Impact in networks and ecosystems: building case studies that make a difference

open accessThis toolkit aims to support the building up of case studies that show the impact of project activities aiming to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. The case studies respond to the challenge of understanding what kinds of interventions work in the Southern African region, where, and why. The toolkit has a specific focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems and proposes a method of mapping out the actors and their relationships over time. The aim is to understand the changes that take place in the ecosystems. These changes are seen to be indicators of impact as increased connectivity and activity in ecosystems are key enablers of innovation. Innovations usually happen together with matching social and institutional adjustments, facilitating the translation of inventions into new or improved products and services. Similarly, the processes supporting entrepreneurship are guided by policies implemented in the common framework provided by innovation systems. Overall, policies related to systems of innovation are by nature networking policies applied throughout the socioeconomic framework of society to pool scarce resources and make various sectors work in coordination with each other. Most participating SAIS countries already have some kinds of identifiable systems of innovation in place both on national and regional levels, but the lack of appropriate institutions, policies, financial instruments, human resources, and support systems, together with underdeveloped markets, create inefficiencies and gaps in systemic cooperation and collaboration. In other words, we do not always know what works and what does not. On another level, engaging users and intermediaries at the local level and driving the development of local innovation ecosystems within which local culture, especially in urban settings, has evident impact on how collaboration and competition is both seen and done. In this complex environment, organisations supporting entrepreneurship and innovation often find it difficult to create or apply relevant knowledge and appropriate networking tools, approaches, and methods needed to put their processes to work for broader developmental goals. To further enable these organisations’ work, it is necessary to understand what works and why in a given environment. Enhanced local and regional cooperation promoted by SAIS Innovation Fund projects can generate new data on this little-explored area in Southern Africa. Data-driven knowledge on entrepreneurship and innovation support best practices as well as effective and efficient management of entrepreneurial ecosystems can support replication and inform policymaking, leading thus to a wider impact than just that of the immediate reported projects and initiatives

Impact in networks and ecosystems: Building case studies that make a difference

This toolkit aims to support the building up of case studies that show the impact of project activities aiming to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. The case studies respond to the challenge of understanding what kinds of interventions work in the Southern African region, where, and why

Emerging regional innovation policies for industry 4.0: analyzing the digital innovation hub program in European regions

This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here (please insert the web address here). Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.[EN] Purpose Industry 4.0 or digitization, from a regional innovation system (RIS) and policy perspective to improve regional innovation, is over-looked. Specifically, this paper aims to focus on analyzing the nascent European Commission (EC) digital innovation hub (DIH) program, designed for fostering transition into Industry 4.0 in regions and facilitating new path development. Design/methodology/approach Empirically, 10 Spanish DIH is explored through interviews and secondary data analysis. Findings The results suggest that DIHs despite their emerging and trial-and-error stage are designed for promoting multi-actor collaborative platforms including non-local actors to stimulate transition into Industry 4.0 by promoting place-based collaboration alliances that respond to local/regional contextual specificities and demands. These regional-based platforms facilitate public-private partnerships that co-design policy initiatives resulting from co-participation and negotiation of spatially-bounded oriented initiatives for digitizing. Originality/value The authors answer: what are the key characteristics of emerging European-level regional innovation policies aimed at facilitating Industry 4.0 in regions? This is the first study on the topic.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades: RTI2018-095739-B-100.Hervás Oliver, JL.; González-Alcaide, G.; Rojas-Alvarado, R.; Monto-Mompo, S. (2021). Emerging regional innovation policies for industry 4.0: analyzing the digital innovation hub program in European regions. Competitiveness Review. 31(1):106-129. https://doi.org/10.1108/CR-12-2019-015910612931

Philanthropy Handbook - Giving Effectively from Singapore to Asia-Pacific

The purpose of this handbook is to: * Offer guidance to current and new philanthropists on how to start or expand your giving journey from Singapore.* Highlight joint areas for action that you can rally around with others to build the ecosystem and collectively address persistent needs.* Motivate inclusive wealth management by providing access to a network in Singapore that can support you in achieving both financial goals and social impact

Considerations Regarding a Canadian Patent Collective

In its 2018 budget, the Government of Canada pledged CDN$85.3 million over five years to support an ambitious new intellectual property (IP) strategy, including CDN$30 million for the formation of a Canadian “Patent Collective.” This paper explores the possible structure and goals of such a collective, as well as potential risks and challenges of each. It concludes that appreciable technology development by Canadian firms is not likely to be achieved through the proposed patent collective, but that such a collective could assist Canadian firms by facilitating their participation in existing international defensive patent networks. The paper recommends that the proposed Canadian patent collective avoid the acquisition and aggregation of patents, and instead focus its limited resources on three supportive functions for Canadian industry: assisting Canadian firms, through subsidies or other resource commitments, to participate in existing international defensive patent networks; encouraging Canadian universities and research institutions to focus on commercially relevant “translational” research; and assessing the potential benefits of facilitating patent sharing or pooling arrangements in select Canadian industries, and offering administrative and infrastructural support for such efforts

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

We Have Everything to Win : Collaboration and Open Innovation in Public Administration

While the concept of open innovation has attracted significant industry and research interest in the past five years, there remains a paucity of research on the application of the concept in noncommercial settings. This paper presents an exploration of a network of Swedish municipal authorities. Within this network, we have observed a move from isolated innovation to the purposive leveraging of knowledge inflows and outflows in a manner characteristic of the open innovation paradigm. This paper presents a characterization of these knowledge exchanges using an existing framework of open innovation archetypes, as well as a description of the business model impacts of these innovation approaches for the participant municipalities. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for future research

Network e-Volution

Modern society is a network society permeated by information technology (IT). As a result of innovations in IT, enormous amounts of information can be communicated to a larger number of recipients faster than ever before. The evolution of networks is heavily influenced by the extensive use of IT, which has enabled co-evolving advanced quantitative and qualitative forms of networking. Although several networks have been formed with the aim to reduce or deal with uncertainty through faster and broader access to information, it is in fact IT that has created new kinds of uncertainty. For instance, although digital information integration in supply chains has made production planning more robust, it has at the same time intensified mutual dependencies, thereby actually increasing the level of uncertainty. The aim of this working paper is to investigate the aspects of evolving networks and uncertainty in networks at the cutting edges of different types of networks and from the perspective of different layers defining these networks

GLADNET: Promise and Legacy

[Excerpt] The Global Applied Disability Research and Information Network on Employment and Training (GLADNET) was launched by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1995, in cooperation with over 50 social policy research centres, governmental and non- governmental organizations involved in disability-related employment programmes from over thirty countries around the world. Major organizations of persons with disabilities were also represented – the World Blind Union, the World Federation of the Deaf, Inclusion International (formerly the International League of Societies for Persons with Mental Handicap (ILSMH)) and Disabled Peoples International (DPI). GLADNET’s lifespan was little more than a generation (1995 – 2018). What’s of interest is that it survived beyond its first few years of existence. It could easily have died early on, given a significant change in nature of support from its initiating body. That it didn’t speaks to the aspirational nature and relevance of the vision prompting its formation. It’s in pursuit of that vision where GLADNET left its mark. This document focuses on its legacy, beginning with a brief review of context within which it was initiated