The Basque Innovation Agency Innobasque launches a guide to boost open innovation and innovation ecosystems
The publication responds to the growing relevance of collaborative innovation to face today’s complex challenges.
It pursues the dual objective of explaining in an accessible way what open innovation and innovation ecosystems are and offering concrete guidelines to implement them effectively in all types of organisations.
The guide is now available for consultation and free download on the website of the Basque Innovation Agency, Innobasque.
Innobasque presents the guide ‘Open Innovation and Innovation Ecosystems’, a publication that combines theoretical and practical information to facilitate understanding and promote the incorporation of open innovation and participation in innovation ecosystems in all types of organisations.
This publication reflects the growing relevance of collaborative innovation, an approach that involves different agents and perspectives external to the organisation in the innovation process. This model is positioned as a key response to today’s complex challenges, since, as Innobasque explains, ‘organisations do not have all the resources or the necessary knowledge to face such demanding scenarios. It is essential to collaborate and open up to new contexts’.
This trend was reflected for the first time in 2019, in the first Foresight Report prepared by the Basque Innovation Agency, Innobasque, and has become even more relevant in the current context, where scenarios are increasingly complex and competitive.
The guide has a double objective: on the one hand, to explain in an accessible way what open innovation and innovation ecosystems are, and on the other hand, to offer organisations concrete guidelines to implement them in a structured way and in line with their innovation strategies.
The document defines open innovation as a ‘distributed process of innovation based on deliberately managed knowledge flows, crossing organisational boundaries, using pecuniary and non-pecuniary mechanisms in line with the organisation’s business model’, to distinguish it from mere collaboration: ‘collaborating does not necessarily mean doing open innovation; it must be a planned, intentional and deliberate process’, explains the Basque Innovation Agency, Innobasque. Innovation ecosystems, meanwhile, are defined as ‘networks of autonomous agents that interact (cooperate and compete) to create a greater and different value than the initial conditions of the agents, and conveys the idea of something alive, that is, that can emerge from any organisation, that can change and adapt to the conditions of the environment, or generate new environmental conditions, and that can disappear at any given time’.
The guide, which lays the foundations of open innovation and the ecosystems that articulate it, is now available on the Innobasque website for free consultation and download.
A guide for beginners and experienced people
The publication is aimed at organisations of all sizes and sectors, providing them with a roadmap for both integrating into existing innovation ecosystems and leading the creation of new ones. According to Innobasque, the guide is not only useful for those starting out in this field, but also for organisations seeking to optimise their participation in existing ecosystems or re-evaluate their role in them.
In addition to theoretical concepts, the document includes practical recommendations and key questions that organisations should consider before approaching these collaborative models. Aspects such as governance, partners, processes and performance measurement are discussed in detail to help structure effective and sustainable initiatives.
Fruit of collaboration and knowledge sharing
The Basque Innovation Agency, Innobasque, with more than 910 partner organisations, acts as an open innovation ecosystem in which knowledge flows and collaboration between agents is encouraged.
The guide it presents is, in itself, the result of shared knowledge and collaboration. For its preparation, the Basque Innovation Agency has relied on the company Bilakatu, a partner of the agency specialised in the field, as well as on the numerous existing bibliography and a benchmarking of innovation ecosystems.
The launch of the guide reinforces Innobasque’s commitment to the promotion of tools and methodologies that facilitate the adoption of innovative practices.
