A collaborative knowledge platform to promote the implementation of the Regional Innovation Strategy

1. Intelligence Territoriale et prospective socio-écologique 24, 25, 26 Mars 2010, Nantes et Rennes A collaborative knowledge platform to promote the implementation of the Regional Innovation Strategy by Olivier Gaussens and Muriel Gilardone CREM UMR CNRS 6211 / MRSH UMS 843, Université de Caen Basse-Normandie. e-mail address: olivier.gaussens@unicaen.fr and muriel.gilardone@unicaen.fr

2. Whatis a collaborative knowledgeplatform ? meta-organizationadapted to «cognitive interactions» betweendifferentactors in ourcontext : SMEntrepreneurs, social scientists, innovation policyimplementers, innovation policymakers to steer the Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) in a context of «agencyfication» Finally to improve the individual and collective competencies about innovation processus

3. Why a knowledgeplatform to steer the RIS ? Our hypothesis: the actor’sviews, judgements, decisions or actions are based on implicit positions or mental modelswhichconstituteimpediments to the development of innovation The platform, thanksto confrontations of different expertises, should help actors to reconsidertheir initial positions by clarifyingthem to perceive or assess innovation in a more pertinent way

4. A knowledge base for actors’ interactions Composed of indicators and dashboards of synthetic analysis from databases, it allows actors to: 1)position themselves2) stimulate the explicitness of problems and solutions related to innovation 3) build their own tools of steering innovation.

5. database The knowledge base is building from databases : for example, enterprises data emergefrom a representative (random and stratified) sample of 70 regional and industrial SME (Projet IDEIS, CPER-Feder, 2007-2013)

6. 5 entrepreneurs’ positional biaises as impediments to innovation 1) Entrepreneurs have difficulty to assess their own innovative effort 2) Entrepreneurs use a network mainly limited to their professional sphere to access the knowledge 3) Main businesses innovate to increase their competitiveness mainly through innovation-oriented customer satisfaction 4) Entrepreneurs cooperate little to generate new knowledge. 5) Entrepreneurs have difficulty assessing aid policies and innovation support for them.

7. For example Entrepreneurs use a network mainly limited to their professional sphere to access the knowledge : The suppliers (55%), customers (50%) and competitors (50%) are more frequent knowledge sources that the universities (10%), research organizations (5%), or even the bodies of business support (15 %) (open access sources) Patents and norms are not important sources of knowledge The innovation process is opened : it is based on interactions with different actors (“thinking out the box”)

8. For example Entrepreneurs cooperate little to generate new knowledge. They innovate in a rather informal and non cooperative relationship They use more information sources (open access) than sources of knowledge through a cooperative partnership The innovation process is based on knowledge interactions : these require a cooperative framework

9. For example Main businesses innovate to increase their competitiveness mainly through innovation-oriented customer satisfaction. The dominant reasons to innovate appear as the following: "increase or maintain market share“ (80%) and "new markets“ (70%). In contrast, the development of environmentally friendly products is less prominent (65% of enterprises) the “reduction of production costs design” is infrequently evoked, while this factor directly impacts the profitability of innovation. improved sharing or transferring knowledge is not mentioned. The innovation process is based on the economic, social and cultural value creation (innovation efficiency, sustainable development, poverty reduction, better job, competencies and creativity development,…)

10. What action model suitable for innovation policy ? Policy-makers are designing policies based on implicit models of collective action. Innovation policies are built on market failure the corresponding action model is the “allocative innovation” model. For example, the motive for subsidizing research

11. “Allocative model” relevant ? 1) the established facts show (IDEIS survey, 2009) that : non-market incentives to innovate are not very effective The property rights are not as crucial that we advance 2) The “model of allocative innovation” is based on a random, science-technology-pushed model of innovation

12. Policy-makersneedan alternative model Based on a representation of innovation as a process to steerthe Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) To overcome "apparently" contradictory For example : competitiveness of SMEs vs sustainable development Policy-makers should seek to orient innovation toward the creation of social - and not simply economic value

13. Allocative model and agencyfication : policy implementers 1) it tends to partition the different "policy implementers," 2) it provides little visibility into the real causes of "policy-implementers” performance. The learning platform is the right tool for the deployment of RIS by allowing to effectively coordinate policy-implementers

14. The role of social scientists in the platform Organize the conditions for a collective production of knowledge Help actorsexpliciting and analysingtheirneeds and representations Invoke a widevariety of viewpoints, outlooks and models on innovation, confronte them and try to reach a bettermutualunderstanding Highlightactors’ positional biaises Provide micro and macro evaluationtools

15. Between open and private model of innovation In our view, the pure “private model of innovation”is particularly counterproductive because it doesn’t : overcome positional illusions stimulate cognitive interactions between different actors . In contrast the pure “open science model” enables to avoid the social loss problem but it creates problems with respect to motivating contributors Between the two, the knowledge platform can be considered as a framework adapted to develop innovation for example, the “private collective innovation model”(von Hippel and von Krogh model (2003))