Open innovation and Collaboration

In the project Local Participatory Innovation Practices, I among other things study conferences and events for media development that has to do with the triple-helix thesis. In this text I present some thoughts deriving from these experiences.

In innovation studies open innovation is the paradigm of today. Professor Henry Chesborough and others, in this way links user innovation to a company context: how to work with a more open process of innovation, collaborating with users and others. Being open to external ideas as well as internal ideas and processes.

One expression of the high status of open innovation is that the European Union has created a digital platform, http://www.openinnovation.eu/ “to contribute to the development and knowledge diffusion of the concept of open innovation in the European business community”.

The openess is, not surprisingly, not totally open. There are editorial aspects on many levels. Only business (Chesborough). Only EU countries. Only some academics. Only some companies. Only some individuals.

At Chesboroughs centre for Open Innovation, one has started the Berkely Innovation Forum, “an exclusive membership group consisting of carefully selected corporate Directors who are deeply involved in managing innovation within their company. Current members include a number of technology companies, such as HP, Cisco, SAP and GE”.

Conferences and events for innovating media can be seen as opening up for internal and external ideas, and at the same time creating an exclusive membership group. This tension between inclusion and exlusion is by no means new, it the case of all actions: what to do, with whom.

I think it is especially interesting to understand the inclusion and exclusion of open innovation. In what way are ideas from different fields meeting in these contexts? How is an exclusive membership group created?

I have chosen 5 conferences/events to discuss this. They are local/global, academic/business, bottom-up/top-down. My story is chronological. See it as field trip reports.

In June 2010 I attended the conference Moving images, this year about real time as a phenomena. It took place at Malmö University. One academic was in the program, and almost none in the house. The main message was to let different success individuals from an entrepreneurial and social media field meet. Our exclusive membership was created by the fact that we were there and were able to be active participants during the day (tweeting, talking with each other). On the relationship between academia and business, media development is so fast that slow academics do not understand (have experiences of) the “new” open innovation?

In August 2010 I attended Sweden Social Web Camp (SSWC), an unconference on social media. It took place on a small island in the south of Sweden. Different ideas that met was the of mixing small companies and big companies. Also present were politicians, because of election time. Many of the people present on Moving Images were also attending SSWC. Our exclusive membership was created by the fact that we made the conference: filling the grid with sessions. On the relationship between academia and business, there was one academic – me. Among the participants the need for deeper knowledge came from being an intellectual, gathering the knowledge needed, more than relying on academics to do this.

In September 2010 I attended RIPE, a conference on Public Service Media After the Recession. It took place in London. The conference is an example of where government and academics collaborate to “rescue” public service media. One day was spent at BBC. Different ideas that met was mainly researchers from different parts of the world, exchanging ideas on how locality, regionally, nationality influenced an understanding of public service media. There were lot’s of contacts between government and academics – none with companies. One company was present as keynote speaker, that was a spokesperson for Google UK. Even so, comments on collaboration was that collaboration was inhibiting and still made this conference possible. Our exclusive membership was created by being an academic, helping out. That was the main relationship between academia and business that was staged.

In November 2010 I attended Geek Girl Meetup in Malmö, an event on focusing on female rolemodels and networks within digital media and entrepreneurship. It took place in Malmö and started with a tour in the new public service television building in the West Harbour. Different ideas that met was a mix of companies and academics, also students, former students. Our exclusive membership was created by our gender and involvement in creating media innovation. On the relationship between academia and business, there was an interest in doing a meetup at Malmö University. The academics there were all involved in collaboration with companies.

In November 2010 I attended the conference Innovation in mind, a large conference, financed by Region Skåne. It took place at Lund University, as an important part of the new Vice-Chancellors way of strengthening the University as an innovative place. Different ideas that met was lot’s of people working at university and from triple-helix organizations. Our exclusive membership was created by us being there, getting edited knowledge – and also – different from last year – round table discussions. On the relationship between academia and business, there was interweaving relations. Participants were both, rather than either or. Both a company and a PhD students.  One participant told me he saw himself as a “pracademic”; a practitioner and an academic.

In November 2010 I attended the conference Room for work, a conference on work science with a section relating it to digital media development. It took place in Norrköping, at The Museum of Work, co-financed with a research foundation. This conference was quite different from the others, at a museum for work. Here academics were telling people how to understand work. In the audience there were retired people, dropping by to ask questions. One researcher, Susanna Toivonen, used material as www.stateofthefuture.org and from consultant firms as Kairos Future. Susanna also showed a video of google, as a way to make concrete a possible work place. Here media business stands as an image of the office of the future. One of the lecturers uses Overhead projector. History is present and linked to the present. A critical view on media development is also presented by Lars Ilshammar, as a critique towards a researcher called Barlow, as a symbol for the evangelists. Not that “information wants to be free”, instead what should society do?

I hope that these tentative sketches of experiences are seeds to understanding open innovation as co-producing of knowledge, where there should be insightful ethical negotiation based more on articulated awareness of power on collaboration.