During this spring IIT project has conducted 10 company case studies in order to deepen its knowledge about Innovation Ecosystem strategies in changing company environments. The results of the earlier IIT interview survey with almost 700 companies from 11 European member states have shown the increasing importance of the Innovation Ecosystem (IES) for innovation activities. Companies fill knowledge gaps through collaborating and exchanging with a high variety of partners. Their loose and strong ties range from their supply chain, to customers, academia, policy makers, regulators, investors and consultants.
Beyond that rather static analysis we have been interested to explore the interrelation between strong strategical changes from companies and change of or within their Innovation Ecosystem. We asked questions in both directions:
· In which way do anticipated or current changes in the IES influence company strategies?
· How do companies influence and shape their (new) IES in times of changes?
In order to receive broad but at the same time deep insights we focused the case studies on companies from the IIT core countries in which the project partners are located: Austria, Finland, The Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom. We also avoided to include a too wide range of sectors. Instead we decided to concentrate on companies from ICT and manufacturing industries. Through new opportunities arising from digitalisation both sectors currently undergo some kind of change process so that a sectoral dynamic with changing IES can be expected. Concurrently, both sectors offer opportunities for contrasting and comparing cases.
During the last months we conducted 10 case studies covering primarily the topic of change and collaborative foresight activities as an important part of change processes.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649351
