| Date post: | 27-Jul-2015 |
| Category: |
Business |
| Upload: | pole-numerique-cci-de-bordeaux |
| View: | 72 times |
| Download: | 1 times |
Crowdsourcing on what are
the new sources of ICT-
enabled growth and jobs to
take into consideration in the
follow-up to the Digital
Agenda for Europe
FINAL REPORT
A study prepared for the European Commission DG
Communications Networks, Content & Technology
by:
Page | 2
This study was carried out for the European Commission by
Authored by Michael Franklin and Dr Kelly Higgins
Internal identification
Contract Number: 30-CE-0607927/00-34
Smart Number: SMART 2013/0046
DISCLAIMER
By the European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content & Technology.
The information and views set out in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect
the official opinion of the European Commission. The European Commission does not guarantee the accuracy of
the data included in this study. Neither the Commission nor any person acting on the European Commission’s
behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.
ISBN 978-92-79-43379-5
DOI 10.2759/85364
© European Union, 2014. All rights reserved. Certain parts are licensed under conditions to the EU.
Page | 3
Table of Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................. 4
1. Executive Summary ........................................................................................ 5
1.1 Open Innovation Challenges ........................................................................... 5
1.2 Thought-leader Workshop on Open Innovation ................................................. 7
1.3 Final Study Report ........................................................................................ 8
2. Overview of Collected Ideas ......................................................................... 14
2.1 Challenge 1 – Overview of Collected Ideas ..................................................... 14
2.2 Challenge 2 – Overview of Collected Ideas ..................................................... 15
3. Retained Ideas ............................................................................................. 17
3.1 Challenge 1 ................................................................................................ 17
3.2 Challenge 2 ................................................................................................ 20
4. Policy Recommendations .............................................................................. 24
4.1 Challenge Submissions – Policy Recommendations .......................................... 24
4.2 Open Innovation Policy Recommendations ..................................................... 25
4.2.1 Challenge Design .................................................................................. 25
4.2.2 Where to best implement Open Innovation Challenges for the European
Commission .................................................................................................. 27
4.2.3 Alternative uses of crowdsourcing ........................................................... 28
4.2.4 Developing an organisational culture of openness towards crowdsourcing ..... 29
4.2.5 Development of a Solver community ........................................................ 30
5. Conclusions .................................................................................................. 32
6. Appendices ................................................................................................... 34
6.1 Question 1 Internally Created Answer ............................................................ 34
6.2 Challenge 1 Winning Submission ................................................................... 43
6.3 Challenge 2 Winning Submission ................................................................... 52
Page | 4
Abstract
This Final Study Report represents the culmination of the project InnoCentive has
delivered under tender from the Directorate-General for Communications Networks,
Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) of the European Commission. Exploring how
examples of open innovation can be used to direct information and communications
technology (ICT) public policy, two innovation Challenges were run as part of the
project. A thought-leader workshop was then held to discuss the outcomes and
implications of the Challenges, and explore how open innovation can be more widely
used in public policy and the potential for up-scaling. As an emergent tool growing in
popularity, crowdsourcing public policy can be seen as a vital way to further democratise
policy development, while accessing external expertise that otherwise may not have
been known to the organisation. This report firstly details the ideas collected through the
open innovation Challenges run, highlighting those that were retained by the judges or
received an award. Later chapters then build off these submitted ideas to outline
implementable policy recommendations that were discussed amongst workshop
attendees and broader recommendations for the potential future use of open innovation
and crowdsourcing by the European Commission.
Résumé
Ce Rapport d'Étude Final représente l'aboutissement du projet qu'InnoCentive a livré
sous contrat de la Direction Générale des Réseaux de Communication, Contenu et
Technologie (DG CONNECT) de la Commission Européenne. En explorant comment des
exemples d'innovations ouvertes peuvent être utilisés pour orienter des politiques
publiques vers les technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC), deux
Défis d'innovations furent exécutés dans le cadre de ce projet. Un atelier de leader
d'opinion fut ensuite organisé pour discuter des résultats et des implications des défis, et
pour explorer la façon dont l'innovation ouverte peut être utilisée plus largement dans
les politiques publiques et la possibilité d'un changement d'échelle. En tant qu'outil
émergeant gagnant de plus en plus en popularité, le crowdsourcing de politiques
publiques peut être considéré comme un moyen essentiel pour démocratiser davantage
encore l'élaboration des politiques, tout en accédant à une expertise externe qui,
autrement, pourrait ne pas avoir été connue de l'organisation. Ce rapport détaille tout
d'abord les idées recueillies dans le cadre des Défis de l'innovation ouverte, en
soulignant celles qui ont étés retenues par les juges ou ayant reçu un prix. Les chapitres
suivants tirent partis de ces idées soumises afin de présenter des recommandations de
politiques implémentables ayant été discutées par les participants de l'atelier et de
recommandations plus générales pour la potentielle utilisation future de l'innovation
ouverte et du crowdsourcing par la Commission Européenne.
Page | 5
1. Executive Summary
Under a contract with the European Commission, InnoCentive designed, ran and
evaluated two open innovation Challenges. With the help of experts within the
information and communications technology (ICT), public policy and open innovation
spheres, this report has been compiled to reflect the major trends present in both the
Challenges, and the outcomes from the thought-leadership workshop held in Brussels on
16th September 2014. Under the Directorate-General for Communications Networks,
Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) mission of harnessing information and
communications technology to help deliver greater economic growth and job
opportunities, this open innovation project had two aims: firstly to garner insights from
the crowd as to potential policies that could be implemented to meet this DG CONNECT
aim, and secondly to act as a trial to see whether crowdsourcing could be successfully
used to deliver and design public policy.
The two open innovation Challenges explicitly requested either potential policies that the
European Commission could develop to help deliver growth and jobs, or innovative new
business models that could better harness technological developments. Workshop
content used these Challenges as a starting point before exploring in detail the best
practices for successfully implementing crowdsourcing: where it could be most
effectively used in the policy creation process, and how the European Commission could
enhance the success of any future open innovation projects they may wish to undertake.
A series of recommendations were made by the experts present and these are
thoroughly covered in Section 4 of this Final Study Report.
1.1 Open Innovation Challenges
Within the tender produced by the Commission, seven questions were outlined to be
answered through the project and open innovation Challenges. These were:
(1) Which emerging technologies and ICT-enabled practices are
particularly relevant in terms of sources of growth across the
economy (per sector of the economy)?
(2) What are the main barriers to growth, job creation and investment
across the economy (per sector of the economy) in Europe?
(3) What are the critical "framework conditions" (legal and
administrative requirements, market variables, etc.) that would
help maximize the economic and social impact of new technologies
and ICT-enabled practices in Europe?
(4) How could the European Commission address the barriers identified
in Question 2 and/or improve the framework conditions mentioned
in Question 3?
(5) What would be the most innovative policy approach that could be
taken at a European level to address the creation of new jobs and
stimulate growth in ICT-related areas?
(6) What are seen as barriers for business model innovation in ICT
intense sectors in Europe? What inhibits exploration and
experimenting of new value creation approaches, scale up and
Page | 6
multiplying of the successful approaches? Have platforms and
innovation ecosystems been a driving role for business model
innovation?
(7) What kind of new policy or legislative approaches could foster the
innovation of business models in ICT intensive sectors in the short
and medium terms?
Question 1 was covered in a report created by InnoCentive through academic and
market research – this report can be found in Appendix 6.1. The remaining six questions
were split evenly between the two Challenges: questions 2 through 4 formulated into
Challenge 1 and questions 5-7 for Challenge 2.
Both Challenges ran concurrently on the InnoCentive website from 3rd March 2014,
through to 8th April 2014. In response to the postings, Challenge 1 received 202
registered Solvers (those interested in submitting a proposal) and 37 submissions.
Challenge 2 had 159 registered Solvers, 47 of whom submitted a proposal for the judges
to assess (these percentage submission rates fare well in comparison to historical
submission rates for InnoCentive Challenges.)
After an internal filter of entries to ensure quality and relevance, a pool of industry-
leading judges assessed entries online before the top 5 for each Challenge were
discussed on a deliberation call to select the overall winner of the $5000 prize for each
Challenge.
The winning solution for Challenge 1 presented 10 ways Europe can compete in an ever-
increasingly digitalized world; breaking down recommendations into the self-titled
categories of “Initiate”, “Concentrate” and “Transcend”. By firstly detailing a situation of
Europe losing ground to other world regions and how recent years have not seen enough
emphasis on rectifying this, “Initiate” looks at improving labour skills, entrepreneurial
culture and creating a level playing field, “Concentrate” seeks to increase public
spending and create more tech hubs that fit within a holistic pan-European master plan,
and “Transcend” slants more towards businesses themselves: increasing R&D spending,
improving strategic foresight and creating more inter-company collaboration. The full
submission can be found in Appendix 6.2.
The winning solution for Challenge 2 presented an approach of “Crowdpreneurship”:
combining the powers of entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing to redefine business
approaches and spark company led ICT innovation. By filling a void that other services
such as EIT ICT labs do not currently fill, and pairing thought-leaders from both technical
and entrepreneurial fields, it is hoped that greater involvement and ownership of the
company would lead to better outcomes. The idea took into consideration some of the
legal complexities for both the idea and equity management, along with how the central
idea incubator platform on which this would take place would help guide the contract
process and provide a free resource catalogue to help businesses grow further. The full
submission can be found in Appendix 6.3.
These entries will be discussed in greater detail in Section 3. Broad comments would
suggest that while a useful exercise that provoked some innovative policy suggestions,
the submissions for the Challenges did not present numerous opportunities for further
investigation: this is again discussed in more detail in section 2 and 3.
Page | 7
1.2 Thought-leader Workshop on Open Innovation
Through briefly discussing the outcomes of the Challenges and then using them as a
back-drop for further exploration, the workshop held in Brussels on the 16th September
2014 brought together industry experts from private firms, city officials, academia, and
NGO’s to explore the up-scaling of crowdsourcing within public policy creation.
Roundtable afternoon discussions looked to answer some of the key concerns as to
whether there is a scalability issue in the use of open innovation to create public policy
and how successes seen in the sciences and engineering could be transferred across to
this less quantifiable sphere. Through discussions amongst workshop attendees, the
following key questions were covered:
Where does open innovation work and why?
Is crowdsourcing a suitable tool for public policy and the social sciences?
Where to best implement open innovation Challenges for the European
Commission?
How to develop an organisational culture change to be more in favour of open
innovation?
How to build a Solver community outside of the engineering and science based
topics?
What recommendations can be made for the European Commission to allow the
up-scaling of the use of open innovation?
Discussions will be outlined in much greater detail in the Policy Recommendations
section (Section 4) of this study report; however three key themes became apparent as
the day progressed. Addressing these policy recommendations could be seen as taking
the first step towards a greater implementation of open innovation, and drawing better
successes:
1. Challenge Design
Open Innovation is not a panacea that can solve all issues. The first consideration of any
crowdsourcing programme must be the correct selection of topic. The second area for
attention is then an understanding of what the implications and goals of the Challenge
are and this must occur before any design begins. Only once these two facets are
cemented can the Challenge Design process start: questions asked, prizes offered
(monetary and non-monetary), intellectual property implications, background
information provided, and solution level desired must all be taken into account. The
Policy Recommendations section delves into far more detail, using examples to show
how different aspects can be considered and making broad recommendations to where
open innovation Challenges may be best implemented by the European Commission in
the future; including wider comments on other crowdsourcing opportunities.
2. Building a Solver Community
This must be seen as a pre-requisite for all Challenges – without a pool of knowledgeable
and engaged Solvers a perfectly designed Challenge will still fail. Building a community
can be done through correct outreach, marketing and recruitment (by accessing groups
such as university students and those experts who have recently retired, the aim can be
to reach non-usual suspects who may otherwise not engage with the policy creation
process). Large kick-off prizes can help draw in these groups, but then continual
Challenges must be present to maintain engagement. Community interaction and
Page | 8
management prevents drop-out and disillusionment of the use of any solutions
submitted and whilst return on investment analysis must be done to ensure worth,
detailed feedback and interaction with Solvers can be used to help build belief in the
open innovation process.
3. Developing an organisational cultural change
Thought leaders and open innovation champions must be present within an organisation
to ensure there is uptake and support for the process: there must be a willingness to
accept all solutions and be open to exploring their potential, even if this requires a
complete paradigm shift. However, having a pool of pilot Challenges – and there being
successful examples coming from these - is useful for the greater acceptance of open
innovation. Further to a successful delivery of the actual Challenge programme, a
framework for implementing the outcomes of the Challenges is needed to ensure ideas
are not forgotten and real value is extracted from the process. There is no precise
science to developing this change and it can take many years, however it is important if
a lasting open innovation programme is to be developed.
While internal, closed innovation processes will not disappear, through technological and
societal developments a great opportunity has arisen for accessing global experts and for
crowdsourcing to develop and dwarf the outcomes that its counterpart can deliver.
However this relationship between innovation processes must not be seen as
dichotomous, instead open innovation acts as an essential component to more traditional
approaches and can accelerate outcomes faster than otherwise possible; whether that be
harnessing ideas for further exploration, or overcoming a specific barrier that was
otherwise hindering progress.
Public sector initiatives represent a great opportunity for the running of influential,
relevant and trend-setting open innovation Challenges with the organisations not only
receiving the success of Challenges run, but also having the opportunity of providing the
framework to fuel the innovation processes for others who may wish to follow suit.
Ensuring that the correct frameworks, processes and designs are in place is the key step
that public sector organisations such as the European Commission must deliver on if
there is to be this greater usage.
1.3 Final Study Report
What follows in this Final Study Report will firstly look in more detail at the collected
ideas of the Challenges – assessing themes that arose and the implications solutions
might hold towards future European policy.
From this collection of ideas, Section 3 will then focus on the retained ideas that were
extended to the judging panel and then discussed on the deliberation calls to decide the
winners. This section will talk in detail about why certain entries were selected to be
advanced through each judging stage and the key features that made them attractive
proposals.
Section 4 will firstly explore the ICT-related policy recommendations that arose through
the Challenges, before then delving into detail regarding the wider policy
Page | 9
recommendations as to how to expand and scale-up the use of crowdsourcing and open-
innovation.
Finally, key conclusions to the project will be highlighted in Section 5. Full versions of the
winning submissions can be found in Appendices 6.2 and 6.3, and the internally created
document answering question 1, can be found in Appendix 6.1.
Résumé Analytique
En vertu d'un contrat avec la Commission européenne, InnoCentive a conçu, mené et
évalué deux défis d'innovation ouverte. Avec l'aide d'experts dans la technologie de
l'information et de la communication (TIC), des politiques publiques et du domaine de
l'innovation ouverte, ce rapport a été établi afin de refléter les grandes tendances
présentes dans ces défis, et les résultats de l'atelier de leader d'opinion tenu à Bruxelles
le 16 Septembre 2014. Dans le cadre de la mission de la Direction Générale des
Réseaux de Communication, du Contenu et de la Technologie (DG CONNECT) d'employer
la technologie de l'information et de la communication pour aider à fournir plus de
croissance économique et d'opportunités d'emploi, ce projet d'innovation ouverte avait
deux objectifs: premièrement, d'accumuler des connaissances sur le public ainsi que
politiques potentielles qui pourraient être mises en œuvre afin d'atteindre les objectifs de
DG CONNECT, et deuxièmement de faire un essai afin de voir si le crowdsourcing
pourrait être utilisé avec succès afin de transmettre et de concevoir des politiques
publiques.
Les deux défis d'innovation ouverte exigèrent explicitement soit des politiques
potentielles que la Commission européenne pourrait développer pour aider à assurer la
croissance et l'emploi, ou de nouveaux modèles d'affaires innovant qui pourraient mieux
exploiter les développements technologiques. L'atelier utilisa ces Défis comme point de
départ avant d'explorer en détails les meilleures manières d'implémenter avec succès un
crowdsourcing: là où il sera utilisé de la manière la plus efficace dans le processus de la
création d'une politique, et comment la Commission Européenne pourrait améliorer le
succès des futurs projets d'innovation ouverte qu'elle souhaiterait entreprendre. Une
série de recommandations ont été formulées par les experts présents celles-ci sont
complètement couvertes dans la Partie 4 de ce Rapport d'Étude Final.
1.1 Défis d'Innovation Ouverte
Dans l'appel d'offre publié par la Commission, sept questions furent amenées à être
répondues à travers le projet et les Défis d'innovation libre. Celles-ci étaient:
(1) Quelles sont les technologies émergentes et les pratiques liées aux
TIC qui sont particulièrement importantes en termes de sources de
croissance dans l'économie (par secteur de l'économie)?
(2) Quels sont les principaux obstacles à la croissance, la création
d'emplois et d'investissements dans l'économie (par secteur de
l'économie) en Europe?
(3) Quels sont les «conditions-cadres» critiques (exigences juridiques
et administratives, variables de marché, etc.) qui permettraient de
Page | 10
maximiser l'impact économique et social des nouvelles technologies
et des pratiques des TIC en Europe?
(4) Comment la Commission Européenne pourrait lever les obstacles
identifiés à la question 2 et/ou améliorer les conditions-cadres
mentionnées à la question 3?
(5) Quelle serait l'approche politique la plus innovante qui pourraient
être prise au niveau européen afin d'aborder le problème de la
création de nouveaux emplois et de stimuler la croissance dans les
domaines liés aux TIC?
(6) Que sont considérés comme des obstacles dans l'innovation des
modèles d'affaires dans les secteurs intenses des TIC en Europe?
Qu'est-ce inhibe l'exploration et l'expérimentation de nouvelles
approches de création de valeur, de changement d'échelle et de la
multiplication des approches réussies? Est-ce que les plates-formes
ou les écosystèmes d'innovations ont eu des rôles moteurs dans
l'innovation des modèles d'affaires?
(7) Quel genre de nouvelles politiques ou d'approches législatives
pourrait favoriser l'innovation des modèles d'affaires dans les
secteurs à forte intensité de TIC à court- et moyen-terme?
La question 1 a été couverte dans un rapport créé par InnoCentive à travers des
recherches de marché et académiques - ce rapport peut être trouvé dans l'Annexe 6.1.
Les six questions restantes ont été réparties également entre les deux défis: les
questions 2 à 4 pour le Défi 1 et les questions 5-7 pour le Défi 2.
Les deux défis ont eu lieu en même temps sur le site Web d'InnoCentive du 3 Mars
2014, jusqu'au 8e Avril 2014. En réponse aux annonces, le Défi 1 enregistra 202
solveurs (ceux intéressés à soumettre une proposition) et 37 soumissions. Le Défi 2
enregistra 159 solveurs, dont 47 ayant présentés une proposition à faire évaluer par les
juges (ces pourcentages de taux de soumission sont bons en comparaison des taux de
soumission antérieurs des défis d'InnoCentive.)
Après un filtrage interne des soumissions afin d'assurer la qualité et la pertinence, un
panel de juges leaders d'industries évaluèrent les soumissions en ligne avant de d'élire le
Top 5 pour chacun de ces Défis et de délibérer pour sélectionner le vainqueur du prix de
5000$ pour les deux Défis.
La solution gagnante pour le Défi 1 présenta 10 façons pour l'Europe de rivaliser dans un
monde de plus en plus numérisé ; décomposant les recommandations dans des
catégories auto-intitulées "Initier", "Concentrer" et "Transcender". En détaillant tout
d'abord la situation d'une Europe perdant du terrain face aux autres régions du monde et
le manque d'emphase employé à rectifier ceci, "Initier" se concentre sur l'amélioration
des compétences de travail, de culture d'entreprise et de créer une situation équitable,
"Concentrer" cherche à augmenter les dépenses publiques et de créer plus de centres de
technologies correspondant au plan directif général pan-Européen, "Transcender" se
tourne plus vers les entreprises elles-mêmes: l'augmentation des dépenses en R&D,
l'amélioration des prévision stratégiques et la création d'une plus grande collaboration
inter-entreprises. La soumission complète se trouve à l'Annexe 6.2.
Page | 11
La solution gagnante pour le Défi 2 a présenté une approche de "Crowdprenariat":
combiner les avantages de l'entrepreneuriat et du crowdsourcing pour redéfinir les
approches commerciales et susciter la mise-en-place d'innovations dans les TIC par les
sociétés. En remplissant un vide que d'autres services tels que les laboratoires de TIC de
l'IET ne remplissent pas actuellement, et l'appariement des leaders d'opinion de
domaines à la fois techniques et entrepreneuriales, il est à espérer qu'une plus grande
implication et appropriation de la société conduirait à de meilleurs résultats. L'idée prit
en considération certaines des complexités juridiques concernant à la fois l'idée et la
gestion des capitaux propres, ainsi que la manière dont la plate-forme centrale
d'incubation d'idée au sein de laquelle ceci se déroulerait pourrait aider à le processus de
marché et fournir un catalogue de ressources gratuites pour aider les entreprises à se
développer davantage. La soumission complète se trouve à l'Annexe 6.3.
Ces soumissions seront discutées plus en détail dans la Section 3. Les commentaires
généraux suggèrent que bien qu'étant un exercice utile qui a provoqué quelques
suggestions de politiques novatrices, les soumissions aux Défis n'ont pas présentés de
nombreuses opportunités d'investigations plus approfondies : ceci est de nouveau
discuté plus en détails dans les parties 2 et 3.
1.2 Ateliers de Leader d'Opinion sur l'Innovation
Ouverte
En discutant brièvement les résultats des défis et en les utilisant ensuite comme toiles
de fond pour une exploration plus approfondie, l'atelier tenu à Bruxelles le 16 Septembre
2014 a réuni des experts de cabinets privés, de fonctionnaires de la ville,
d'universitaires, et d'ONGs pour explorer le changement d'échelle du crowdsourcing au
sein de la création de politiques publiques. Les tables rondes de l'après-midi cherchèrent
à répondre à certaines des principales préoccupations concernant l'existence d'un
problème de mise à l'échelle dans l'utilisation des innovations ouvertes pour créer des
politiques publiques et comment les succès enregistrés dans le domaine des sciences et
de l'ingénierie pourraient être transférés dans ce domaine moins quantifiable. Au cours
des discussions entre les participants de l'atelier, les questions suivantes ont été
abordées:
● Où est ce que l'innovation ouverte fonctionne, et pourquoi?
● Est-ce que le crowdsourcing est un outil approprié pour la politique publique et les
sciences sociales?
● Où serait le meilleur endroit pour implémenter des Défis d'innovation ouverte
pour la Commission Européenne?
● Comment développer un changement de culture organisationnelle afin d'être plus
en faveur de l'innovation ouverte?
● Comment construire une communauté de Solveurs en dehors des sujets
d'ingénierie et de sciences?
● Quelles recommandations peuvent être faites pour la Commission Européenne
pour permettre la mise à l'échelle de l'utilisation d'innovation ouverte?
Les discussions seront décrites beaucoup plus en détail dans la partie Recommandations
de Politiques (Partie 4) de ce rapport d'étude; cependant trois thèmes principaux sont
apparus alors que la journée avançait. Répondre à ces recommandations de politique
Page | 12
pourrait être considéré comme le premier pas vers une plus grande mise en œuvre de
l'innovation ouverte, et l'élaboration de meilleures réussites:
1. Conception des Défis
L'Innovation Ouverte n'est pas une panacée qui peut résoudre tous les problèmes. Le
premier examen de tout programme de crowdsourcing doit être le bon choix de sujets.
Le deuxième domaine d'attention est alors une compréhension des implications et des
objectifs du Défi, cela devant se produire avant le début de toute conception. C'est
seulement une fois que ces deux facettes sont considérées que le processus de la
Conception du Défi commence: les questions posées, les prix offerts (monétaires et
non-monétaires), les implications de la propriété intellectuelles, les informations de base
fournies, et le niveau de solution désiré doivent être pris en compte. La section des
Recommandations de Politiques couvre beaucoup plus de détails, utilisant des exemples
afin de montrer comment différents aspects peuvent être considérés, et en faisant des
recommandations générales concernant l'endroit où les Défis pourraient être implantés
au mieux par la Commission Européenne à l'avenir; ainsi que des commentaires plus
larges sur d'autres possibilités de crowdsourcing.
2. Construire une Communauté de Solveurs
Cela doit être considéré comme un pré-requis pour tous les défis - sans un groupe de
solveurs compétents et motivé, un Défi parfaitement conçu échouera malgré tout. Bâtir
une communauté peut se faire grâce à une sensibilisation adéquate, au marketing et au
recrutement (en accédant à des groupes tels que les étudiants universitaires ou des
experts ayant récemment pris leur retraite, l'objectif serait d'atteindre un autre type de
personnes qui pourraient autrement ne pas participer au processus de création de
politiques). D'important prix au moment du lancement peuvent aider à attirer ces
groupes, mais des défis constants doivent être présents pour maintenir l'implication.
L'interaction et la gestion communautaire empêchent l'abandon et la désillusion de
l'utilisation de toutes les solutions soumises tandis que l'analyse du retour sur
investissement doit être menée afin d'assurer un feedback détaillé, les interactions avec
les Solveurs peuvent être utilisées pour aider à créer de la confiance dans le processus
de l'innovation ouverte.
3. Développer un changement de culture organisationnelle
Les leaders d'opinion et les champions de l'innovation ouverte doivent être présents au
sein d'un organisme pour assurer la présence d'une adhésion et d'un appui au
processus: il doit y avoir une volonté d'accepter toutes les solutions et d'être prêts à
explorer leur potentiel, même si cela nécessite un changement complet de paradigme.
Cependant, avoir un panel de Défis pilotes - il y a des exemples de réussite en
proviennent - est utile pour la plus grande acceptation de l'innovation ouverte. Au delà
d'une bonne exécution du programme de Défi, un cadre pour l'implémentation des
résultats des Défis est nécessaire pour s'assurer que les idées ne seront pas oubliées et
que leur véritable valeur soit extraite du processus. Il n'y a pas de méthode particulière
pour développer ce changement et ça peut prendre de nombreuses années, cependant
c'est important si un programme durable d'innovation ouverte doit être développé.
Bien que les processus d'innovations internes et fermés ne disparaîtront pas, une grande
opportunité a surgi à travers les développement technologiques et sociétaux pour
accéder à des experts mondiaux et pour que le crowdsourcing développe ou réduise les
Page | 13
résultats provenant de son homologue. Cependant, cette relation entre les processus
d'innovations ne doit pas être considérée comme dichotomique, l'innovation ouverte agit
comme un élément essentiel pour des approches plus traditionnelles et peut améliorer
les résultats plus vite que possible autrement; que ce soit pour employer les idées à de
plus amples explorations ou pour outrepasser un obstacle particulier qui autrement
entravait le processus.
Les initiatives du secteur public représentent une grande opportunité pour la gestion des
défis d'innovation ouverte influents, pertinents et avant-gardistes, les organisations ne
recevant pas seulement les succès du Défi accompli, mais également la possibilité
d'apporter un cadre pour alimenter les processus d'innovation pour d'autres qui
souhaiteraient peut-être leur emboîter le pas. S'assurer que les bons cadres, processus
et modèles soient en place est l'étape clé que des organisations du secteur publique
comme la Commission Européenne doivent exécuter en cas d'une utilisation accrue.
1.3 Rapport d'Étude Final
Ce qui suit dans ce Rapport d'Étude Final se penchera premièrement plus en détails sur
les idées recueillies lors des Défis - évaluant les thèmes qui en émergent et les
implications que ces solutions peuvent apporter pour la future politique Européenne.
En se basant sur cette récoltes d'idées, la Partie 3 se concentrera alors sur les idées
retenues qui furent présentées aux membres du jury et ensuite examinées lors de la
délibération des lauréats. Cette partie va couvrir en détail pourquoi certaines
soumissions furent sélectionnés et ont passées les différentes étapes de jugement ainsi
que les caractéristiques clés qui ont fait d'elles des propositions intéressantes.
La Partie 4 explorera premièrement les recommandations liées aux TIC qui ont émergées
au cours des Défis, avant de se pencher plus en détails sur les recommandations de
politiques plus générales concernant comment étendre et mettre à l'échelle l'utilisation
du crowdsourcing et de l'innovation ouverte.
Enfin, les principales conclusions de ce projet seront mises en évidence dans la Partie 5.
Les versions complètes des soumissions gagnantes peuvent être trouvés dans les
Annexes 6.2 et 6.3, et le document créé en interne répondant à la question 1 peut être
trouvé dans l'Annexe 6.1.
Page | 14
2. Overview of Collected Ideas
Along with Section 3, this chapter will be sub-divided into the two Challenges that were
run as part of this project. Challenge 1 sort to pertain solutions for improved job creation
and investment across many economic sectors through the use of ICT, alongside how
current barriers to growth could be overcome.
The focus of Challenge 2 was slanted towards novel policy approaches to help promote
economic growth and innovative business models that could take advantages of these
policy changes. Each Challenge answered three of the questions outlined in the European
Commission tender: Challenge 1 covered questions 2-4 while Challenge 2 answered 5–7.
2.1 Challenge 1 – Overview of Collected Ideas
With this Challenge seeking ideas to improve job creation and ICT investment while
breaking down current barriers that prevent growth, a wide spectrum of solutions were
submitted and each looked at the Challenge statement from a different perspective.
Overall, 37 submissions were received, with the top 11 being passed on to the external
judges. This section will primarily look at the broad themes that existed across all 37
entries, however will also comment on those that were not passed on to the judges
(Section 3 will look in detail at each of the fully assessed entries).
While submissions varied in quality, recommendation and perspective, three main
themes can be extracted from the entries as an entire group:
1. educational improvements for better ICT uptake and usage,
2. further development of centralized EU portals and more holistic management
systems,
3. a renewed focus on entrepreneurship and greater support opportunities made
available for startups.
As with all open innovation competitions, solutions are attracted from many different
fields and with the purposeful aim of having few barriers to entry in these Challenges (no
proof of technical knowledge or eligibility criteria were used to ensure higher quality or
relevance), a varying quality of submissions was received. Those that were discarded
were generally one or more of: lacked coherence or reason, short in length, irrelevant
content or incomplete. Some did comment on useful policy recommendations but were
either usurped by more detailed and thorough submissions on a similar theme, or were
so short that a proper appreciation of the recommendations could not be gained. Topics
that some of these rejected entries covered included:
The promotion of holistic ICT management across society and using centralised
EU platforms – having one widespread system instead of numerous silos that
service only one requirement
European Union acting as a support body for entrepreneurial development.
Creating open source applications alongside publishing internal ICT trends to
allow entrepreneurs to appreciate future market opportunities
Altering business models to ensure developments are consumer-centric. Similar
entries commented on using business model benchmarking to firstly educate
entrepreneurs and then guide business development
Page | 15
Building on the centralised platforms mentioned, the higher quality entries commented
further by introducing potential policies such as platforms for Smart City integration to
enable the crosspollination and exchange of ideas and practices. Other examples include
the creation of central marketplaces for IP/Licensing which acted with the support of the
European Commission, and four key EU portals that would help provide greater learning,
employment, transaction and business delivery possibilities.
For the theme of entrepreneurial development, those submissions that were retained
delved into greater detail on prize based recognition and support of entrepreneurial
excellence, and the removal of information poverty for entrepreneurs to allow them to
fully realise potential and create employment opportunities. Many of these submissions
were more suitable for Challenge 2 which focused on new paradigms for business models
and thus entrepreneurial focused crossovers will be seen in more detail in later sections.
The final trend in the discarded entries was how improved ICT education could be
attained to meet economic and social ends. Whilst policy recommendations varied, some
focused on one particular area that could be improved, such as the championing of ICT
skills among school children, while others looked to numerous diverse fields: briefly
touching on areas such as the up-skilling of workers, centralised interoperable systems
for personal knowledge management, and the promotion of open source business
information. As a group they all argued for greater education and up-skilling to create
more productive workers, more innovative entrepreneurs and more tech-savvy
consumers who could take full advantage of a technologically-driven society.
These are just some of the broad themes that rejected submissions commented on.
Some of these were present in those submissions passed on to the judges, however
varying quality, analysis and direct appreciation of the Challenge aims separated out the
advanced and rejected entries.
2.2 Challenge 2 – Overview of Collected Ideas
Whilst soliciting solutions slanted towards novel policy approaches to help promote
economic growth, alongside innovative business models that would take advantage of
these policy changes, many crossovers with Challenge 1 existed in the solutions
submitted for Challenge 2. Overall, this Challenge attracted more submissions, and more
of a higher quality: 47 entries were submitted and 15 were retained and passed on to
the judges. As with Challenge 1 previously, this section will explore the themes and
overviews of all submissions, however comment more on those that were rejected at the
first stage.
Those ideas that were rejected varied greatly in context and focus. Entries ranged from
implementing ‘digital motorways’ that provided high speed internet in rural areas, to
limiting intellectual property ownership to thirty years; and from the greater pairing of
private and public institutions to drive innovation, to the creation of numerous tech hubs
supplied with 1 gigabit internet. Many submitted ideas contradicted each other and while
this is normal to see in policy related open innovation Challenges, it potentially highlights
a lack of a coherent school of thought amongst Solvers. Ideas previously submitted for
Challenge 1 also reappeared in edited forms for Challenge 2: greater support
mechanisms for tech starts ups through tax breaks and centralised portals that could
help facilitate collaboration were just two of these duplicates.
Page | 16
Similarly to Challenge 1, those ideas that were rejected were usually short, irrelevant or
unimaginative: potentially repeating what was laid out in the introductory documents, or
restating current trends in academic work. However some ideas were at the opposite end
of this spectrum: outlining a dream scenario that would either require huge amounts of
capital to implement, or had colossal social, cultural or political barriers that may prevent
it from becoming a reality. To ensure relevance and best use of time for the judges,
these entries were removed from consideration and only the top fifteen passed on.
Those ideas that shone through the field and were selected to be passed on did not
necessarily focus on a completely different field, but instead offered greater insight,
analysis, or a slightly different tact that presented an implementable alternative that
could deliver policies for economic growth or new business models to take advantage of
recent policy developments.
One thematic trend present in the entries for Challenge 2 was that of minor changes to
the intellectual property system or business model changes that would force a change in
practice. Whether through a new business led paradigm of ‘Creative Destruction’
(clearing old software to force innovation), or a governmental legislative change that
would again promote innovation and limit the time period intellectual property ownership
lasted, the salient arguments were that changes need to be made to allow advancement
and growth. Judges later commented that the revolutionary aspects of these proposals
may prevent implementation, but they appreciated that some steps to realisation had
been outlined and thought through.
Other submissions combined ideas previously introduced, for example the creation of
centralised EU portals however combined with authorship law changes to create an
online marketplace for crowdsourcing ideas. In a similar field was a proposal for the
creation of crowdpreneurship: a policy to combine the strengths of crowdsourcing
knowledge and expertise but specifically focused on entrepreneurial ventures, all
controlled through one EU centralised portal.
Again, private/public partnerships and the creation of entrepreneurial sandboxes were
introduced, along with the development of digital clusters and the promotion of
telecommuting. What separated many of these ideas from those that were rejected was
the quality and depth of analysis within the answers, along with an appreciation of the
Challenge aims rather than just a proposal for their own technology or idea.
Page | 17
3. Retained Ideas
As with Section 2, the insight to the retained ideas will be split into the two Challenges.
These sections will provide a far more detailed look at the retained ideas and
recommendations, outlining their key strengths and why they were advanced through
the judging stages. The winning solutions for each Challenge are given further attention
and the full text for these entries can be found in the Appendices 6.2 and 6.3 of this
report. To retain the anonymity of the authors of the submitted solutions and therefore
guarantee impartial evaluation, the solutions were referenced using their submission
number throughout the whole Challenge process. The same submission numbers are
used here in the Final Report.
3.1 Challenge 1
Entry 10:
While brief in the initial stages of answering questions 2 and 3 that sort insights to the
main barriers to ICT-related growth and the critical "framework conditions" that would
help maximize the impact of new technologies, this entry was retained due its four ideas
on centralised portals that could supply the necessary infrastructure for an ever more
digitalized economy and society. Through the self-labelled EU-Learn /Employ /Deliver
/Transact, services would be made available to different sects of society and help
provide resources to better guide users through the digital age. The judges felt that this
holistic and rounded view of European Union services was well-founded and had
potential impact in many different areas of life. Full implementation could lead to a
paradigm shift and significantly change digital experiences across society. However,
judges commented that it was not as ground-breaking as other entries (academic trends
and thought have already covered this in detail) and lacked full detail or implementation
plans, limiting the policy applicability.
Entry 16:
This entry built on the EU policy of the development of smart cities and how technology
could revolutionise everyday citizen life. It promoted the development of a central portal
for Smart Cities to learn best practice from each other and increase the speed of
development: with the ethos of interconnectivity within the city, extending this to create
a continental network of Smart Cities appeared to be the next logical step for this Solver.
Again, this submission was retained due to its holistic and transferable insights:
championing the crosspollination of ideas and creating a system that facilitated crowd-
learning instead of enforced top down recommendations. However as before, it lacked
full detail to implementation or greater insights as to how the platform would function
and thus judges marked the entry down on these criteria.
Entry 17:
This solution focused on the lack of financial incentives for technology entrepreneurs and
juxtaposed this to the purported USA situation whereby far more venture capitalists are
present due to a differing culture than in Europe; more merger & acquisition offerings
are available which in turn creates a less risk-averse entrepreneurial community. To
counteract these disparities, the entry suggested the creation of large scale
entrepreneurial recognition prizes: awarding them to the European technology startups
that create the most value or built the largest consumer base. These would not only
encourage entrepreneurship, but specifically social-entrepreneurship as companies would
Page | 18
not be so reliant on profit if potential prizes could be won. This submission was retained
for it developed past the entrepreneurial support that many similar entries commented
on, and suggested an alternative system that can complement direct investment and
seed-funding. This entry lacked detail or implementation stages, but had merit in the
idea and thus was advanced to the judges however potentially naïve in thinking prizes
could counteract a whole M&A culture.
Entry 18:
Championing the embedding of ICT in education, this proposal sort to modify the over-
importance placed on handwriting in education systems; updating the schooling model to
be more relevant to the digital society of the 21st century. By arguing that the root cause
of economic development is the workforce that fulfils it, focusing on more appropriate
training in schools appeared to be a logical and implementable policy that could have
long term implications for economic competitiveness and skilled labour. Judges liked the
paradigm shift it presented and the potential long term competitive gains. While the
entry did lack detail, as an outline to a future policy it was highly recommended by the
judging panel.
Entry 19:
Providing great detail to current barriers to growth and framework conditions that are
required to maximize the impact of new technologies, this entry sort to present the
creation of Personal Knowledge Management Systems in a cloud based system as
providing the potential to overcome these obstacles. This entry was retained due to its
full detail, the potential it held for life-long learning, and the direct appreciation of all the
questions asked in the Challenge statement. The judges did comment that more
information was needed to separate this service from others that are more freely
available and why it would need a central government policy to implement it –
businesses already offer similar services and thus questions were asked to the role the
European Union could play within this scheme.
Entry 20:
Briefly mentioning some of the barriers and framework conditions, this entry
predominantly focused on the large-scale investment and backing of Person2Person
satellite phones. It purported that despite 4G LTE systems and other connectivity
developments, infrastructural limitations prevent full services being able to be accessed
by all customers and satellite phones present the only real solution in delivering
connectivity to all. As a complete paradigm shift, this entry presented an intriguing, if
far-fetched, solution that provided great detail to potential implementation plans.
However due to the huge startup costs and such large buy in to current systems, it was
seen as too extravagant and distant from current society to win the prize.
Entry 23:
Whilst not directly answering the questions in the Challenge statement, this entry
outlined the statistical development of a permanent mechanism for the surveillance and
analysis of job postings; granting employees greater information and leading to more
appropriate fillings of postings. Recognising the need for greater ICT skills of workers,
the proposed solution would data mine and filter job postings and disseminate
conclusions so the best skilled individuals became aware of positions available. Judges
saw the application as creative and feasible, however questioned whether HR
departments were not already capable of doing this and thus what the role of the
European Union would be within this policy.
Page | 19
Entry 25:
Along a similar theme to the previous entry, this submission looked at increasing job
information for employees: in this case through the crowdsourcing of employment
information. With user generated information about companies and employers,
prospective future employees would have a greater insight to a company allowing more
efficient job applications and sourcing of labour. This entry was seen as a creative
alternative to current systems and would help rebalance power between employees and
employers, however lacked detail and was not advanced past the initial online judging
stage.
Entry 30:
Adapted from an academic paper previously written by the Solver, this solution focused
on “information poverty” that he stated adversely effects entrepreneurs. Providing great
insight and detail on the issue of information poverty, this paper was advanced for the
evaluation presented and the innovative ideas mentioned: giving evidence and proof as
to why one policy route should be followed. As an academic paper, it lacked a good
implementation plan, focusing far too much on the issues rather than a potential solution
that question 4 was particularly pertaining to. Judges liked the background information
yet saw little innovative policy or solution and thus marked the entry down.
Entry 37:
Outlining 10 ways Europe can compete in the future global economy and allow greater
ICT growth, this paper firstly detailed a situation of Europe losing ground to other world
regions and how potentially the Europe Union do not do enough to rectify this. The 10
detailed propositions the Solver outlined were then grouped together in self-titled:
“Initiate” which looked at improving labour skills, entrepreneurial culture and creating a
level playing field, “Concentrate” which sort to increase public spending and create more
tech hubs that fitted within a holistic pan-European master plan, and “Transcend” which
was slanted more towards businesses themselves: increasing R&D spending, improving
strategic foresight and creating more inter-company collaboration.
The judges all liked this entry and appreciated the level of detail and insight it provided –
not just focusing on one improvement that could be made but instead outlining a range
of complementary policies that can deliver growth outcomes. It was selected the overall
winner of this Challenge with judges commenting how it presented a range of
opportunities for changes in policy that effected numerous barriers and framework
conditions needed for economic development. There was potentially a lack of detail on
each of the 10 proposals, but as a starting point for further development it represents an
interesting paper for further exploration.
Entry 38:
By transferring a potential policy from something that has already implemented in India,
this solution sort to redefine the licensing and intellectual property practices by creating
a central European Union run marketplace. This marketplace would firstly help startups
protect their IP, before creating a platform for licensing to other companies who may be
interested in using the invention. The solution continued by directly addressing problems
in sales, marketing and financing which startups may have, outlining how open source
software could be made available to support businesses: best practice guides and
transferable information were two options mentioned. While transferable and addressing
specific issues, this entry was not seen as highly creative and with a poorly written
structure, judges struggled to thoroughly understand and appreciate the entry.
Page | 20
3.2 Challenge 2
Entry 04:
With Challenge 2 pertaining innovative business models and novel public policies that
could stimulate economic growth through ICT, this submission argued for the
implementation and uptake of an online idea crowdsourcing marketplace. New
authorship laws would be written to protect the ideas posted on the portal and the hope
is that the platform would facilitate a greater sharing of business ideas, in particular
allow the buying of ideas from those who did not have the capability to realise them.
This entry was retained due to its ambitious aims which could result in a high impact,
and the Solver showing appreciation of legal complexities that would have to be
overcome before implementation. However judges did comment how it was potentially
naive on implementation and made assumptions that undermined the feasibility of the
project.
Entry 06:
This entry proposed that to manage the supply chain of all national governmental
services, the EU should create a shared services organisation to help deliver and enable
the use of ICT to increase efficiencies and save money. Through one uniform system for
financial, fiscal, procurement, HR and many others, businesses, citizens and
governments would be able to save money while pan-European interoperability could
become apparent between firms. This entry was advanced due to potential high impact
in both the short and long term, alongside the interoperable impacts that it would cause
(also developing best practice and ensuring standards across the EU). However, judges
commented that despite this potential, the idea was not new and much of what was
outlined already existed.
Entry 07:
Promoting a new business model that combined the power of entrepreneurship and
crowdsourcing, the so called “Crowdpreneurship” this solution purportedly could allow
creativity and innovation to flourish and fill a void that other services such as EIT ICT
labs do not currently fill. By pairing thought-leaders from both technical and
entrepreneurially fields and through rewarding business partners with shares rather than
a fixed income, it was hoped that greater involvement and ownership of the company
would lead to better outcomes. The idea took into consideration some of the legal
complexities for both the idea and equity management, along with how the central idea
incubator platform on which this would take place would help guide the contract process
and provide a free resource catalogue to help businesses grow further.
This entry was selected the overall winner for Challenge 2 with judges commenting on
how it filled a gap within the current system and offered an alternative business model
and support network to what was currently implemented. There are translated schemes
that work on this idea of business/science partnerships however do not focus so much on
the intellectual property and company ownership aspects: with an ecosystem already in
place, some of the recommendations made in this entry had the potential for great up-
scaling and thus this idea was selected as the overall winner for Challenge 2.
Entry 09:
This entry looked to promote a new business model paradigm and outlined six policies
the EU could implement to encourage this transition. These included an increase in
subsidies given to entrepreneurs and startups, supporting a new worker paradigm of
Page | 21
telecommuting, encouraging corporate involvement with entrepreneurs to facilitate
greater cooperation, driving ICT based education to ensure a properly trained workforce,
and centralizing business to English. These ideas were all given more background
information as to potential implementation routes and benefits they would bring, and
while they each had potential on their own, with such a scattered approach of ideas
commenting on many different problems, the entry lacked coherence. The judges
appreciated some of the potential, however thought it missed commerciality specifics
and unless there was widespread direct affirmative action from the EU, it would be
impossible to implement all measures suggested.
Entry 10:
To help drive innovation and growth in businesses and particularly the public sector, this
entry argued for following a policy of “Creative Destruction”: the idea that a percentage
of old or outdated software should be removed periodically to allow for updating and
create a need for innovative new solutions. The Solver combined this idea with that of
using crowdsourcing solutions to create the new software and by making public sector
metadata freely accessible to allow for businesses to learn and build off it. With the
inclusion of law change considerations as well, judges felt this entry had a good
understanding of the legacy drag issues and whilst lacking specifics, the proposed policy
had potential to be successful: human barriers and further legal consideration were the
two greatest hurdles that would need to be overcome.
Entry 11:
This proposal specifically looked at software development and how government projects
could be better organised to deliver value for money and greater efficiencies. Using
“Function Points” as a standard measurement of effort and building cost, the solution
remarked that having a set of measure would allow better understanding of the
undertakings for both the supplier and contractor, and would allow comparability not
only within government departments, but across nations if this was a widely taken up
scheme. Giving information as to how the ecosystem would develop to facilitate its use,
and then also embellishing on the direct benefits that would be realised, this proposal
was seen as transferable and with good impact potential. However judges did comment
on its limited scope and how the system of Function Points system was invented many
decades ago – not fulfilling the innovative criteria that the question sort after.
Entry 14:
Seeing talent and entrepreneurship as the two most useful traits when trying to drive
economic growth, this entry sort to create a supportive network for startups and outlined
three main methods for achieving this: (1) the creation of entrepreneurial sandboxes to
help support scientists transfer developments across from academia, (2) the
matchmaking of entrepreneurs with scientists to help combine expertise to deliver better
results, and (3) introducing subsidies and tax relief for innovative companies. With these
three combined methods, the Solver argued that technological improvements will follow
and economic growth occurs. The judges were split on their support of this entry: some
commenting on the clear understanding of the situation and presenting pragmatic
solutions, others stating that many of these methods are already being tried in smaller
settings and they would be more suited to a university partnership. With these split
opinions the entry was retained and advanced through judging stages, however was not
elected as an overall winner.
Entry 20:
Page | 22
This entry sort to present a lack of incremental change over the years as being the main
barrier for current business model development and economic growth: outdated laws
and regulatory systems preventing innovation. It suggested widespread changes to both
procurement and copyright laws, alongside a change in internal government behaviour
to innovation: breaking down relationships with established players and promoting the
hiring of startups and entrepreneurs. The judges recognised that some key issues were
highlighted, however commented that they are not the root cause of barriers preventing
growth and the solutions presented were neither feasible nor wholly based on accurate
assumptions.
Entry 21:
Presenting the case for a Global Smart Workforce, this entry proposed the support of e-
authentication software and the greater uptake of cloud based services to allow people
to work from anywhere in the world. To aid this scenario of greater non-locational work,
the entry proposed the creation of a Dynamic Virtual Organisations Breeding Platform
which would be set up by the EU. This platform will allow the creation of virtual
businesses by pairing individuals from around the world; facilitating a better matching of
skills and needs and opening access to talent and businesses globally. While the judges
liked the ingenuity and innovative element of this entry (highlighting its transferability
and potential short term impact), issues relating to different countries legal systems and
the pure scale that the Platform would have to facilitate, the judges thought the proposal
lacked feasibility.
Entry 22:
A replication of entry 20 from Challenge 1, this submission looked at the greater uptake
and backing of Person2Person satellite phones. Again the judges saw the entry as
intriguing and ambitious, however with such high costs and potential legal and political
barriers, they thought it was reaching too far and the social desire to take up P2P
satellite phones was not present. With relevancy to both Challenges, the entry was
forwarded to judges; however both sets felt that it was too far-fetched and not feasible.
Entry 24:
Another repeat entry from Challenge 1, this entry outlined how statistical analysis could
be used to improve the awareness of job postings and allow more efficient hiring
processes. The judges commented that despite the potential short term benefits, there
was little situational awareness or perspective and with skills in IT digitalization and job
requirements changing, it may become quickly void.
Entry 25:
This entry focused on a barrier to growth for startups and presented how the creation of
an EU ICT reseller would assist European company’s growth and help gain customers in
their early stages. The site would allow cheap advertising for companies and would act
as a trialling stage for entrepreneurs to realise if there is a market for their product, or if
they should stop before investing any more. The entry took into consideration the legal
consequences and changes that may need to be made, but also presented a further step
whereby startup funding could be provided to the most promising businesses on the site
to help them grow further. The judges commented that the entry was feasible to
implement and could have a pan-European effect in a range of sectors, but required
large scale support from central European Union and was not a truly innovative idea.
Entry 35:
Page | 23
Edited from an academic paper written by the Solver, this entry looked at cluster theory
and how the creation of ICT clusters in the EU could lead to greater productivity and
growth. While going into great detail and academic theory behind the benefits of
clusters, the judges thought this entry was a little clichéd, and with no attempts to
situate it within the Challenge context, many of the points were either unoriginal or not
centralised to the Challenge aims. There were benefits of high transferability between
national and European sectors and good long term potential impacts, however with it
repeating theories and having little true implementation plan, the entry was not elected
a winner.
Entry 39:
Outlining two interlinked policies, this proposal argued for an increase in the uptake of
telecommuting, and from this, a reduction in cost of employment for firms. To allow
greater uptake of telecommuting, the entry proposed standardising work laws across the
EU and creating clear regulations for cross-border employment. With tax breaks offered
to both the company and employees for taking part in the scheme the Solver felt uptake
could be substantial. To reduce employment costs further, the entry also suggested
creating a policy that limits the difference between net salary received and the total
employer costs: arguing these differences currently prevent the best staff from being
hired and the proper remuneration being received. The judges saw that the entry had
some interesting ideas for problem areas that have been raised previously, however
lacked detail or full outlines of how schemes or policies would work. Once implemented,
the short and long term impact could be substantial and highly transferable across the
EU.
Entry 46:
A replicate entry of the winning submission from Challenge 1 (entry 37), this entry firstly
outlined the current situation and barriers to growth before presenting 10 ways Europe
can improve competitiveness – grouping these into “Initiate”, “Concentrate” and
“Transcend”. With relevant business and EU policies suggested this entry was again well
received by the judges due to its situational awareness and contextual understanding of
both the barriers, and the future capabilities that could be realised.
Page | 24
4. Policy Recommendations
4.1 Challenge Submissions – Policy Recommendations
While primarily used to explore the success and potential up-scaling of the use of open
innovation as a tool for policy creation, the two Challenges run as part of this project still
presented a plethora of policy suggestions that could have implications for future
European Commission recommendations on ICT enable growth.
Firstly looking at the policy recommendations of the two winning submissions that are
shown in full in the appendices: “The Future of ICT-Enabled Growth and Jobs in the EU:
Ten Ways Europe Can Compete” for Challenge 1, and “Crowdpreneurship: An Idea
Incubator Platform Powered by the Crowd” for Challenge 2.
“Crowdpreneurship” as an idea is a recommendation which certainly has unique aspects;
proposing the combining of crowdsourcing labour and support for entrepreneurs
(specifically introducing those with business skills with technology innovators to ensure
complimentary skills are present in start-ups). Through various new legal frameworks
and support aspects, “crowdpreneurship” could represent a complimentary proposal to
the EIT ICT labs and other schemes already in place and thus is an opportunity for
further exploration.
The “Ten Ways Europe can compete” proposal presented numerous different
recommendations which covered various aspects of ICT-related economy that would
coalesce to deliver greater outcomes than their individual parts. The majority of the 10
proposals built off current policy and suggested adaptations or improvements, rather
than full-scale re-developments: this could be argued to show a lack of innovativeness
and thus a failure of the Challenge to draw groundbreaking proposals. Conversely the
similarity of proposals can be seen as a ratification of current European Commission ICT
action: with large numbers of proposals following similar lines to what has already been
implemented this could be interpreted as a large agreement with policy and the
recommendation in fact is to stay-the-course.
Further to this theme of a lack of creativity, within the background documentation on the
Challenges an introductory paper was supplied to potential entrants: this outlined what
the current policy situation is and introduced some of the more recent developments that
have been implemented. The purpose of this document was to give enough background
knowledge so that applicants from any expertise could build in their knowledge and
suggest new innovative policy proposals. However, the document may have in fact
provided too much information and from this then stifled the creativity of applicants:
reading the current situation in great detail may then confine your thinking as to only
how you can adapt and improve the aspects raised. Providing background information is
important to make sure that applicants are aware of the current situation and already
implemented policy; however there must be a balancing point between an overload
which imposes on creativity, and the key information that can help spur inventiveness.
Another limiting factor in the Challenge Design that may have prevented truly innovative
ideas is that the questions posed and Challenges presented were potentially too broad:
asking for any ICT based recommendation that could deliver economic growth and jobs.
Without boundary objects and frameworks that would help focus solutions, huge
variation was present and lack of specificity within the submissions. The following
Page | 25
sections on Policy Recommendations related to implementing open innovation will look
into the Challenge Design process in more detail, however the two Challenges that were
run as part of this project potentially gave first-hand experience which can be built upon
and rectified for future projects: specificity of questions can help direct Solvers to
providing higher value solutions, instead of receiving a broad under-developed plethora
of proposals.
4.2 Open Innovation Policy Recommendations
As mentioned above, with these Challenges representing an exploration to the potential
of open innovation in the process of policy creation, there can be direct actions taken off
the back of the strengths and weaknesses of the Challenges. However further to this
first-hand experience, the bringing together of experts at the workshop allowed detailed
exploration of open innovation best practice and recommendations that could be made
as to how best implement crowdsourcing in the future. These recommendations come
under 4 main themes: 1) Challenge Design, 2) Where to best implement Open
Innovation Challenges for the European Commission, 3) Developing an organisational
culture of openness towards crowdsourcing, and 4) Building of a Solver Community that
can provide solutions for the Challenges presented.
4.2.1 Challenge Design
Open Innovation is not a panacea that can solve all issues. It adds an alternative method
to the tool-box and presents an opportunity for accelerated value creation but only if
used correctly. The first consideration of any crowdsourcing programme must be the
correct selection of topic: with open innovation spurring out of life sciences, engineering,
chemistry and similar subject areas, it is best to first explore why it has been successful
in these fields.
Specific, quantifiable, verifiable: successful science based crowdsourcing Challenges all
have these features. They allow absolute assessment criteria and solution requirements
and facilitate a clear linear implementation path that allows for solutions to move
through from the idea, to proof of concept, to full realisation stages. The question can of
course ask for different levels of proof or complexity, but with measurable outcomes a
quantitative assessment to the value of the crowdsourcing process can be easily
attained. This quantifiable measurement is also present in the second key factor that
allows for a successful Challenge Design: a known desired outcome prior to the launch of
the Challenge and thus knowledge of a successfully run programme.
While the policy creation process is of course not so dichotomous between success and
failure, and there are not standard measures that can be quickly obtained to assess
validity of submissions in the Challenge, there are examples where the use of open
innovation policy can be successful implemented and Challenges can deliver
measureable benefits.
Amsterdam and Barcelona are both part of the Open Cities initiative which looks to
promote open & user driven innovation and both have implemented crowdsourcing
Challenges to deliver policy. Barcelona launched the 2013 Urban Lab Challenge
(http://www.opencities.net/urban_lab_challenge) to help improve the tourism industry
in the city and outlined four policy goals that entries should meet: how to best connect
tourists with locals, better personalization of the visitor experience, optimising travel for
tourists without affecting locals day-to-day lives, and how to best travel in the city as a
Page | 26
tourist. €3000 was offered to the winning policy proposal alongside an introduction to
the relevant city officials: helping to pilot the policy in the city and then setting up
potential links to other European cities with a similar issue.
Two of the finalists were local businesses who used the Challenge for endorsement of
their business and then to support further growth. Rudder Tech (http://rudder-tech.com)
implement cloud-based software that helps better manage tourist activities, while
Trip4Real (http://trip4tech.com) offer a unique booking service to better connect locals
with tourists (their service is now present in over 40 cities across Europe). This is an
example of an open innovation Challenge that shows that while not directly creating new
public policy or laws, connections between public and private organisations can be
utilised to meet targets and impact the public policy landscape. In having precise
questions and problem areas, relatable issues for the citizens of Barcelona and a prize
package that provides support through the development of the business, this Challenge
has facilitated private business development to meet a public policy aspiration.
The second city to highlight is Amsterdam. Having launched a crowdsourcing platform
(http://amsterdamopent.nl), city officials now regularly use the inducement prize
process as a way to further engage citizens with issues in the city and to spur innovative
policy suggestions that can improve services offered. The Challenges usually present
small policy questions such as how to better use a public park in the busy summer
months or how to improve safety on public transport. Alongside looking for solutions to
the issues highlighted, the use of open innovation Challenges can help spur interest in
public policy and raise the democratisation of policy creation. City meet-ups and Open
Innovation Festivals help bring a physical location to initiatives and a dedicated Solver
community is now present on the platform to provide solutions to the Challenges issued
and discuss the entries fellow Solvers have posted. With submissions for Challenges
regularly reaching the magnitude of hundreds, this Amsterdam example shows how open
innovation can spur interest in public policy and how the creation of an engaged Solver
community can lead to higher discussion levels and standards of any solutions submitted
(a point that this report returns to in much greater detail in later sections). While not
pertaining to the broadest policy related questions or requiring the deepest
understandings of legislative intricacies, the Amsterdam innovation platform works due
to the simplicity and openness: finding those issues that people can engage with and
offer their localised knowledge and insights.
From an InnoCentive perspective in running far more global and grander-scale open
innovation Challenges, policy related questions represent an opportunity to tap a world-
wide talent base. While personal interaction with the issue may not be present from
Solvers, subject expertise and also the transfer of initiatives from around the world can
offer innovative solutions to the policy issues presented.
Annual Economist Challenges that look at alternative policies to help tackle a specific
aspect of poverty in the developing world draw 1000s of interested Solvers and 100s of
solutions. By positioning the Challenges at the intersection of a pressing global issue,
and then trying to implement cutting edge technologies or methods, this helps draw in
both technology enthusiasts, and those more interested in the alleviation of global
poverty. The prize on offer also gives a prestigious opportunity for winners: $10,000
alongside presenting your policy initiative to a room of experts at the Economist
Conference in New York. Economist examples take forward the Amsterdam and
Barcelona ideals of policy related open innovation, and then exemplify how the up-
Page | 27
scaling to global questions can occur. While some of the benefits of the local scale are
lost, accessing a global crowd through a cleverly worded Challenge can draw in hugely
influential solutions.
4.2.2 Where to best implement Open Innovation Challenges for the
European Commission
The above section comments on the importance of Challenge Design and then presents
some examples of where policy related open innovation Challenges have been successful
elsewhere: here InnoCentive would like to make recommendations as to where the
European Commission may be able to successfully implement their own future
Challenges.
The first and most important recommendation is based on the scale of the Challenge
solution: is the desired outcome a “seed” idea that can spark further developments, or
an implementable policy which only needs refinement before realization? This question
can be further investigated by asking is the outcome a brand new policy where there are
few current initiatives, or is it tinkering with current procedure? From InnoCentive
experience, insight from the two Challenges run, and discussions at the workshop,
InnoCentive feel that open innovation Challenges are better placed to answer seed idea
questions.
Policy Challenge questions in fields which have fewer limitations due to current
legislation can allow for more innovative solutions to be presented and thus greater
Challenge outcomes achieved. In policy spaces that have many years of compounded
legislation and regulation, not only does this require huge amounts of background
knowledge to be able to interpret the quagmire, but also offers limited space for
ingenuity and creativity (regardless of whether this is to present small improvements or
potentially complete paradigm shifts). Another benefit with crowdsourcing Challenges is
that the Solver community is not constrained by internal politics of an organisation: they
can provide a fresh set of eyes to the issues and focus solely on providing solutions.
Further to this ideal of how developed the outcomes of the Challenge will be, it is also
important to consider the scope of the question being asked: is it looking for insights into
a huge space and thus solutions could cover any number of different topics, or is it
asking for answers to one specific issue (as highlighted above in the Challenge Design
section)? From experience gained through these two Challenges and from the past
thousands InnoCentive have run, specificity and providing frameworks within which
Solvers can work is vital. By combining these two Challenge design aspects InnoCentive
would recommend that the Commission in the future asks for seed ideas, however within
a precise framework and topic. For example, how could taxation and regulation of
wearable-tech application developers be altered to spur greater innovation in this field?
Further recommendations that can be made as to the successful future implementation
of open innovation Challenges look again at the solution scale requested in the
Challenge, however in a geographical aspect in this instance. The city-scale shown in
Amsterdam and Barcelona has proven successful for developing greater citizen
involvement. A next step would then be to ask whether multi-stage Challenges could
utilise this initial locality to drive greater engagement. Asking questions that target one
specific city region or tech-hub allows for more precise and targeted answers instead of
pan-European solutions; however there then could be the opportunity for later Challenge
stages to ask for the up-scaling of these local initiatives to affect the supra-national. The
Page | 28
Living Labs initiative has been successful in connecting these local, regional and national
actors and ensuring a pathway through to greater scale implementation – a similar
model could be used for crowdsourcing initiatives.
Final recommendations that may help improve the design of European level Challenges
is to avoid emotionally charged issues as they can lead to a publicity backlash and
general negativity surrounding the Challenge whilst also rendering a lot of entries
worthless. Another potential consideration to take into account with public policy
initiatives is that they may want to match with the term lengths of politicians: being able
to launch, ratify and implement any new policies suggested in the Challenge within the
lifetime of an election cycle will potentially allow for greater support from politicians.
4.2.3 Alternative uses of crowdsourcing
The majority of workshop discussions and of this Final Study Report centre on the use of
open innovation Challenges in the creation of public policy, and of course two were run
as part of this project. However crowdsourcing as a wider topic is far broader and
complex than just the running of Challenges or prizes.
One alternative use of crowdsourcing which was briefly touched upon at the workshop
was actually taking the public consultation a step back along the Challenge Design
phase: calling upon the crowd to help with the selection of topic for the Challenge which
will then proceed forward to the full design. This approach has recently been
implemented by the British government with their re-launch of the Longitude Prize. A
series of TV shows were run to highlight the capabilities of open innovation competitions
and experts presented 6 of the most pressing global issues for the Longitude Prize to
focus on; an online voting system was then set up to decide on which problem the prize
should tackle and receive the backing of the £10million prize fund.
This form of crowdsourcing could be thought as being a popular vote in seeing which
issues the public think require the most attention: a form of polling if you wish. Using
crowdsourcing in this method is a great way to democratise the entire process and
increase public involvement, whilst also acting as a good PR method for raising
awareness of the ethos and willingness for public engagement an organisation has.
However this method is not without its issues. Some subject fields and topics are so
complex that the wider public may not having the pre-requisite understanding to truly
grasp the scope of the issue at hand: just because an issue is or isn’t popular, this does
not equate to its true worth. Secondly the selection of the topic does not mean that
there is a reduction in development work for the organisation running the Challenge; full
research and design procedure must still follow and if in fact this problem ideation stage
results in an alternative Challenge being developed to the exact outline which was
presented to the public in the voting process, then there could be questions as to the
worth of this form of crowdsourcing. The way the Longitude prize used this
crowdsourcing worked successfully due to keeping the Challenge field vague in detail and
giving various potential scopes to actually develop the Challenge.
An alternative method of crowdsourcing the topic of the Challenge is to have a public call
for issues which they would like to see tackled: not pre-selecting 6 or 7 topics, but
having an open call for any suggestions. InnoCentive have recently done this with a
governmental client with mixed success. An open call allows greater transparency,
involves more stakeholders and can help ratify any decisions you end up with. However
Page | 29
the standard of suggestion was low or not a suitable topic for a Challenge, thus very few
of the issues raised were taken forward to the Challenge Design phase. A similar policy-
related example of a recently implemented initiative is that of German MEP Julia Reda
who has called upon the crowd to submit questions through an online platform
(http://whatwouldyouask.eu); she then asked the most popular to the relevant
European Commissioners.
A third crowdsourcing method that can be used is in the finale of the Challenge: again
consulting the public, but to do so on the selection of winners of the Challenge. This can
be achieved through the use of an online platform which presents each submission to the
crowd, and then asks for voting – this does require submissions to be openly accessible
and this may present issues with some Challenge types. An alternative setting for
crowdsourcing judging is in a live final event: attendee’s judge the submissions
presented to them and a winner is presented there and then. In both these cases, the
public vote can make up a percentage of the overall voting, or it can be the entirety: the
specifics which are followed will have to be decided upon within the Challenge Design
stages.
4.2.4 Developing an organisational culture of openness towards
crowdsourcing
While seemingly an obvious pre-requisite to the successful implementation of any open
innovation programme, a lack of organisational culture support and understanding of the
process is frequently a prime reason for Challenges not realising full potential. The most
important factor to stress is that it is not just Challenge owners or managers who must
have full belief in the process, but those politicians and others who will be responsible for
the implementation of any proposals that come out of the process. All must be truly
open to all entries that are received and the potential of a complete paradigm shift in
policy if that is what the crowd is suggesting. A willingness to also admit that there are
issues that you can’t solve internally and require the assistance of the crowd is also key:
this should not be seen as a weakness or fault but instead a positive utilization of all
resources available, whether internal or not.
From experience of implementing open innovation Challenges for a variety of
organisations, but also an internal facing platform which relies on far higher
organisational involvement for success, the below suggestions on developing a culture
change not only come from the workshop outcomes, but also direct experience of
working with InnoCentive clients.
Having internal “champions” who have the role of educating others to the process and
capabilities can help improve uptake: this is in fact a pre-requisite that we require to be
in place before the launch of the internal facing crowdsourcing tool InnoCentive offers.
Once champions are in place, an educational process can then be achieved through
workshops or seminars as to best practice, potential for success, but also the limitations
and realisation that open innovation cannot solve all problems.
Further to these internal leaders, having a pool of successful pilot Challenges will ratify
the methodology and then lead to greater future implementation. From past experience
with a variety of clients in numerous different industries, InnoCentive has found that 5 or
6 Challenges are needed to truly understand the capabilities of the crowd and further
refine the process to improve success. It is advised that these pilot projects are done
Page | 30
with smaller, less significant issues as to reduce the importance put on the outcomes:
the pilots should be seen as experiments and assessed accordingly.
Once the Challenge solutions have been submitted and prizes distributed, there is the
important step of building upon suggestions and making sure that worth comes from the
Challenges. A framework for further implementation should be developed internally to
ensure that the outcomes are not left in a draw to collect dust, but instead their true
potential realised: whether this is further refinement of the seed idea, or investigation to
the scaling of the more implementation-ready initiative. It may of course be realised that
the solution cannot be taken any further forward, however having for example a
framework of a 100-day process to measure this feasibility is important for delivering
value and change through open innovation.
Further to this ideal of having a process for the implementation of solutions, there also
needs to be an organisational understanding that the use of open innovation is a process
rather than a one-off event. In the broader sense this can relate to the idea of having a
body of evidence through a number of Challenges run before making a full judgment on
success, however on the more individual sense towards one Challenge, it relates to the
idea that it takes time and is not instantaneous. There is a required longevity of
engagement with the process to ensure the design, implementation and assessment of
the Challenge are all properly achieved. Open innovation cannot be seen as a one-off call
to the crowd which provides immediate gratification, but instead a process like any other
project.
The final key point that should be stressed when looking to develop a culture towards
open innovation is that it should not be seen as a replacement for traditional innovation
and policy creation methodologies. Conversely, crowdsourcing should not just be seen as
an add-on to all other methods and just being used as a PR exercise to display a culture
of openness and democratisation of policy creation. The policy tool box has many
different utensils and open innovation has a place to fit in this system: as previously
mentioned it is not a solution to all issues and careful selection should be made to
ensure that the most suitable problems and policy areas are recognised. An internal
understanding of this role crowdsourcing plays is vital to preventing disillusionment with
the outcomes that may be presented and the realistic opportunities it does present.
4.2.5 Development of a Solver community
As previously mentioned in the Amsterdam example of using open innovation to great
success, the creation of an engaged and dedicated Solver community is key to ensuring
the success of crowdsourcing and must be seen as a precondition for all Challenges the
European Commission may wish to run in the future. However, it is not just about
drawing in as many people as possible to the open innovation community, but also
drawing the correct individuals who will be able to add the most value in the submissions
they enter and comments they provide on other Solvers solutions (if this is a feature of
the community).
Reaching these correct individuals requires direct and targeted marketing: it is advised
that this marketing is heavily invested in before the launch of any Challenge and then
throughout the submission process. A key recommendation further to this broad
marketing goal is to target non-usual suspects who may not have previously had contact
with the European Commission. University students and retired industry experts are two
groups that have seen involvement and success in open innovation Challenges and are
Page | 31
potentially those that otherwise would not be involved in public tender processes that
the Commission may already undertake. As seen in Amsterdam and Barcelona, it is also
those who will be directly affected by the policies who show the greatest involvement. In
the two open innovation Challenges run as part of this EU Smart project, European
targeted marketing took place due to the nature of the Challenges and this resulted in
40-50% of submissions coming from the continent (compared to usually 10-20% for
other non-location specific InnoCentive Challenges).
Another potential way to spur interest in the open innovation process and build a Solver
community is to launch one large prize, or a series of prizes that build into a large fund.
We need to look only at the success that the first X-Prizes saw at not only drawing
investment in the field and Solvers to the space, but also the general public awareness
of crowdsourcing and inducement prizes: a decade later comments from American
clients still focus on the desire to run something similar to an X-prize. If a comparable
fund could be present on the European scale it could not only be used to answer some of
the pressing policy issues the Commission are currently facing, but also set a precedent
and trend for the greater knowledge, use and involvement with open innovation
Challenges. Once this initial interest is present, a continual posting of smaller Challenges
can then be used to maintain engagement and interest.
Continuing this notion of maintaining engagement with the open innovation process, one
way of helping to do this is providing feedback on solutions submitted and keeping
Solvers updated with developments that have come following the Challenge: as
previously noted most Solvers will enter Challenges that centre of issues important to
them and thus will want to know what is being done to alter policy or implement the
suggestions submitted. This ideal of providing feedback can multiply the effort required
by the Challenge organizers: a return on investment analysis must be done to see
whether the time taken to fully respond to all submissions is worthwhile against the
potential loss of Solver engagement.
A final suggestion as to developing and maintaining a Solver community is the creation
of support systems. Many of the policy areas presented will be complex and with large
amounts of associated information that could be relevant for Solvers. Filtering this and
providing the key information to allow an initial understanding of the field will lead to
greater relevancy in solutions and mean that more people have the capability to enter.
There is of course a balance to be had between providing too much information and
potentially limiting creativity off the back of this, however background documents can
help facilitate greater involvement and higher Solver numbers.
Page | 32
5. Conclusions
From a starting point of asking policy related questions to Solvers and exploring the
potential for the use of open innovation at the European level, this project has given
great insights to not only the specifics of the opportunity for crowdsourcing in the chosen
topic area, but also a wider understanding of the potential for future up-scaling of use
and where may be best placed for further implementation.
While the two Challenges may not have delivered the numerous groundbreaking
proposals that would have been hoped for, these potential short-comings present far
more learning processes than a perfect result would have. A thorough analysis of the
limitations that potentially occurred allowed great insights into the; question design,
broader Challenge design, marketing and Solver community make up. This investigation
of the Challenges immediately gave a good starting point to then explore in more detail
where open innovation works and why, and through structured discussions with experts
at the workshop these key questions were raised and answers garnered from their
experience in the field.
As highlighted in the Policy Recommendations section above, there are three key areas
of recommendation within the general theme of using open innovation, and then more
direct recommendations as to how this can be best implemented by the European
Commission in the future. These recommendations can be categorised as two pre-
requisites that need to be in place before the benefits of open innovation can be fully
realised:
1. Developing an organisational culture of openness towards crowdsourcing
2. Developing a Solver community in the policy area within the focus of the Challenge
The third recommendation covers the far broader topic of Challenge Design: ensuring
that a plethora of considerations are taken into account and defined scopes are present
(solution requirements, topic area, and geographical considerations to name just three).
While there is no one-size-fits-all model for developing open innovation Challenges and
every problem statement must be seen as distinctive, the above section presented
guidelines and topics that are essential for any Challenge designs.
This project was undertaken with two-fold objectives: to get insights into potential public
policy initiatives related to ICT enabled jobs and economic growth, and to explore the
potential for scaling up the use of open innovation within the creation of public policy.
Through the running of the two Challenges and the workshop exchanges, the following
key findings have been discussed and presented in this Final Study Report: 1) an
understanding to the potential limitations & strengths of crowdsourcing policy related
questions; 2) an understanding to the pre-requisite circumstances that must be in place
for open innovation successes to be realised; 3) an understanding to the questions that
must be taken into consideration before even the first word of the Challenge Design is
inked; 4) a wider consideration of alternative forms of crowdsourcing that can be
implemented by the European Commission.
Open innovation is a complex and dynamic process which is ever-developing. It offers an
opportunity to garner the skills, expertise and knowledge of thousands of people who
otherwise may not have been involved in the public policy creation process. Through
Page | 33
democratising the creation of public policy, raising citizen engagement within
governance, and facilitating access to otherwise untapped potential, great benefits can
be realised through running crowdsourcing Challenges. If the use of open innovation is
to flourish then policy-makers must take serious measures to develop the frameworks
outlined above that support the process and in doing so properly understanding how to
harness the capabilities crowdsourcing offers. This Final Study Report outlines various
recommendations and uses first-hand experience to discuss how the increased usage of
open innovation can occur and the course for it to become a regular part of the European
Commission policy creation process.
Page | 34
6. Appendices
6.1 Question 1 Internally Created Answer
Which emerging technologies and ICT-enabled practices are
particularly relevant in terms of sources of growth across the
economy (per sector of the economy)?
Introduction
As part of the Europe 2020 strategy, the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) outlined
aims for getting European economies back on track through “smart, sustainable and
inclusive growth” (European Commission 2010, p3). ICT is seen as a main driving factor
for these aspirations and with the sector directly responsible for 5% of European GDP
(€600billion, European Commission, 2010) and indirectly increasing growth and jobs
opportunities in most other sectors, exploring in greater detail how technologies and
ICT-enabled practices can create economic growth is both necessary and reinforces
Europe’s progressive vision. The DAE outlined some of the problems that currently exist
in the technological landscape of Europe and opened a call to tackle them. These
include:
Fragmented digital markets and a lack of interoperability,
A lack of investment in networks and insufficient R&D, and
A lack of digital skills and from this, low levels of trust in technologies (European
Commission, 2010).
What follows will look at an individual emergent practice or technology examining what
has been previously implemented, before then delving into what innovations may drive
future growth opportunities. This is by no means an exhaustive analysis, but will
hopefully give insight into improvements that have occurred in the past, what
technologies may play a factor in the near future, and how all of this relates to economic
growth opportunities across the European Union.
Emerging Technologies and ICT-Enabled Practices
Online Platforms
One ICT practice that has built off the interconnectivity of the internet is the use of
online portals to connect otherwise distant experts, businesses and customers. Online
portals can create a Medici Effect of crosspollination of ideas; driving innovation and
growth that otherwise may not have been possible. One such example of this platform
being used within a specific industry is the European Construction Technology
Platform – a hub created to increase connectivity and achieve world leading levels of
performance (Idea Consult, 2008). This specific portal has aims of driving R&D and
increasing ROI’s to realise growth potentials and profitability within the sector –
coordination with EU and National regulators allows policy to align with these new
practices.
A second such technology platform is the European Institute of Innovation and
Technology ICT labs which seek to bring together researchers, academics, and startups
from across Europe to develop new technologies and assist business growth. Two
success stories from the EIT ICT labs include Sowiso; with the help of EIT it finalised
Page | 35
its platform for digital content for education (EIT, 2013a), and Cliris & Innorange; two
otherwise distant companies amalgamated together to construct an indoor geo-location
people management software system (EIT, 2013b).
The use of online portals is not however limited to just the development and supply side
of business: it presents opportunities for sales generation and openness in public
procurement (Carayannis and Popescu, 2005). The EU SIMAP Public Procurement
System is one such example of a purchasing portal. Since its inception, the portal has
seen 3000 contracting entities and 100,000 suppliers join – over €10trillion of services
are now sold yearly on the site (Carayannis and Popescu, 2005). One area for future
development outlined in the Digital Agenda for Europe Futurium is the possible creation
of an EU App Store. The creation of an EU platform that could take advantage of the
single market and centralised decision making, may deliver efficiencies and
interoperability across the app market in the Union (European Commission 2013a).
Nanoelectronics
As the base for most technologies, nanoelectronics are seen as a key area for
continual investment if Europe is to maintain industrial advantages. Aeneas and Catrene
(2012) state how a €200billion investment programme until 2020 will help create
250,000 direct jobs. Outcomes of the nanoelectronics industry include smaller, high
powered 450mm wafers and dedicated test beds which result in improvements that will
drive the aerospace, medical, industrial and telecommunications industries. Specific
examples of use cited are: using Nanoelectronics to develop ultra sensitive DNA/protein
analysis for personalised health risk assessments, and sensors that respond to genes in
crops; altering the water input to lower waste and improve food security.
Following “Moore’s Law” of capacities doubling every two years (EIF, 2014), the field of
nanoelectronics has seen great strides forward since the Aeneas and Catrene report. One
such development is that of Memristors: devices that can remember the last resistance
level through them and maintain this so when the circuit is switched back on it has an
immediate efficiency. Digital Journal (2014) highlight how the marketplace for these
devices will go from virtually nothing in 2012/13 to $100million in 2018 and $675million
in 2023. The last 24 months have also seen microchip developments such as Intel’s
recently announced 14-nanometer processor. This size allows for smaller hardware such
as wearable devices, smartphones and tablets at possibly cheaper price tags (the Intel
CEO predicted the first sub $100 tablet would soon be released) (venturebeat.com,
2013).
The paragraph above spoke of how nanotechnologies could be used in medical
industries. One such use is TruTag Technologies who offer the tagging of FDA approved
drugs to prove they are not counterfeit (World Economic Forum, 2013). The above
mentioned Memristors can also be used in medical industries: MRI/CT scans can
understand how brain neurons may remember past signals that ran through them
(Memristor.org 2014). In the DAE Futurium (European Commission, 2013a), a whole
section was dedicated to the development of a trans-humanistic era: ICT and bio-
medicine combining to revolutionise our understanding of the human body and the
capabilities it holds. Nanoelectronics are vital to the realisation of this trans-humanistic
revolution.
Page | 36
Broadband and satellite system
A third technological development that has led to improved economic possibilities is the
implementation of ultra-fast broadband and 4G mobile satellite systems. The
World Bank and infoDev state that the implementation of broadband internet can lead to
a 1.4 – 3.6 times increase in the number of indirect jobs in the area, alongside the direct
employment that is gained (World Bank, 2012). Chattanooga TN, followed an initiative of
implementing super-fast broadband of speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second (50 Mbps is
considered a high level in the developed world) (Chattanoogagig, 2014). These speeds
have drawn companies to the city with UBS, T-Mobile, AT&T and Volkswagen all opening
or expanding their premises to take advantage of the technological services available.
While fibre optics are the current optimal method of connectivity, the DAE Futurium
posed questions of how photonics and quantum developments could be harnessed to
overcome the limitations in fibre optics (European Commission, 2013a). As a central
goal of the DAE, connectivity is continuously being developed and advanced.
On mobile satellite systems, demands for data (in particular Over The Top services
(video, music etc.)) mean that Long Term Evolution (4G) systems are being
implemented to meet growing demand (BEREC, 2013). While this roll out of 4G Long
Term Evolution systems may still be ongoing, the future is already looking towards
5G (EIF, 2014). Announced in 2007, the EU has given out €400million in grants to help
develop 5G by 2020 (European Commission 2013c). With 30 times more mobile traffic
expected in 2020 than in 2010, 5G is expected to meet these demands through
transmitting 1000 times more data in one area, having a 10-100 times better streaming
rate and a five-fold reduction in download delays (European Commission, 2013c): EIF
(2014) talk of 5G as an “ambient” network that is omnipresent and essential for
everyday life, the “softwarisation” of all life actions.
The practices that can come out of these improvements are unknown however experts
have predicted 5G could allow telesurgery, whereby doctors can control surgical
equipment through movements on their smart phones. Other uses include smart travel
where cars are constantly interconnected and communicating with each other to reduce
danger, and smart grids that feedback energy demands and ensure a secure and
consistent service in even the most rural areas (European Commission, 2013c).
However, there are still major steps to the realisation of 5G. The negotiation of
standards, harmonisation of national regulations and ensuring privacy and trust are
maintained are discussions that must occur. A final question for future connectivity
improvements is how to better use the spectrum availability and allow higher speeds for
users (European Commission 2013a).
Internet of Things
Faster internet connections and the above stated technological improvements have made
available a phenomenon that is set to revolutionize everyday life: the Internet of
Things. A “pervasive and self-organising network of connected, identifiable and
addressable physical objects” (RAND (2012), p.XVII), the Internet of Things opens
possibilities for smart decisions to be made instantaneously through connections
between everyday electronic devices. Innovators in the field include NEST (2014) who
has created a thermostat that learns your heating and cooling preferences after a few
days of use, and then interacts with other devices in the home to automate and monitor
temperature amongst other conditions. Looking towards the future and emerging
technologies in the Internet of Things, as the trend of interconnected devices
Page | 37
increases, more developments can arise that build off this home-to-mobile connection –
non-locational control of windows, ovens, lights and locks could all become the norm.
However one area for consideration is how a wireless spectrum bottleneck could be
created due to the magnitude of devices using it to communicate with each. To
overcome this, the DAE Futurium posed a possibility of the use of radio spectrums to
increase capacities and allow a fully developed interconnected ecosystem of devices
(European Commission, 2013a). As with 5G connectivity, the adaption and redefining of
prior technology could present growth opportunities.
Another trend in the Internet of Things is the development of wearable technology. From
smart watches to Google glasses, devices that interact with our bodies can allow us to
automate many parts of life. Some examples highlighted by Business Week (2014)
include ear-bubs that monitor heart rates, posture trackers that can be worn under
clothes, and haptic shoes that communicate a GPS location to the users through
vibration alerts allowing a visually impaired user to navigate better. Wearable technology
will also open up new avenues for companies to connect with consumers – a non-
locational point of sale or advertising will arise and create instantaneous transactions
based on the users’ location and needs (European Commission, 2013a).
Big Data
Linked to the interconnectivity and interaction of devices is the movement towards Big
Data: a swathe of information about everyday decisions is now easier to collect, analyse
and thus act upon (UN, 2013). Previously only theoretical uses in areas such as
personalised advertising, differentiated health care, and improved management of
transport networks are now becoming a reality (EIP, 2013). Companies such as Data4
are now mining social media posts to understand traffic complaints as they are made in
real time (World Economic Forum, 2013). This data can then lead to automatic decisions
over traffic management and through combining the original data with visual information
from sensors and cameras, Data4 can create an engaging real life picture of what is
occurring on a city’s transport network. Another company is Lenddo: a service that
through user generated information on social media, assesses for credit worthiness and
then starting off with small amounts, can loan to individuals in need (World Economic
Forum, 2013). These developments however raise issues with possible discrimination –
the availability of genetic and health information could lead to higher premiums or the
refusal of treatment and is there a moral dilemma with harvesting personal data to
determine financial risk? New regulation will have to be implemented to ensure fair and
proper use of Big Data and pan-European standardised legislation will help ensure parity
(European Commission, 2013a).
The advertising sector is also going under a great transformation due to the power of Big
Data. Adtelligence GmbH has created an algorithm that means one particular website is
not the same for any two users and instantaneously adapts depending on the viewer
(World Economic Forum, 2013). Using data on previous purchases, views, interests and
others, it predicts which adverts, images and videos are most appropriate for the user
without them ever knowing – creating a personalised experience and resulting in higher
sales levels than normal advertising methods.
With this movement towards Big Data, many companies wish to get involved but have
neither the skills nor staff. However crowdsourcing opportunities are occurring which
focus purely on Big Data Challenges. Kaggle has an online community of 100,000 data
scientists who tackle tasks ranging from a $500 reward up to $10,000’s (World Economic
Page | 38
Forum, 2013). Kaggle’s business model combines the connectivity and community
aspect driven through the internet, with the desire for better Big Data analysis, creating
a synergy of new ICT-enabled practices.
Cloud computing
Another outcome from new technologies and greater connectivity has been the
development of cloud computing. An IDC report (European Commission, 2012) found
that 80% of organisations that used cloud computing reduced their costs by 10-20%
while raising productivity by 41% (see also European Commission, 2013a). Legal
problems do arise with which country’s legislation to follow regarding the international
movements and storage of data; however the possibilities for growth are huge. The
European Commission (2012, p2) state “cloud computing makes computing power
available everywhere and to anyone” and could lead to a cumulative €957 billion value
and 3.8 million jobs in the EU by 2020. As we move further towards a ‘knowledge’
society whereby access to information and data is key to not only business but society in
general, cloud computing will only become more common place (EIF, 2014). The only
roadblock to this development is the public understanding and trust of what the cloud is:
the variance it offers means all in society can benefit, however many are not yet aware
of this.
Cleantech
As the technological developments outlined above come into mainstream use, there are
growing demands for not only power, but power storage and higher efficiency levels
(European Commission, 2013a). Thus, numerous technological advancements are also
occurring around the CleanTech and energy creation and storage sectors. Metal
batteries have always had issues with losing stored power – lowering the efficiency of
inconsistent creation methods such as renewable wind energy. Harvard News (2014)
report that researchers have created a liquid chemical that can act as a battery and
store a much higher percentage of energy created – this can then be released when
needed to balance the demand and supply side of the energy system. Another Cleantech
development is from SunPartner who have created a 90% transparent photovoltaic cell.
Designed to be used under a cell phone screen, it can generate power off both natural
and artificial light and could account for 20% of a devices needs – enough for an e-
reader to stay permanently on or for a smartphone to be permanently idle (World
Economic Forum, 2013). As we accumulate more electrical devices, power demands will
only increase and so these technologies can offer a response to this demand while
championing renewable and sustainable sources.
3D Printing
As a technology that could revolutionise global manufacturing, redefining production
models and purchasing methods, 3D Printing is another development that could
present numerous possibilities across many different economic sectors (Big Innovation
Centre, 2012) (European Commission, 2013a). The first 3D printed gun was produced in
May 2013 with blueprints being available for all to download. KamerMaker, a Dutch
construction company, have made the first fully printed house: a future of customisable
and mass produced houses could arise. In biotechnology and healthcare, a 3D printed
jaw was used as a replacement for a Belgian woman (Ted, 2013) while researchers in
Scotland are producing 3D printed stem cells (BBC, 2013).
3D printing has the capability to revolutionise production and drive innovation: the
“democratisation of manufacturing” whereby experimentation with materials and
Page | 39
methods will lead to advances that previously weren’t possible (EIF, 2014). The key
obstacles that currently exist are cost, and the speed of production: reducing these will
allow micro-production and personalisation to become the future of industry (European
Commission, 2013a). However as always with new technologies, public policy must keep
up to ensure correct and proper use: protecting intellectual property and legal
responsibility over designs and safety standards in both production and end goods will
need clarification to protect businesses and consumers (Big Innovation Centre, 2012).
Education/ Training
While these new technologies and practices present great opportunity, without a
properly trained workforce who understands not only the basic uses, but also the future
possibilities, the uptake and benefit gained may be stunted. As one of the key pillars of
the DAE (EU, 2010), the up-skilling of European citizens has been implemented in
many different forms in countries and cities across the continent. From general
governmental schemes such as interface3 in Belgium and the Ireland FIT Initiative,
through to the corporate sponsored UK Cisco Networking Academy and NGO led DoIT!
Belgium which targets migrant women, schemes have varying success of training and
placing people in jobs, whether in the tech industry or other economic sectors (Green et
al 2013). However, as the DAE Scorecard 2013 (European Commission, 2013b) showed,
skills shortages are still present and in fact possibly increasing: the DAE (2010)
estimated 700,000 ICT job placements with skill shortages but this was revised up to
900,000 by 2015 (European Commission, 2013b).
Continuing to tackle this skills shortage, there are emerging ICT related practices that
instead focus on non-locational learning and a community led interaction whereby every
member is both a teacher and student. The development of MOOCs (Massive Open
Online Courses) from some of the world’s top institutions has allowed 4 million people to
undertake one of 400 online courses (World Economic Forum, 2013) - the European
Commission has recently announced the creation of a network of European MOOCs
centering on the development of web and app skills (European Commission, 2014).
Another example is Codecademy; it provides basic training in coding whilst users can go
further and generate their own courses, providing support to fellow students along the
way (World Economic Forum, 2013). While by no means a new technology, Codecademy
has led to a new understanding and design which can alter the pedagogies surrounding
ICT training and help cut the 900,000 job skill shortages the DAE Scoreboard (EU, 2013)
reported.
A new shit of focus in ICT and education is towards a lifelong learning paradigm –
continual up-skilling throughout working lives to enable a competitive and well trained
21st Century labour force (European Commission, 2013a). Education can be altered and
improved to match this need through the use of Big Data to improve, enhance and
personalise the educational narrative. Matching techniques with a student’s preferred
styles and automatically adapting to individual learning needs will allow higher
efficiencies and success rates while allowing more advanced learning (European
Commission, 2013a).
It is not just the learning methodologies on offer that can make a difference. Combined
with the increased capacity of internet technologies, the increased coverage in which
they reach – both geographically and demographically – is important (European
Commission, 2013a). A UK initiative, WiredUp communities, was set up to give 14,000 of
the poorest homes their first interaction with ICT; supplying computers and additional
Page | 40
support to enable proper use (The Guardian, 2002). This trend of providing technology
to those who would otherwise not use it has continued; the EU launched GoldUI in 2011
which aims to present 70-85 year olds with their first internet experience. Built into this
increased coverage is the desire for greater levels of trust, and thus uptake in
technology: developing frameworks, legislation and regulations, while also informing
consumers of their standing will help improve understanding and thus use of the
technologies that are becoming available (European Commission 2013a). The hope is
that whilst these recipients will not create economic output from their usage, a greater
uptake of internet public services will help increase efficiencies and enable future
developments in this area (Science Business, 2013).
Summary
All of the new technologies or ICT-enabled practices that have been laid out in the
previous sections offer great opportunities for businesses to expand into different
sectors, efficiencies to be gained and to result in a more IT literate population that can
take advantage of systems and technology presented to them. Question 1 specifically
asks about how these technologies or ICT-enabled practices will lead to growth prospects
across different economic sectors. The technological developments will obviously have
manufacturing possibilities but the end products present the greatest possibilities. These
uses and growth sources may not be clear at present; however examples such as the
Internet of Things in the health sector or Big Data driving advertising, provide an insight
into the growth outcomes that could arise. Education, energy, public services, security,
R&D, health, food industries, manufacturing and many more should all be able to take
advantage of not only these developments, but those that will arise in the coming
months and years. EIF (2014) talk of how we on the verge of software avalanche – a
digital revolution driven by the technologies available and the demand of the ‘knowledge’
economies and societies. How Europe takes advantage of this avalanche will be vital for
growth prospects and outcomes.
While covering numerous different fields and technologies, the insight described in the
above sections has barely scratched the surface of possibilities and future trends in
technologies and ICT enabled practices. Through the two Crowdsourcing Challenges
answering questions 2 through 7, a global audience will be able to present more trends,
economic opportunities and business policies that can help lead to Europe attaining its
target of “smart, sustainable and inclusive growth” (EU 2010, p3).
Reference List
Aneas and Catrene (2012) Innovation for the future of Europe: Nanoelectronics beyond
2020, accessed through http://www.aeneas-office.eu/web/downloads/strategic-
docs/position_paper_final.pdf on 19/03/2014
BBC (2013) Edinburgh scientists use 3D printing to produce stem cells, accessed through
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-21328109 on 19/03/2014
BEREC (2013) BEREC Annual Reports 2012, accessed through
http://berec.europa.eu/eng/document_register/subject_matter/berec/annual_reports/12
84-berec-annual-reports-2012 on 19/03/2014
Page | 41
Big Innovation Centre (2012) Three Dimensional policy: Why Britain needs a policy
framework for 3D printing, accessed through
http://biginnovationcentre.com/Assets/Docs/Reports/3D%20printing%20paper_FINAL_1
5%20Oct.pdf on 19/03/2014
Business Week (2014) The Breakthroughs in tech to watch for in 2014, accessed through
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2014-01-08/the-breakthroughs-in-tech-to-watch-
for-in-2014 on 19/03/2014
Carayannis, E., and Popescu, D. (2005) Profiling a methodology for economic growth and
convergence: learning from the EU e-procurement experience for central and eastern
European countries, Technovation, vol 25, p1-14
Chattanoogagig (2014) accessed through http://chattanoogagig.com/ on 19/03/2014
DigitalJournal (2014) Global markets for Circuit Elements with memory: memristors,
memcapacitors and meminductors, accessed through
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1737044 on 19/03/2014
European Internet Foundation (2014) The Digital World in 2030: what place for Europe?,
accessed through https://www.eifonline.org/digitalworld2030 on 1/04/2014
EIP (2013) European Innovation partnership on Smart Cities and Communities:
Operational Implementation Plan First Public Draft, accessed through
http://ec.europa.eu/eip/smartcities/files/operational-implementation-plan-oip-v2_en.pdf
on 19/03/2014
EIT (2013a) Success Story: Cliris & Innorange, accessed through
https://www.eitictlabs.eu/uploads/media/SuccessStories_Cliris-
Innorange_130130_AS_v3.pdf on 19/03/2014
EIT (2013b) Success Story: SOWISO, accessed through
http://www.eitictlabs.eu/uploads/media/SuccessStories_SOWISO_130130_AS_v3.pdf on
19/03/2014
European Commission (2010) A Digital Agenda for Europe
European Commission (2012) Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe,
accessed through http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2012:0529:FIN:EN:PDF on
19/03/2014
European Commission (2013a) Digital Agenda for Europe Futurium, accessed through
http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/futurium/en on 31/03/2014
European Commission (2013b) Digital Agenda Scoreboard 2013, accessed through
http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-
agenda/files/DAE%20SCOREBOARD%202013%20-
%20SWD%202013%20217%20FINAL.pdf on 19/03/2014
Page | 42
European Commission (2013c) Mobile Communications: Fresh €50million EU Research
Grants in 2013 to develop ‘5G’ technology, accessed through
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-159_en.htm on 19/03/2014
European Commission (2014) European Commission launches network to foster web
talent through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), accessed through
http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/european-commission-launches-network-
foster-web-talent-through-massive-open-online-courses on 31/03/2014
Green, A (et al) (2013) ICT and Employability, JRC Technical Report
The Guardian (2002) Screen Break, accessed through
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/jul/10/internet.society on 19/03/2014
Harvard News (2014) Battery offers renewable energy breakthrough, accessed through
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/01/renewable-energy-breakthrough/ on
19/03/2014
Idea Consult (2008) Evaluation of the European Technology Platforms
Memristors.org (2014) Memristor Applications, accessed through
http://www.memristor.org/reference/294/memristive-memristor-applications on
19/03/2014
NEST (2014) accessed through https://nest.com/uk/ on 19/03/2014
RAND (2012) Europe’s Policy options for a dynamic and trustworthy development of the
Internet of Things, accessed
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR300/RR356/RAND_RR
356.pdf on 19/03/2014
Science Business (2013) Help older people access the internet, access through
http://www.sciencebusiness.net/news/76067/Help-older-people-access-the-Internet on
19/03/2014
TED (2013) A 3D printed future: 10 surprising things we could see printed soon,
accessed through http://blog.ted.com/2013/07/29/a-3d-printed-future-10-surprising-
things-we-could-see-printed-soon/ on 19/03/2014
UN (2013) Exploring data-driven innovation as a new source of growth, Directorate for
Science, Technology and Industry
Venturebeat (2013) Intel CEO announces 14-nanometer processors, predicts sub-$100
tablets, accessed through http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/10/INTEL-CEO-ANNOUNCES-
14-NANOMETER-PROCESSORS-PREDICTS-SUB-100-TABLETS/ on 19/03/2014
World Bank (2012) ICT Policy Note: Broadband and job creation, accessed through
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INFORMATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONANDTECHNOLO
GIES/Resources/2012-02-ICTPolicyNotes.pdf on 19/03/2014
World Economic Forum (2013) Technology Pioneers 2014
Page | 43
6.2 Challenge 1 Winning Submission
The Future of ICT-Enabled Growth and Jobs in the EU: Ten Ways Europe
Can Compete
Europe’s global competitiveness depends on a vibrant high-tech sector. Technology plays
a crucial role for nearly every industry, particularly as machines and products get
smarter and intelligent networks that coordinate the efficient use of resources spread
rapidly. A healthy high-tech sector is an engine for innovation that is a prerequisite for
giving European companies a leg up in a highly competitive environment.
Recent reports and studies highlights that already today little more than 10 per cent of
the global ICT revenues of the top 100 information and communications technology
(ICT) companies are generated by European companies. Only nine of the top 100 ICT
companies worldwide have headquarters in Europe, a number that has dwindled in
recent years in the wake of both M&A and faster growth by Asian and U.S. companies.
Many European industries are dependent on non-European high-tech players—in terms
of both production and research and innovation. The European Commission has officially
recognized technology’s importance to Europe’s future growth, competitiveness, and
mastery of upcoming social challenges, but policy makers’ efforts have not done enough
so far to stop the decline of the European high-tech sector.
Europe is losing ground
Examining nine sectors within the ICT industry: IT services, IT hardware, software,
communications equipment and services, consumer electronics, handsets,
PCs/laptops/tablets semiconductors, and electronic components. The world’s top 100 ICT
companies in these segments generated $1.67 trillion in revenue in 2012, an increase
from $1.59 trillion in 2011. For Europe, however, industry representation is low. Of the
nine top-100 ICT companies from Europe, one will drop off the list when Microsoft
officially acquires Nokia’s devices and services division this spring—a move that will
leave Europe with no representatives among the world’s top 10 handset makers.
Europe’s brightest spots are in B2B, and there are also some leaders in smaller sectors
that don’t make the top 100. However, in total, Europe has few large-scale ICT
companies big enough to act as consolidators in each segment’s endgame. This leaves
the others vulnerable to buyouts by larger rivals from other regions.
Europe’s share of global sales is also slowly dwindling. In terms of projected CAGR
between 2011 and 2015, Europe (2.2 percent) will grow at less than half the rate of
North America (5.2 percent) and Asia (5.4 percent). Particularly in important segments
such as IT services, software, communications equipment and services, IT hardware,
and semiconductors, Europe is losing importance as a market. European companies—
particularly IT service providers—are more beholden to regional demand trends than
their American and Asian counterparts, and therefore could lose market share due to this
shift.
EU efforts fall too short
The reasons why Europe is losing ground are multi-fold, ranging from the fragmentation
of the European market and the shortage of funding for companies to grow and gain
Page | 44
scale, to the shortage of strategic foresight, innovation, skilled engineers and
competitive, flexible labor laws, to the lack of strategic partnerships both between the
EU and companies as well as among companies.
The EU commission has identified many of these shortcomings and is addressing several
of them through the “Horizon 2020” program, which was commissioned in 2013, as well
as through several other initiatives. These efforts tend to fall short, focusing on financing
research, commercialization, and recently on incubation. A strategic master plan is
missing in which the EU is placing major bets to grow promising ICT sectors, and in
which an industrial policy is designed to help leading players maintain and expand their
positions and create scale. Although the EU has begun identifying the right business
sectors, a decisive policy combining strategic direction, demand management, focused
financing, and pre-competitive partnerships is required.
That Europe needs ICT to compete in its industrial strongholds, such as automotive,
aerospace, industrial engineering, retail, telecommunications, and energy services, and
the jobs and prosperity that come from them is undisputed. By 2025, a car’s embedded
software and electronics will account for up to 65 percent of its total value. Also, the
recent revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency’s clandestine electronic
surveillance programs have highlighted the dangers of dependency on U.S. and Asian
high tech players.
Ten ways Europe can compete better in high tech
Research garnered from multiple sources show concrete steps that EU institutions,
national governments, industry associations, and individual companies, building off of
existing programs, can take to restore the industry's vitality.
The actions fall into three main pillars:
Initiate. Put in place initiators for a prosperous high-tech sector.
Europe must improve the skilled labor supply through more technology-oriented
education and targeted immigration, to provide better venture and growth funding
for high-tech companies (especially for internationalization), to improve the
entrepreneurial culture by opening entrepreneurial options and celebrating successes,
and to create a level playing field in terms of standards and regulations.
Concentrate. Define and execute a concentrated strategy for overcoming the
fragmentation inherent to Europe.
The EU and national governments should develop an EU-wide master plan with
clearly defined ICT application focus areas where European players can succeed and
assume industrial leadership (typically centered around high-tech B2B ICT needs).
Focusing these investments, based on educated strategic choices, will ensure that
resources are not spread too thin. Consequently, Europe should create real pan-EU
clusters of excellence around these key application areas anchored around key
buyers, and leverage its public spending and investments to develop these
areas.
Transcend. Outperform global competition though innovation, partnerships, and
decisive leadership.
Page | 45
At the same time, European companies need to improve their corporate responses
to future challenges with better strategic foresight and more decisive leadership to avoid
the failures of the past. They need to push their innovativeness by increasing R&D
spend and fuel their organic and inorganic growth ambitions. Re-establishing the
vendor-customer partnership as an innovation vehicle, where large buyers of high-
tech products—public or private—take a more strategic collaborative approach, balancing
short-term cost-saving opportunities with the strategic value of having Europe-based
high-tech players, would give the required impulse to the sector.
Initiate
1. Improve skilled labor supply through technology-oriented education and
targeted immigration. To prosper, high-tech companies need access to a highly
qualified workforce. This starts by more deeply implanting MINT (Mathematics,
Informatics, Natural Sciences and Technology) subjects into Europe’s education systems
from elementary schools to universities—including fostering greater interest from girls
and women. Besides the formal education system, the broader community needs more
easy access to MINT content— here MOOCs (massive open online courses) can play an
important role, not least to identify, train, and recruit highly skilled individuals.
Underpinning these measures is an appreciation for science and technology in European
society—celebrating, not fearing, technological progress.
However, these changes take time. Managing and nurturing the existing scarce resource
pool over the next years and shifting it to where it is needed is important. Encouraging
talent migration within Europe will be crucial, and it is already occurring between
Southern Europe and Germany. Relaxing EU border controls for highly skilled workers by
easing graduate enrollment in education and access to working visas can increase the
supply of engineering talent. Combining these moves with a cluster strategy to create an
English language infrastructure and environment for highly skilled immigrants (for
example, shops and schools) will allow immigrants to acclimate more quickly.
2. Provide better funding for high-tech companies and for internationalization.
Better funding of high tech in Europe is imperative. Policy makers can support European
venture capitalists indirectly with tax breaks, complemented by government-backed
venture funds to ease and increase the flow of funding toward promising startups.
Financial instruments such as export credit, growth loans, and credit default insurance
can help ICT firms go global and seek fast growth, overcoming their scale disadvantage.
Europe’s banking system plays an important role here—to focus on supporting SMEs and
corporations in their funding needs, with a particular emphasis on ICT companies. The
establishment of an EU-wide, technology-based stock exchange similar to NASDAQ
would not only provide additional opportunities to raise public financing, but would also
provide investors a way to cash in on their investments—thereby creating independent
European players that can survive without selling out to international companies.
China’s 11th Five-Year Plan shows how it can be done. It gave companies, particularly
the biggest, governmental support when “going global”: financing, insurance, foreign
exchange, customs clearance, quality inspection, and staff entry and exit.
3. Improve entrepreneurial culture and support. An entrepreneurial culture can fuel
the creation of more high-tech startups and the expansion of larger high-tech players
into new business fields. This means public celebration of entrepreneurial role models
Page | 46
and technology-led achievements to make entrepreneurship more attractive. Educating
MINT students on business and making them more aware of entrepreneurial options (as
the EIT ICT Labs are already doing with graduate school options), and lowering the
administrative burden (particularly the patent application process) will facilitate the
creation of a vibrant technology-driven sector. More flexible labor laws in terms of layoff
protection and employer responsibilities (such as sick leave) will encourage new
ventures to take risks and grow more rapidly by hiring ahead of the curve, since their
leaders know they can scale their company as needed. This is not only true for venture
capital-driven startups, but also for incubating and spinning off ideas generated within
larger companies, where the seeds planted now may become the basis for future
business.
The in-memory storage system HANA was created by SAP in a startup fashion by the
Hasso Plattner Institute, and it now provides a major growth engine for SAP in the global
software market. Clearly the Hasso Plattner Institute’s entrepreneurial culture and risk
taking helped to secure SAP’s position as one of Europe’s major technology players. Like
many other ICT companies, SAP has now developed a program to support.
4. Level the playing field between European ICT companies and their
competitors. European high-tech companies face a maze of regulatory regimes in home
markets and Europe as a whole— including labor laws, tax red tape, security and
environmental standards, data protection laws, product standards, and investment
support—which reduces their home-market advantage against other markets. The EU
needs to ensure that its emphasis on consumer benefits, through standardization and
regulation, does not negatively impact the competitiveness of European ICT companies.
For example, regulators have eroded profits for many European telecom operators
compared with Asian and U.S. operators by introducing regulated wholesale and retail
price caps, even proposing to abolish long-standing tariff classes such as international
calls or roaming. The profit squeeze has forced operators to restrict their capital
investment—by buying the cheapest possible equipment, forcing strategic work to
offshore locations, delaying investment programs, or favouring non-European vendors
that can offer short-term discounts to “buy” market share.
European ICT companies need to be able to compete on the same terms as their
competitors— by setting common standards in the European market (such as in data
protection laws and environmental standards) and by influencing global bodies and other
nations to discontinue unfavourable practices. Naturally, the EU (via laws) and industry
associations (via certification) can support the ICT industry, particularly in Europe, by
setting easily attainable standards. Other nations are already using these tactics.
Size and consolidation are also areas where Europe needs to nurture its ICT industry.
Competition laws that allow European companies to make mergers and acquisitions—
rather than a narrow market-by-market approach—will enable them to be size
competitive in global ICT markets. For example, the Weve mobile commerce joint
venture by three UK mobile operators, designed to compete with global payment and
internet companies, was forced to undertake a nine-month investigation before
proceeding—crucial time in a fast-moving, competitive marketplace. With many
industries moving to consolidate in search of scale—including communication equipment
suppliers and semiconductors, as well as related industries such as defense—competition
authorities will need to continue their pragmatic approach and not shy away from getting
Page | 47
involved in global high-tech mergers impacting Europe. In certain areas, the EU should
even support consolidation to create players with sufficient size to compete.
In many large emerging markets, the EU also needs a vigorous push for fairer
procurement practices among both government bodies and semi-government-controlled
corporations. For example, under the framework of The National Medium- and Long-
Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006-2020), the Chinese government
has boosted its industry by giving procurement preference to domestically produced
high-tech equipment and products with IP ownership.
Concentrate
5. Develop an EU-wide master plan with clearly defined ICT application focus areas. The
EU, national governments, and industry associations are already investing substantial
resources to boost European competitiveness in the high-tech sector. Focusing these
investments, based on educated strategic choices, will ensure that resources are not
spread too thin. A strategic master plan that clearly defines for Europe the sectors and
key industrial and public application areas in which it can and wants to achieve
leadership will lead to more focused investments. Such a master plan requires EU
institutions to work with national governments and the EU high-tech sector, represented
by major industry associations and key industry players. Aligning most if not all public
funds and actions with the plan will ensure it is executed with maximum force.
Taking the global competitive environment and the industrial strengths and remaining
technology sectors in Europe into account, Europe’s best shot comes in high-end, B2B
and business-to-government (B2G) markets rather than in the consumer sector. The
B2B and B2G sectors require high quality and flexibility, the capability to manage
complex solutions, and horizontal and vertical integration competence spanning ICT
sectors and industries. The few remaining top 100 European high-tech players work in
such environments; though they also have challenges, they aren’t as vulnerable to pure
labor arbitrage and large-scale market entrants, given the lock-in factors of the
ecosystems they operate in.
A master plan can identify where ICT can address innovation and productivity challenges
in economic sectors in which Europe has a comparatively strong position, such as the
automotive, process industries, industrial machinery, utilities (including utility equipment
vendors), telecom, and financial services. The master plan should focus on ICT
subsectors that will specifically address the unique challenges of these top industries and
Europe’s standing within them—and create a sizable home market for European ICT. The
right ICT subsectors might include embedded systems (including semiconductors),
intelligent networks (such as smart grids), cyber-physical systems, ICT-enabled smart
automation (such as the German government’s Industry 4.0 strategy), complex software
systems, security systems and big data and analytics solutions.
The master plan can also identify where ICT can address Europe-specific societal
challenges and consumer demands. For example, the EU accounts for half of the world’s
spending on publicly funded welfare-related services such as healthcare, child and elder
care, education, employment market-related services, tax administration, public
transport systems, and general public services. ICT can support these sectors by taking
ICT solutions already deployed in the private sector and applying a revised focus. Over
Page | 48
time, emerging economies will increase their spending in these areas, opening up ICT
export opportunities for EU providers.
Rather than being driven by technology (as is the case with KETs [key enabling
technologies] and KICs[knowledge and innovation communities]), the master plan
should focus Europe’s ICT industry on meeting the needs of major EU buyers (both
public and private) over a five-year period. In other words, meeting end-user demand is
the goal, not merely developing technology for its own stake. The largest EU buyers of
these new ICT solutions can ensure success by pledging to buy research and prototypes,
and making investment and spending decisions based on a longer-term view that
foresees the development of commercially viable solutions. Tapping into major areas of
EU spending will enable existing initiatives to escape from the funding trap
6. Create pan-European clusters of excellence. A few large Europe-wide “clusters of
excellence” can help tackle the major areas of the master plan. Key buyers should be the
focal points for each cluster, including major ICT companies, SMEs, entrepreneurial
startups, and research institutions. Research shows that physical clusters are more
effective than virtual (non-colocated) clusters. Beyond establishing five to 10 physical
clusters, the EU should also take on the challenge of making virtual clusters work as
effectively as possible. Creating the most effective clusters starts by positioning them
where there is a nucleus of user and provider expertise with advanced and forward-
looking buyer organizations—not where an economically weak region needs support.
Logical geographical clusters could include Germany for auto- or utility-centric ICT
solutions, Berlin for Internet solutions, Stockholm and Helsinki for communications,
France for aerospace, security, and defense, and London for banking. The Netherlands,
which ranks first in the European Health Consumer Index, would be a logical location for
a health-related cluster, Finland for education, and the UK for e-government.
Encouraging several buyer groups across the EU to join the clusters will support the
development of new ICT solutions within the clusters and secure Europe-wide adoption.
Rapid agreement on EU-wide solutions and standards will be key to ensuring the
development of efficient, value-creating solutions that can be ramped up for broader,
Europe-wide implementation within five years.
Other regions have shown how designating clusters as “special economic zones” offers
significant benefits, as has occurred in the Shenzen and emerging Shanghai zones in
China. Such zones, using flexible labor laws and tax breaks, would allow clusters to pilot
measures and foster an entrepreneur-friendly EU environment.
7. Focus EU spending and investments on priority areas and clusters. Nearly all EU
member states have initiatives to develop certain sectors and to form clusters at the
national or regional level. In total, 130 specific national measures support clusters in 31
countries. Although Europe’s federal structure is a strength, a more focused approach is
needed to boost competitiveness in high tech.
Prioritizing cluster development by aligning their programs with the master plan, with a
focus on fewer but more effective clusters, will help them achieve world-class
performance. Success requires more intense and practical cooperation. For example,
coordinating various national initiatives and establishing the right policy framework can
direct innovation to the most promising fields.
Page | 49
Furthermore, public spending can be steered to support and ensure the adoption of ICT
solutions focused on public-sector challenges. Of course, this spending should be in line
with the spirit of the WTO GPA policy, but clusters’ unique ability to offer Europe-focused
solutions will give them a clear competitive edge, assuming public spending decisions are
based on medium- and long-term benefits rather than short-term results.
Of course, the effort should not simply be a European-centric approach. The high-tech
sector is far too global and interconnected to make it a pure European play. Engaging
foreign high-tech companies will boost success, and encouraging global venture capital
companies to have an active presence in clusters will accelerate the commercialization of
new ideas.
Transcend
8. Improve corporate responses with better strategic foresight and more decisive
leadership. The above measures will improve the external environment for Europe’s ICT
players. But long-lasting advantage will come when high-tech companies step up to the
challenge. To last in a dynamic, uncertain, and globally interconnected world requires
European ICT companies to have greater strategic foresight, improved innovation
capabilities, a more active approach to M&A, rapid corporate transformation, and cost-
competitive “best shoring.”
Strategic foresight is of particular importance for breaking out of three-year incremental
strategic planning. It can come by analyzing major trends, uncertainties, and potential
wild cards that may occur. Research shows that leading companies—such as BASF,
Volkswagen, Nestlé, and Ericsson—that regularly take a 10-year view on how their
industries, customer needs, technologies, and competitor landscape could evolve enjoy a
significantly higher average long-term shareholder return than companies with shorter
planning horizons. This isn’t just about making point predictions—it’s analyzing
alternative scenarios and creating “preferred futures” with an elaborated agenda to
shape the future.
Responding to industry change requires corporate renewal and transformation, whether
through organic transformation or an aggressive M&A strategy in a buy-and-build
fashion. It is not easy to do, but transformation is becoming increasingly necessary to
survive brutal, fast-paced global market forces. Often this entails cannibalizing existing
businesses, such as mobile telecom services cannibalizing fixed-line services. The truth
is, if a company doesn’t cannibalize its own business, a challenger may do it for them.
Interestingly, some of the most successful high-tech companies, such as Apple,
Samsung, and Cisco, are steered by highly empowered leaders (often helped by their
ownership stakes), rather than the typical European approach of committees,
management meetings, stakeholder alignment, and union negotiations. How companies
can develop rapid transformation capabilities will differ by company, but there is little
doubt that for every high-tech firm in Europe it should be an urgent priority that all
stakeholders must acknowledge.
9. Push innovativeness and growth ambitions. Long-term advantage will come only by
ambitious innovation approaches and increased investment in R&D. At the same time,
R&D productivity must improve, in coordination with selective offshoring, to overcome
Europe’s labor cost disadvantage and tap into talent pools. Large companies can broaden
their mindset to include their vendor base. In technology, much of the development—
Page | 50
and hence the competitive advantage—comes from suppliers; because technology
development takes long cycles, close collaboration with an ecosystem of suppliers can be
a key competitive advantage. Many strategies that have made leading automotive
manufacturers successful, such as modularization, supplier collaboration, and supplier
innovation, are applicable to today’s high-tech environment.
SMEs need to grow rapidly to achieve the economies of scale necessary to compete with
large companies. Whether they succeed or not depends heavily on how well their
capabilities are matched by clear ambition and a willingness to take risks. Here, the
management culture and access to capital play important roles.
Broadly speaking, growth comes either through M&A or organically, and most industries
consolidate as they mature. Cisco, for example, achieved a leading position from the
start by putting a strong emphasis on acquiring technologies and companies. A “buy-
and-build” strategy requires solid skills in evaluating targets, transaction execution, and,
most importantly, appropriate integration. Mergers are risky business, so the integration
process requires close attention.
Organic growth comes in part from ambition and in part from organisational capabilities.
For SMEs, the primary goal is often to reach full geographical and customer segment
penetration. This requires significant entrepreneurship and risk-taking to break into new
markets—something that is no doubt in the DNA of Europe, but needs honing and
development.
The final step is sustaining the innovation capability that got it all started. The European
IMP³rove program, is one strong way to embed innovation. More than 1,500 companies
have used the program so far, and it has proven to be a solid tool to self-assess
innovation capabilities and practices and take actions to improve them. The IMP³rove
assessment should be made mandatory by investors— private or governmental—for any
SME seeking financing, as it will boost returns when acted upon. Innovation is the key
ingredient for future growth and for evaluating SMEs.
10. Reestablish vendor-customer partnerships as innovation vehicles. Approaches from
the 1970s and ’80s to strategic partnerships, between corporations and between
government and corporations, are key vehicles for risk management and for pooling
capabilities. Long-term collaboration is crucial for achieving important breakthroughs
Government-led policies, standards, and ambitions (such as GSM and Energiewende) can
set the direction for the high-tech industry to rally around and achieve leadership
through cooperation. The EU and national governments can set many challenges
together with industry to foster innovation and growth. Examples include creating the
world’s leading European intelligent networks in education, government, and traffic;
creating the world’s smartest electric grid infrastructure to handle renewable energy; or
building the world’s most efficient healthcare system.
Success here does not require massive public investments, but rather the right
conditions and dialog between policy makers and industry. Some nations already follow
this path. In Germany, the national IT summit is the basis for an intensive discussion
between industry and the government on pushing important topics, such as broadband
coverage in Germany or speeding up the rollout of intelligent networks for energy,
health, traffic, education, and government. Such a dialog must happen on a broader
Page | 51
European basis. Industry associations and leading players must step up to create this
partnership.
Such vendor-customer partnerships do not have to be limited to the relationships
between policy makers and industry. The large buyers of high-tech products—public or
private—can take a more strategic collaborative approach to European high-tech players,
balancing short-term cost-saving opportunities (often temporarily caused by labor
arbitrage) with the strategic value of having Europe-based high-tech players. Close
collaboration can help the industry boost global competitiveness, as demonstrated by
collaboration in auto and energy equipment with Europe’s semiconductor companies,
such as Infineon, NXP, and STM.
Rethinking the Strategy
Europe’s unique characteristics, history, and culture make it impossible to replicate the
conditions that have enabled ICT companies to thrive in North America and Asia.
Europe’s distinctive federal structure is both a strength that breeds competition and a
weakness that causes subscale developments, fragmentation, and lower returns.
But there remains plenty that European institutions and governments can do to emulate
their U.S., South Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese counterparts by more strategically
managing the continent’s industrial base to maintain competitiveness. Policy makers can
do their part by making rejuvenating the ICT industry a top priority. EU institutions,
national governments, ICT companies, venture capitalists, and industry associations can
work together to develop an ICT master plan along the lines described above. Horizon
2020 is a step in the right direction, but more decisive and focused efforts are required
to nurture and build on the remaining high-tech industry in Europe now, rather than
merely hoping that today’s research programs will enable the sector to rise like a
phoenix from the ashes at some point in the future.
Without decisive action now, Europe’s high-tech industry will continue its decline, which
would affect the continent’s vitality, competitiveness, and prosperity. But the right steps,
taken decisively and in coordination, can give Europe the chance to reestablish a strong
foothold in the global technology sector and support the competitiveness of Europe’s
industrial base. More pan- European leadership is needed—from institutions,
governments, and industry.
Page | 52
6.3 Challenge 2 Winning Submission
Crowdpreneurship: An Idea Incubator Platform Powered by the Crowd
Economic growth hinges upon creativity and innovation, both driving the growth of
productivity. Creativity and innovation flourish in environments where people build
synergies and cooperatively develop creative business ideas. This essay proposes
building an enabling idea incubator platform in EU, in which self-starter entrepreneurs
can collaborate to innovate ideas. The proposed platform is powered by the crowd and is
referred to as crowdpreneurship. It supplements the existing EIT ICT Labs in a way that
it targets people who work on creative ideas based on self-initiative and aims to enable
self-starters transform their ideas to successful businesses. The proposed incubator
platform requires the least amount of supervision to teams because it expects that
entrepreneurs mature their ideas based on self-initiative and collaborative effort. Least
amount of supervision is a fundamental difference between crowdpreneurship and the
EIT ICT Labs.
The essay starts by explaining the motivation behind the idea incubator platform. Then it
proceeds by elaborating the concept of crowdpreneurship. After this explanation the
related proposal to the European Union Commission is articulated. Next the relevance of
crowdpreneurship to the EIT ICT Labs is explained. Before the conclusion, a related work
done very recently is summarized. Finally a conclusion section wraps up the essay.
Motivation
Illustration 1 on the next page shows the unofficial symbol of American
entrepreneurship, a garage. Some of the American multinationals came into existence in
private garages, a tradition which was continued by Facebook, but a garage was
replaced with a dorm-room in this case. Google is an example of a company which
started in a private garage and was based on academic research. The Google project in
its early stages would have been an ideal case the EIT ICT Labs would supervise its
growth. However, there are many other American multinational giants (HP, Apple,
Facebook among others) which were not based on academic research, but succeeded as
a result of successful execution of business ideas by visionary entrepreneurs. It's
possible to add Twitter to this list, even though Twitter was not symbolically founded in a
private garage or a dorm-room like the others.
One common characteristic of these companies is that they were co-founded by a group
of highly motivated entrepreneurs with complementary set of skills. Apple was co-
founded by a group of three people, a visionary entrepreneur (Steve Jobs), an
electronics engineer and computer programmer (Steve Wozniak) and a designer (Ronald
Wayne). The crew who founded Facebook consisted of two programmers (Mark
Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz), a graphic artist (Andrew McCollum), a business
developer (Eduardo Saverin) and a marketing expert (Chris Hughes). Similarly the co-
founder team of Twitter consisted of people with complementary skills: a web-developer
(Jack Dorsey), a software developer (Noah Glass), a software developer and marketing
Page | 53
specialist (Evan Williams), and a creative director and software engineer (Biz Stone).
These examples demonstrate the importance of having complementary skills on-board,
for a creative idea to be transformed into a successful business.
Illustration 1
Finding entrepreneurs with complementary skills to co-found a company is very difficult
to achieve, especially when done individually. It's necessary to have an environment
which motivates and facilitates entrepreneurs to meet, exchange ideas, form teams and
build businesses collaboratively. This essay proposes building such an environment
throughout Europe and promoting it among the European entrepreneurs. The proposal
aims to unleash the European entrepreneurial potential which has been confined in
garages, dorm rooms or private studies so far.
Crowdpreneurship
This section explains in detail the proposed idea-incubator platform. The proposal is
inspired by modern business models which are powered by the crowd, like
crowdsourcing and crowdfunding and is referred to as crowdpreneurship. The term
crowdpreneurship is a portmanteau of two nouns, crowd and entrepreneurship. The
explanation first gives a visual overview of the concept. Then the characteristics which
define crowdpreneurship are discussed in detail.
Overview
Illustration 2 gives a visual summary of the concept of crowdpreneurship. In the
example, an entrepreneur has a business idea and needs to collaborate with others, who
possess necessary skills to develop this business idea. He turns to the crowd for finding
other entrepreneurs with the necessary skill-set. In Illustration 2 each colour designates
an individual qualification, which infers that entrepreneurs with 3 unique qualifications
join the project. The team which is formed works according to the guidelines explained in
the next section and constitutes an example of crowdpreneurship.
Page | 54
Illustration 2 Details Crowdpreneurship is an idea incubator platform which facilitates entrepreneurs develop
business ideas by working collaboratively. It defines a set of standards which foster a
fertile and enabling environment for working together. This section discusses the
proposed set of standards in detail.
Legal security for the business idea: An idea incubator platform should provide legal
security for the business idea, so that an entrepreneur can freely and safely share his
idea with others, without risking that his idea will be stolen. The legal security should
encompass all EU member states, including the EU candidates.
Cooperation for equity: In the crowdpreneurship platform entrepreneurs contribute to
a project for an equity in the project and not as freelancers. Participation for equity is
the core of the crowdpreneurship idea incubator platform. Crowdpreneurship is not about
building yet another outsourcing platform. The objective instead is to transform a
creative idea to a revenue generating product or service. For this it's necessary to build a
team of entrepreneurs, who feel ownership for the business idea they'll be developing.
The feeling of ownership can be achieved only with people who are willing to work on the
development of an idea, even without immediate profit.
Legal security for the equity: Similar to the legal security for the business idea, an
idea incubator should provide legal security that an entrepreneurs who contributes to the
successful development of a business idea, will get his share from the generated
revenue. Such legal security should ensure that the generated revenue will be shared
among the team members based on some initial agreement and the contributed effort.
Template contracts: In a crowdpreneurship idea incubator platform entrepreneurs
contribute to a project for an equity in the project. This entails that entrepreneurs will
negotiate with other team members when joining a project. To facilitate such
negotiations, the incubator platform should provide a set of template contracts as
guideline and reference.
Uniform and basic accounting to compute the equity share: In a collaborative
entrepreneurial undertaking it's imperative to track the amount of effort and money each
entrepreneur invests for the development of the business case. The amount of effort
Page | 55
spent or money invested will decide how much share each entrepreneur will get from the
generated revenue. Such tracking will be achieved by a basic accounting system which is
uniform for all entrepreneurs across all European countries. Basic in this context means,
the accounting system should be transparent and easy to understand for people who
don't have a formal accounting education or training.
Knowhow exchange: Self-starter teams possess very deep knowhow on domains
which require specialized skills. Projects that self-starter teams work on, periodically
require having access to other skills, which the team does not have on-board. Currently
the approach is to outsource the related work, but self-starter teams usually do not have
the funds to pay for outsourcing. In order to alleviate such blocking impediments, a
crowdpreneurship idea incubator platform should encourage knowhow exchange
between the teams, which are active within this platform. A typical example of knowhow
exchange is, when one team designs the promotional graphics for another team, while
the second team makes software validation on a hardware that the first team cannot
afford possessing. Such knowhow exchange will reinforce the sense of ownership of team
members, because an entrepreneur will be helping other teams not for personal profit,
but to bring knowhow and capacity to his own project.
Promotion of crowdpreneurship: A crowdpreneurship idea incubator platform should
be promoted among young entrepreneurs and university students. It'll mainly be the
responsibility of the governments of the European countries to promote this concept in
their own institutions to attract entrepreneurs. Young entrepreneurs and students should
be the main target group, because young entrepreneurs and high profile students can
invest effort in entrepreneurial undertakings without an immediate monetary return.
Knowledge base of free resources: Self-starters usually aim to develop a business
idea with as less monetary investment as possible, because funding is usually not
available, or is very limited. Using freely available resources when developing a business
idea is extremely important and equally useful for meeting tight time-to-market
schedules. Using freely available resources in a commercial product can be very tricky
though because there are different types of license agreements, some of which are very
limiting. A crowdpreneurship idea incubator platform should host an up-to-date
knowledge base of freely available resources, which can be used in a commercial
product. This knowledge base will be built collaboratively by the entrepreneurs who are
active within the incubator platform, in a similar way the Wikipedia encyclopaedia is
built. The incubator platform should provide legal counselling on which licenses allow
usage of freely available resources in a commercial product and which licenses don't.
Investors: An investor can join a team at any stage of the project by contributing
money for the operational expenses necessary for the business. Investors will join teams
also for equity in the project.
A proposal to the European Union Commission
This essay proposes to the European Union Commission passing the crowdpreneurship
idea incubator platform as a policy recommendation for the EU governments and the
European entrepreneurs. The governments will need to pass legislation to ensure at least
that:
Page | 56
1. A business idea shared with other people in a crowdpreneurship platform is not
going to be stolen by others, and
2. An entrepreneur or an investor, who contributes to the successful development
of an idea will get his own share from the generated revenue.
Such legislation will secure that entrepreneurs can collaborate on a project for an equity
in the project. It will also make it attractive for investors to put money in new business
undertakings, also for equity. The EU member state governments will need to promote
the concept of crowdpreneurship in their own institutions.
Regarding the responsibilities of the European Union Commission, it is advised that the
Commission would supervise:
1. The preparation of the database of template contracts, which are going to act as
guideline and reference for the entrepreneurs while negotiating participation in a
project,
2. The preparation of a knowledge base of free resources, which can be used in a
commercial product, and
3. The preparation of a Europe-wide uniform and basic accounting system for
tracking the invested effort and money in a project.
Both databases mentioned in items (1) and (2) above, the accounting system in item (3)
and knowhow exchange, which is explained in the previous section, will be a policy
recommendation to European entrepreneurs who are willing to be crowdpreneurs.
Relevance to EIT ICT Labs
The crowdpreneurship idea incubator platform will supplement the existing EIT ICT Labs
and focus on self-starter entrepreneurs, who have difficulties in taking their ideas out of
private studies due to the challenges of making the right contacts. Crowdpreneurship is
not meant to be a substitute for the EIT ICT Labs, but an idea incubator which helps
self- starter entrepreneurs build a competitive proof-of-concept, or a first draft of a
product/service. In order to compare crowdpreneurship with EIT ICT Labs, it's necessary
to focus on the differences between the two.
Crowdpreneurship EIT ICT Labs
Focuses on idea incubation. Once an idea
matures, it may be considered by EIT ICT
Labs for assistance in creating a new firm.
From www.eitictlabs.eu/about-us/strategy/: "EIT
ICT Labs helps creating new firms, facilitate the
growth of existing small and medium size
companies (SME’s), and support large companies
to renew their businesses - boosting innovation
capabilities."
Least amount of supervision to
crowdpreneurship teams is necessary. It's a
platform where entrepreneurs interact and
cooperate based on self-initiative.
From www.eitictlabs.eu/about-
us/strategy/mission/bringing-ict-innovations-
to-life/:
"Entrepreneurs get coaching on how to bring
ideas to market, access to finance and support
in business and consumer development."
Page | 57
Based on American style entrepreneurship,
symbolized by a personal garage, or a dorm
room. The business idea can be as simple as
developing a creative game for
smartphones.
From www.eitictlabs.eu/about-us/strategy/: "To
achieve our mission we link education, research,
and business – the knowledge triangle - in
Europe together."
Related work
The concept of crowdpreneurship was proposed by the author to Eurapp (eurapp.eu) and
it was selected by Eurapp as one of the five solutions for the Innocentive challenge
"Supporting the EU App Economy - Funding and Scaling-Up App Companies". The
selected proposal was presented on November 13th 2013, during the second Eurapp
workshop "Rebooting the EU App Economy", which was organized in Berlin. The
presentation slides were uploaded on www.slideshare.net by Eurapp and can be found on
the following link:
www.slideshare.net/eurapp/crowdpreneurship-by-alichousein
Conclusion
An idea incubator platform, which is powered by the crowd and is motivated by American
style entrepreneurship, is proposed. The idea incubator platform aims unleashing the
European entrepreneurial potential, which unlike its American counterpart, has mainly
been confined so far in private study rooms. EU has a population of half billion citizens,
consisting of very well educated and highly motivated individuals. Given a leadership
which enables self-starters to take their ideas and efforts out of private study rooms, EU
can easily be transformed into a fertile environment where creative ideas and
entrepreneurship flourish. Crowdpreneurship, an entrepreneurship model powered by the
crowd, is the right policy for achieving this ideal.
Page | 58
Page | 59
European Commission
“Crowdsourcing on what are the new sources of ICT-enabled
growth and jobs to take into consideration in the follow-up to the
Digital Agenda for Europe”
Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union
2014 – 60 pages
ISBN 978-92-79-43379-5
DOI 10.2759/85364
Page | 60
ISBN 978-92-79-43379-5 DOI 10.2759/85364
KK
-04
-14
-94
5-2
A-N
