by the MEETING Consortium after the end of the project to spread all the information collected to address the innovation challenge of facilitating collaboration between SMEs and startups. Moreover, the DOP will be used by MEETING partners to implement the model of open innovation co-designed, through a collaborative initiative that will involve the territories of Italy, France, and Croatia.
