Prototyping policy
Leave a reply
Author Archives: Michela Magas
7 ingredients for the Industry Commons
During our innovation labs I have grown used to witnessing jaw-dropping moments – not only in terms of the power of the brains in the room or ingenious solutions to problems we never thought we had, but much more in terms of being surprised by the discovery of extraordinary human capabilities and empowerment through technology.
Since I published 7 Ingredients to build a successful innovation ecosystem two years ago, we witnessed the results of our methods being applied across a range of different sectors and were surprised that large industry corporates – from primary industry to semiconductor manufacturers – offered to donate their IP into our toolkit. The success of these methodologies also resulted in the opportunity for me to represent women innovators as European Woman Innovator of the Year and be the first representative from the creative industries to hold this title.
We are now collaborating with the largest AI project in Swedish history to bring a variety of organisations into a space of common understanding. The bottlenecks identified appear to be the same ones that inspired our journey into building innovation ecosystems: corporates are generally reluctant to release large datasets; research is conducted in-house and centralised; collaboration with other organisations is difficult; and disruptive innovation is seen as something beyond scope and treated with extreme caution. Cue in the Industry Commons: a scale up of our innovation methodologies which unites industry stakeholders from different verticals together with the innovation community to safely bolt disruptive innovation on top of industry capabilities. If this sounds like wishful thinking, feel free to jump to point 3.
When I launched Industry Commons with a keynote at the European Commission’s Open Innovation Conference on the 13th of June 2017 it immediately triggered the establishment of the Working Group on Industrial Applications as a unique collaboration between European Directorate Generals for Research and Innovation, Jobs and Growth, and ICT. It has been written into EU policy in the form of recommendations for future programmes and has informed my AI Innovation advisory for G7 leaders as part of the i7.
Here is how our 7 ingredients scale up:
1) Place creativity at the heart of industry
Creativity is not only the distinguishing feature between humans and automation, but a key skill when systems require a creative leap due to new conditions or parameters. Creative Innovation Management is the best option when open innovation activities bring unforeseen scenarios which require novel technological approaches, guidelines or business models. Effective CIM also encourages further exploration of complex scenarios, increasing the potential for innovation yield in unanticipated conditions and for transversal AI applications.
2) Deploy an effective technology transfer toolkit (TTT)
An effective technology transfer toolkit (TTT) pulls together intellectual property from a variety of stakeholders from research and industry in the form of APIs, GUIs and TUIs and presents them to the innovation community to build upon, unleashing an extremely fast knowledge feedback loop. While APIs have been referred to as “the central nervous system of the app economy”, within the Industry Commons GUIs and TUIs demonstrate real breakthroughs as they take the interaction into the physical space. Industry Commons does not preclude the GUI from adding a third, accessible dimension to its form of expression, but rather defines it as any user interface, whether on-screen or tangible, which utilises the graphic language of icons or abstract symbols as an interface with systems, products or applications. A TUI (Tangible User Interface) is a connected physical product or device which allows for interaction with remotely or locally stored digital information using the affordances of its physical and sensing properties. TUIs are proving to be great enablers for technology transfer of both fungible and non-fungible data, or of data with known or unknown properties, for AI applications in the physical space and the creation of novel transversal AI applications at the junction between verticals. The Transfer IP embedded in these interfaces is an essential component of the Industry Commons value chain.
3) Build an IP Stack
We ensure that novel and hybrid applications of existing industry and research capabilities add an Innovation IP layer to the IP Stack. At our Industry Commons testbed at Slush in Helsinki, we tested the first-ever recording of Innovation IP creation in real time. Innovators built their own layer of IP on top of Background IP and Transfer IP, which created solutions for new or previously unsolved use cases, business models and market applications. We recorded this process in the blockchain to allow for the tracking of provenance using a transparent, time-stamped, distributed and permanently attributable ledger. The IP Stack creates a sustainable system for the attribution of IP by embedding smart contracts within this process. While the reluctance to release proprietary Background IP is the most quoted bottleneck for the deployment of AI applications, unambiguous layers of intellectual property embedded within smart contracts allow Background IP to be safely embedded in disruptive products and services.
4) Break down knowledge silos
Our creative testbeds unite all talent with a diverse set of skills from all ages and backgrounds and an even gender split enabling for fast upskilling and re-skilling while collaboratively seeding ideas. During incubation we bring together carefully selected experts and the most original brains from the innovation community who regularly go on to win recognition and awards, including most recently the title of MIT Under-35 Innovator and the winners of the Wearable Technologies World Cup. All benefit from close collaboration with industry experts during prototyping and from an uninterrupted flow of knowledge which enable them to remove bottlenecks in product development. These exchanges also enable industry experts and TTOs to adjust their Transfer IP for best deployment in innovation scenarios. The Industry Commons brings innovators who operate close to new and emerging markets in collaboration with experts from different verticals to inject Background IP with future markets knowledge.
5) Adopt a hands-on mindset
We provide a maker space of raw materiality that removes the artificial distinction between digital and physical, and recognises all things as human constructions, as media, as the tools with which we create, and as the platforms upon which we build. By adopting this hands-on mindset our labs have not only generated new knowledge, stimulated breakthroughs, or identified business opportunities, markets and applications, but have also proven to reveal extraordinary human capabilities. On the second day of our testbed at Slush in Helsinki we experienced a jaw-dropping moment: the blind singer at the centre of our multidisciplinary laboratory and performance was able to operate a brain-computer interface without the usually required hours of training. For everyone in the lab the penny dropped: this meant she was much more able than someone traditionally considered to be able-bodied when it came to machines operated through brain computer interfaces.
6) Plug into a powerful value chain
The more data is shared between verticals and among competitors, the more opportunities exist for data-driven applications and advancement in AI. Through participation in a decentralised data exchange that gathers diverse datasets from across a wide range of industries and makes that data available using a managed set of protocols, this data may be combined and used to empower groundbreaking AI applications. Industry Commons serves as a physical market place for the sea of data available through carefully managed protocols and introduced into the IP Stack. The physical nature of the market place allows R&I, technology transfer, market analysis, product testing, early adoption, HR, re-skilling, CSR and business development to be integrated with creative innovation management, emerging market insights and hands-on evolution of the technocultural landscape by the research and innovation communities, for a powerful value chain and a fast track to new markets.
7) Create entirely new markets
We have found that some of the most exciting opportunities for breakthrough ideas exist at the collisions between knowledge and expertise verticals. As well as empowering individual sectors with combined datasets, our TTT allows for virtually infinite combinations of IP to be ported across verticals and tested in previously unimagined business cases. Hybrid applications built through an IP Stack are tested with early adopters from the innovation community who operate close to emerging markets. This enables us to test novel business models for Background IPs and discover how rights, privacy and security work in these evolving scenarios, without the level of risk or cost usually associated with new market analysis. The identified new markets make economic sense not only because they are created from a set of established and new capabilities, but primarily because these very combinations appear to create new meaning and advance us as humans.
After all technology is, and always should be, a means for human empowerment.
Above, a jaw-dropping moment during #MTFLabs: blind singer Riikka Hänninen was proven to be much more able than someone traditionally considered to be able-bodied when it comes to operating brain computer interfaces. As well as being fluent at playing the musical scale using neurofeedback, Riikka was also able to feel the reaction of the three audience members on stage via their pulse signal, and the movements of the cyborg Jasmine Isdrake via vibration. [Photo: Andrew Dubber]
Introducing the Industry Commons
Since I wrote ‘7 ingredients to build a successful innovation ecosystem’ we have scaled our methodology to become what we now call the Industry Commons. In this video I address the theory behind it, and the challenge of constructing new kinds of mental models for the physical internet.
The development of the Industry Commons is the logical consequence of the original project’s impacts. By the time we rolled out our Market Testbed our project had hit 5.5 million impacts on social media, one of our startup teams had already filed a patent for heavy industry, agriculture and forestry; one hit the Forbes ‘top entrepreneur’ list; another received €1 million in follow-up funding; and partner institutions had several papers and book chapters accepted for publication as byproducts of the process. Industry had donated IP to our toolkit and some of the first transversal applications were created – and ported across to other industry verticals. Our methodologies were translated into high level innovation recommendations for the European Commission’s future research and innovation programme.
Since then, through the Industry Commons, we developed a way to safely bolt disruptive innovation on top of existing industry capabilities. 13th June 2017 saw the official launch of this idea with a keynote at the European Commission Open Innovation 2.0 conference and Industry Commons has since been adopted as a key recommendation for the future of European open innovation policy.
The above speech was delivered as part of the Worldwide IoT Day, to a Rotterdam meetup focused on Art and Imagination in IoT, on 9 April 2017.
Interview for the Woman Innovator Prize 2017
What made you choose to become an entrepreneur?
There are things I want to create or make possible in the world that simply cannot be achieved in the context of conventional employment. The process of (re)invention starts from the ground up. I like to question how something is organised; what are the guiding principles; do they still reflect the state of technological progress; do they still fulfil their social obligation? Most traditional employment requires a narrow view, one that fits neatly into a slot and follows a linear progression without questioning its foundations. I find that real solutions to challenges often require a rethinking of the supporting structures, which may be perceived as disruptive by conventional standards. Becoming an entrepreneur is the result of this quest to find truly useful solutions from the ground up.
What advice would you give to a woman taking the step of setting up her own business?
Go for it! We need more of the female perspective reflected in our everyday business practices. Countries which insist on 50/50 female/male Steering Boards have registered greater prosperity as a result.
What does the term ‘innovator’ mean to you personally?
An innovator is traditionally someone driven by solutions to challenges, or by curiosity and discovery. It can be someone who imagines the world to be different and sets out to create that difference, or someone who experiments and discovers a different world. Both bring together creativity and science, and in today’s society neither can operate entirely alone. For me personally, an innovator is someone who knows how to join the dots between knowledge from different fields of research and industry, and a variety of cultural viewpoints. It is at the intersection of worlds that we currently find the most promising scenarios, and through knowledge collisions that we discover the best solutions.
Was the research and innovation funding helpful to you?
Radical ideas require validation before they can seek traditional funding. Where ideas are potentially disruptive, they can find resistance from investors because of the high level of risk attached and lack of clear business models upfront. EU research and innovation funding is uniquely placed to support highly risky but potentially game-changing initiatives. Especially where the social impact is notable, the EU funding can afford to take the long-term view and measure the impact beyond immediate income potential. For all these reasons the EU funding was an essential enabler for our initiatives.
Have you faced any prejudice being a woman in your domain?
I was once asked by a male professor in front of a large auditorium of hundreds of students, how did I feel about being a woman designer and entrepreneur – did I feel equal to men? I answered: “With no disrespect, I do not wish to be anything like you. I believe I bring a lot more to the table by offering a woman’s perspective.” An entrepreneur is a state of mind, not a gender.
How can Europe encourage more women innovators?
Our tests show that by opening challenges to creativity and experimentation we get a much better gender balance. We have a clear 50/50 gender split across our children’s workshops, as well as in our creative laboratories for professionals of all backgrounds. We have reached 33% female innovators in our industry testbeds.
Is there a symbol, a proverb, a quote, an idea, that has guided you throughout your professional or private life?
Since my early studies, back in 1990, I had Michael Faraday’s “All this is a dream – still examine it with a few experiments” pinned up on my desk. It has never failed me. The Dennis Gabor quote “The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented” and the later version by Alan Kay “The best way to predict the future is to invent it” has become the motto of our community.
Was it an easy road to arrive where you are now?
I haven’t ‘arrived’ yet – I am still on a journey. It has never been an easy road, there have always been great obstacles and I am still experiencing many of those, but it is a tremendously rewarding journey when you are travelling in the company of a community of brilliant and intelligent people.
What future did you dream about when you were a child?
From a very early age, I was always inspired and fascinated by those people who received the Nobel Peace Prize. It seemed grandiose and far-fetched within the context I was living in at that time, growing up in what was then a restricted, and severely troubled country, about to embark into a war. I was mocked for being a child with big ambitions, but I wanted to be the sort of person who can make a positive impact of that kind.
How should we encourage young kids to become interested in science and innovation?
What we should be encouraging above anything else is the spirit of experimentation, in both the arts and the sciences. There are many ways in which children can meaningfully express themselves. Currently we are focusing almost exclusively on the written word, but modern technology offers children many useful methods of expression that can bridge language barriers and social divides. We need to allow and encourage them to create their own language and expression by discovering their own methods and building their own tools. In order to achieve this, just as with sport, children need some equipment, a place to play and some supportive coaching. With the help of wonderful coaches and role models from our community, parents tell us that their children have become ‘hooked for life’ on science, engineering and creative experimentation.
Are there any life events or persons who have changed your life and contributed to make you the person you are today?
All of the places and people around us make us who we are. I came from a place which is at the crossroads of several European cultures, and from a very early age learnt how to bridge between them. I also witnessed the horrors of civilian conflict and what fear of the unknown can do even to the most educated minds. It often takes just one person to have the courage to create a space where people can “suspend disbelief” and come to a place of common understanding, and this often happens through the arts. For us music has become the social glue – it attracts people from all cultural, intellectual and social backgrounds. It enables them to experiment freely with technology on neutral ground without the pressures of peer reviews or restrictions of jargon. Instead they become fascinated by the other’s knowledge and form strong, long-term bonds which allow them to combine disparate fields of knowledge to solve complex challenges. This not only serves to prevent future conflicts but the resulting innovations also make sound economic sense.
What else is there close to your heart that you would like to share with the readers?
Conflict resolution and economic advancement thorough innovation go hand in hand. Where fear is used to drive profits, this usually creates a short term cash injection, but long-term leaves entire nations poorer. Creating new ways to communicate and exchange knowledge is one of the most effective ways to enrich cultures and advance economies. We have witnessed entirely new methods of communication in our testbeds. The written word is a wonderful “method of translation” for ideas popularised by the technological invention of the printing press, but also presents cross-cultural challenges. New technologies allow us to rely less on the written word and more on gesture and signalling, the way that children do. A new kind of intelligent communication medium will emerge from this world (imagine it as a new kind of “Twitter”), and when it does, you will want to invest in it.
Occupy through interaction
7 ingredients to build a successful innovation ecosystem
Last week Commissioner Moedas published a report on the direct impact that investing in innovation has on EU economy. While this analysis was being conducted, at Stromatolite we used 20 years of innovation experience – from earlier futures concepts for large multinationals such as Apple, Nike and Nokia, to the last 4 years of building a global community of 5000 innovators – to test some of our earlier observations and assumptions and put them into practice. In other words, we invested in hands-on building of an innovation ecosystem.
During this process over the past 15 months, we witnessed something extraordinary – the innovation toolkit we developed with EU research centres hit 1.5 million impacts on social media; 11 unique new product ideas using the toolkit were incubated to first level prototype, one patenting process was initiated in month 10; two new startups founded, the new R-IoT microboard has already been batch tested for production; and as a byproduct of the extremely fast knowledge transfer, several peer-reviewed papers and one book chapter were published. Two projects are now nominated for major international awards and several are being discussed with multinationals and global distributors for deployment.
Here is how we made this happen:
1) Place creativity at the heart of innovation.
Creative thinking is the fuel for an enthusiastic exchange of ideas. In our case the project is called #MusicBricks because music is our social glue. It attracts experts from far afield into a neutral space for an extremely fast knowledge transfer. The Music Industry provides an excellent template for experimentation in the new IoT-enabled innovation space: it thrives on big data; it relies on cloud services; it attracts communities; it provides fast feedback loops for experimentation; it allows for quick prototyping and cheap testing of technology ideas; and it allows to port tested ideas successfully to other industry verticals (if this last claim arouses suspicion, feel free to jump directly to point 7).
2) Enable an extremely fast knowledge transfer.
We build toolkits which interface between research and innovation communities. In January 2015 we set out to create the #MusicBricks toolkit by turning the excellence from EU music tech research centres into APIs, GUIs and TUIs (Tangible User Interfaces). By the end of May 2015, they were ready for deployment and testing with our community of creative developers and early adopters over challenges of accessibility, health and communication. By month 9 we had 11 product prototypes built with the toolkit, by month 10 the first patent being filed.
3) Set up open innovation IP parameters.
Our Consortium Agreement was completely rewritten to enable interfacing with Background IP, deployment of newly created Research IP with adopter-friendly licenses, and creation of a layer of Innovation IP to motivate the wider community of innovators and early adopters.
4) Bring the best brains into the room.
A range of different literacies of digital making such as those shared within ad hoc teams that form within innovation ecosystems, seldom lie exclusively within the domain of a single individual or organisation. We are privileged to have access to some of the most brilliant researchers and innovators from varied fields of expertise, age groups, gender, cultural backgrounds, skills and interests. We embedded #MusicBricks into our Music Tech Fest community platform, where we set out to unite art and science, and academia and industry in a space of common understanding. When our close community surpassed 4000 members, our call response rate registered 25% regular engagement. At our first creative testbed we achieved 33% female innovators. The healthy mix of knowledge and engagement makes for an extremely vibrant ideas ecosystem.
5) Get your hands dirty.
Our community do not read peer-reviewed papers to each other. They literally show each other how to do things. The experimental ‘hack’ is not simply an intellectual game, but a material practice – an act of thinking out loud, embodied in physical and working objects. IoT-enabled gesture-driven and audiovisual-signalling feedback loops are becoming sophisticated tools for communication in this context.
6) Give ample support to valuable ideas.
Regular supply of knowledge and funds are both key to enable growth of innovation ideas. Hitting knowledge barriers can seriously affect timely delivery: direct access to an expert is key at those times. We spent 662 hours in face-to-face, Slack and Skype conversations with our incubatees, and this investment generously paid off. Motivation quickly drops if cashflow stops, and efforts are diverted to alternative sources of income. We ensured microfunding was available for first level industry prototypes and partnered with local incubators to provide further support.
7) Plug ideas into a network.
Ideas do not exist in isolation. Within innovation ecosystems research and developer teams are able to place their findings into the hands of people who will test them to their limits, and situate theoretical and intellectual results within real world environments to adapt their tools and make them more flexible, more robust and ultimately more useful to a variety of markets. With creativity at the heart, at Stromatolite we are trained to understand the wider context of an application, and spot the next serendipitous ‘Post-It’ note discovery. From the beginning of our project, we were scanning the horizon to identify verticals and markets for lateral deployment. As an outcome of the patenting process initiated in month 10 of the project, we are in talks with a multinational in the forestry and agriculture sector with the aim to streamline their heavy machinery operations.
As Commissioner Moedas places emphasis on investment in innovation, we have demonstrated that by using these 7 core ingredients even modest investment in creative innovation can radically impact industry verticals. Think what you could achieve in a large scale pilot using these principles…
Aside from building Innovation Ecosystems through Stromatolite Innovation Lab and its spinoffs Music Tech Fest and #MusicBricks, Michela Magas is currently co-chairing Innovation Ecosystems Group for the EU Alliance of Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI), and co-writing the CAF Innovation Advisory recommendations for the H2020 Work Programme 2018/2019.
The image above is from FindingSomEthingBondingSoUnding – a project which uses EEG readers and the R-IoT microboard to detect neurofeedback in reaction to gesture, incubated to first level prototype through the #MusicBricks project. #MusicBricks has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 644871.