D3.1 The PED Innovation Atelier Organisation Document
Summary:
This report is the first ATELIER deliverable on how to organize and establish a PED Innovation Atelier in cities, as part of WP 3 ‘PED Innovation Atelier’. WP 3 prime objective is to involve the local innovation eco-system in tailoring and supporting the implementation of the smart urban solutions in the PED demonstrators. For doing so, PED Innovation Ateliers are being established in the Lighthouse cities now, and the Fellow cities will follow later. The PED Innovation Ateliers are to be organized in a self-sustaining way, which enables them to endure after the lifetime of the EU project ATELIER itself. However, the main question remains, how to organize a PED Innovation Atelier? In the underlying report, support is offered to partners and stakeholders by means of stepping stones and tools for organising and formalizing the Innovation Ateliers.
A PED Innovation Atelier depends on collaboration with partners, participants and stakeholders. Having a clear ambition, a goal and envisioning an ideal that appeals to the target group can help attract and bind future members to the organization. For this purpose, a vision and mission statement can be propagated, supported by one or more strategies to put them in action. With a vision, the partners of the Innovation Atelier can communicate their dream – what they believe, are the ideal conditions for the Innovation Atelier community.
Alongside an innovation-management perspective, stakeholder-management is considered a crucial element in establishing the Innovation Ateliers. Stakeholders possess unique knowledge. A well- designed collaborative knowledge production processes can help to generate meaningful results for the involved policy makers, scientists and stakeholders by joint production of documents, models, fact finding etc.
A central challenge of an Innovation Atelier is to achieve it’s (long term) economic and societal objectives. Potential value creation can be defined by mapping the (ecosystem, technology and business) services and activities that Innovation Ateliers can offer and what they yield in financial or non-financial contributions. However, these incomes are often insufficient to cover the costs over all the three stages of the Innovation Atelier. Important element is to identify the so called initial and structural funding gaps, and seek for potential funding strategies (incl. public funding schemes).
To manage resources and help partners to understand their positions, line of interactions, responsibilities or liabilities to each other, organizational models are crucial. They govern and establish collaborative linkages among organizations and partners. Potential organization models which can fit Innovation Ateliers are network organization, virtual organization, membership association, open innovation platform.
The PED Innovation Atelier approach requires a new way of collaboration and organisation for most partners in the PED demonstrator sites. Allowing participants of Innovation Ateliers to continuously monitoring progress, and learning in practice, will enable to adjust or intervene in the process, and prepare better guidelines for replication and upscaling. A Reflective Monitoring in Action framework is elaborated to allow this monitoring take place, and encourage stakeholders to reflect upon the impact and collaboration in action.