The ENTOV-HVM Innovation in Tackling the Challenge

The approach chosen by ENTOV-HVM to tackle the challenge of massively increasing innovation speed in high value manufacturing is innovative and indeed disruptive in comparison to contemporary approaches because it focuses on nurturing the purposeful behavior of participants through an evolving series of archetypal collaboration patterns from ideation through commercialization. 

This nurturing is termed “web weaving” and uses value network paradigms to ensure that the tangible and intangible exchanges between participants of key roles at various stages of the innovation process are occurring in an optimal overall manner. 

By focusing on serving the human interactions and exchanges needed at the various stages of the innovation process the foundation is set for significantly accelerating the speed of innovation based on the analogy to how incident response teams like firefighters or emergency surgery teams are able to perform. This is considered as innovative because it shifts the focus of the open innovation process from creating the “space” for innovation to occur (i.e. incubators, accelerators, innovation zones, smart cities etc.) to creating the relationships between those individuals and roles needed for the actual innovation to mature from ideation to commercialization. This is considered disruptive because it acknowledges the paramount importance of the emergent nature of innovation arising from patterns of human relationships, which significantly challenges the process structure of existing innovation support approaches – processes only work effectively if they reflect the true nature of collaboration which is of intangible nature.

The image shows a swarm of honey bees to exemplify how large numbers of individuals can create more than they can individually if their interaction is effectively shaped. Source of the image is: https://backyardhive.com/pages/bee-swarm-removal-hotline

Further innovative aspects of ENTOV-HVM are:

• All participating organizations are represented by a senior professional and an early career researcher acting as mentor/mentees in both directions; this will be duplicated across participating organizations (-> CARING).
• Participating organizations are / have been selected based on the roles that need to be populated during the process of the innovation process from ideation to commercialization (-> VALUE NETWORK).
• The facilitation of interaction of participants will primarily be governed by a small set of “rules of collaboration” (-> SWARM).
• Innovative ideas will be supported in cohorts of 10-15 innovators in order to leverage group dynamics and collaborative support. These will be recruited by participating organizations who will sponsor their inclusion into the network and thus ensure a continuous influx of new participants (-> FRACTAL).
• Each innovation (cohort) supported by ENTOV-HVM will be actively supported by industry organizations with established processes for translating ideas into products in industrial contexts addressing existing challenges. Ideas will be “immediately” applied in real industrial shop floors (-> APPLIED).
• The contributions of all participants will expressly be on a voluntary basis only (-> VOLUNTARY).
• New working groups will be continuously launched based on the ability to match challenges from industry with groups of innovators (-> EMERGENT).