Suvi Konsti-Laakso

Facilitating SME Innovation Capability Through Business Networking

Innovation processes can be regarded as complex, dynamic, and a result of cumulative dynamic interaction and learning processes involving many actors. In this setting, private small‐ and medium‐sized businesses (SMEs) can be considered a key factor – as generators of new ideas, as entrepreneurs carrying out new ventures, and as partners for other local actors. This study focuses on the SME networks and their ability to participate in innovative processes directed at new value creation. We present a case study of the development of a young innovation network. Our focus in the case study is on the SMEs ability to carry out innovation and new value creation in a network. The key contribution of the study centers on the new understanding of the way SME innovation could be promoted through facilitated network development.

Brokerage functions in a virtual idea generation platform: Possibilities for collective creativity?

Abstract The open innovation approach emphasizes the importance of service and product users as a source of novel ideas. An essential question is how user-driven innovation is conducted. Information and communications technology offers various new opportunities and means of acquiring information about users and engaging them in innovation activity. This study investigates brokerage functions in a virtual environment where people with diverse experience, areas of expertise and perspectives collaborate. The research question is how brokerage functions are able to create possibilities for collective creativity. The study focuses on the front-end stage of an innovation process: the ideation phase in a virtual idea generation environment, in which fruitful and fresh ideas based on users; or potential users’, needs are sought for in order to support the innovation process.

Challenges of Bringing Citizen Knowledge into Public Sector Service Innovation

User-driven innovation is an essential part of practice-based innovation. This study, which belongs to user-driven service innovation research, attempts to find out what kinds of challenges there are pertaining to a municipal resident-involving service innovation approach in the public sector. This research question is approached from the points of view of both the municipal resident and the public authorities. With the municipal resident point of view we aim to find out how the municipal residents as service users are disposed towards having the possibility to personally participate in the service development activities, and from what kinds of positions the service users produce a voice to support service development. The public authority point of view examines how the customer-driven service development approach is perceived by the developer authorities, and from what kinds of positions the developer authorities listen to the message compiled from the users’ voices. As a result we present six challenges of the service user-involving service innovation approach. The case study is based on the qualitative analysis of four research datasets.

Managing community engagement: A process model for urban planning

Abstract Todays society stresses the importance of public participation and the management of large stakeholder groups. To confront this challenge, community operational research (community OR), as a structured approach, could help. In this paper, we propose a process model for managing community engagement in urban planning. The model builds on ideas of facilitative modeling, problem-structuring methods and innovation management. The model is empirically validated through a case study setting, where a local entrepreneurial community was engaged in an urban regeneration plan for a city centre area in Finland. One reason for utilizing community engagement in the urban planning process is related to decreasing boundary critique, and especially preventing later conflicts. The results of the study indicate that the constructed and utilized process model was useful. The current literature on community OR recognizes that the use of transparent processes enabling dialogue between participants, accepted as fair by the stakeholder groups, has been shown to make a significant difference in peoples acceptance, even when they might disagree with the outcome of the decision. Based on the results of this study, this seemed to also be the case in the urban planning context. The findings of the study also reveal that an open innovation-based strategy and methods can bring new insights into collaboration practices in the context of community engagement and urban planning.

Facilitating user driven innovation trough a Living Lab

User driven innovation is gaining popularity among companies and policy makers (Nesta 2008, Wise E & Högenhaven 2008). User driven innovation is a concept introduced by Eric von Hippel in the 1980s. According to von Hippel (2005), user driven innovation explores the user-experts, such as surgeons who develop their own instruments. The user develops a product but freely reveals it to some other stakeholder, who then takes care of the commercialization. These users are often interest-driven instead of being entrepreneurship-driven; they do not necessarily look for economic benefits. User driven innovation can also be defined as a process of tapping into user knowledge (Wise & Högenhaven 2008). Traditionally, companies and other organizations have approached users in order to improve their innovation activities, but similarly, users can also be the driving force of innovation. How can these innovative users be supported so that their ideas actually become innovations? This paper discusses user driven innovation and describes a case of user based innovation closely connected to the Lahti Living Lab. The paper focuses on the early phases of the innovation process.

Participatory design of a social enterprise for rehabilitees

BACKGROUND Social enterprises are often seen as a source of new and innovative solutions to persistent societal problems and a means for better inclusion of employees and customers. Because social enterprises combine business logic and social goals, they have vast potential to renew business and social life; therefore, it is vital to understand how their creation can be initiated and supported. OBJECTIVE This study provides an overview of the participatory design process for a new social enterprise as it appears in practice. METHODS The methods used in this case study guided the participants - mental health and substance abuse rehabilitees - in the co-creation and refinement of a business idea. The methods used enabled participants to acknowledge their own strengths or preferences for their potential future work, which was a unique means of establishing a new social enterprise. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Social empowerment of the participants/future employees of the social enterprise formed the important, intangible capital in this case. By definition, the core of social enterprises is the customer- and employee-driven nature. This study clarifies how a social enterprise functions as a laboratory of social innovation at the local and community levels.