Talking about the future of municipal innovation activity

I'm talking tomorrow in a seminar organized by the Finnish Foundation of Municipal Development (Kunnallisalan Kehittämissäätiö in Finnish). Other speakers include:

Esko Aho, President of the Finnish National Fund for Research and Development (SITRA)
Veli-Pekka Saarnivaara, President of the National Agency of Technology (TEKES)
Raimo Väyrynen, President of the Academy of Finland
Christoffer Taxell, President of the Confederation of Finnish Industries
Janne Virkkunen, Editor-in-Chief, Helsingin Sanomat
Maija-Riitta Ollila, Philosopher
Ulla-Maaria Mutanen, Researcher, University of Helsinki
Katja Sorri, Jyväskylä Town Council

Candidates for the Finnish presidential election:
Tarja Halonen, President of Finland
Sauli Niinistö, Director, European Investment Bank

Here is a summary of my talk "FabLabs – the Future of Municipal Innovation Activity?"

The ability to develop new, global-scale innovations and competences in small peripheral communities is weak and getting worse. Small communities generally lack resources in basic research and education. In addition, many of the small communities -especially in the eastern and northern Finland- suffer from brain drain to urban areas. This hinders the accumulation of new, socially and economically meaningful competences in these areas and thus, the viability of the communities.

The starting point of this talk is that small communities in Finland will have to radically change their innovation policy in the near future. This will include the moving from strictly institutional, business-oriented idea of innovation and competence development towards an idea of innovation as practice-based, interactive, and often times semi-professional learning activity. First, I discuss this argument in the light of the recent innovation studies, which suggest that an increasing number of innovations emerge currently within the communities of users and semi-professional developers. Second, I introduce learning theories that emphasize the collective, situated, and object-oriented nature of new knowledge creation and capability development. Finally, I discuss the MIT FabLab concept as a concrete example of an organizational arrangement that builds on the idea of a cooperative, practice-based, municipal innovation activity.

Comments

[Johan Bonner]

Dear,

can you get in contact with me since I'm very interested in your point of view

regards,

Johan Bonner

[Peter Childs]

A couple of things - first I heard about your concept for a universial product identifier to make finding small run products easier. That could reopen the doors to viable 'craft' manufacturing targeting a world wide market without losing a large percentage of the sale cost to distrubution and resale channels. Great idea.

Here in Ottawa (canada) we've developing a community service aimed at supporting people as they first begin to consider business start-up. What we're trying to do is address the conditions that cause ideas to come off the rails before they've really started. Things like confidence, finding like minded people, shareing what you've learned etc.

We're still in the early planning stage but my sense is that by focusing of the very earliest stages of business start-up we can iinvrease both the number of people who actually start business and by strengthening their knowledge and networks the number that are successful.

I'd be interested in your paper when it's available.

[Ulla-Maaria]

Hi Peter, thank you for the feedback. I agree that early informal support is very important. You need people with whom you can play with ideas and try out prototypes. Still, the governmental organizations that support the development of innovations (at least here in Finland) seem to make a strict separation between business and private (leisure time) activity. Most of their services are targeted to already existing companies.

[Ulla-Maaria]

Here is a manual trackback to the Innovation Insider.

[Peter Childs]

I’d agree that most government services are targeted to existing businesses. Finland sounds no different than Canada in that regard.

What we’re finding is that there is recognition that business development is a lot like developing professional athletes that you can create more world caliber performers if you can get more people participating.

For government the cost of delivering services is always an issue. What we’re doing is apply a combination of online and networking tools at the problem set that stops people from starting a business. Our interest is technology companies so the problems we are addressing are:
- Team formation and product building environments
- Business Training & Mentorship
- Customer engagement tools
- Network and giving back
But in the underlying model is applicable to any business.

Much of the model is based on using online community tools to allow people in start-up phase to share information and recommendations so that ones individual experience can benefit everyone – and theirs benefit you. We’ve also found that linking to what’s already in the community is better than recreating it (and helps on the support side). We’re planning on using were using open source products to deliver the service and a volunteer board to run it. To help build and sustain the community we’ve tacked on a few services around the community to increase they length of time people participate and thereby ensure that the community is active enough to be self-sustaining.

We’re still very early in the process of identifying and getting support. I’m happy to forward a more detailed view of the services and model if that’s helpful.

Thanks for the link.