Keywords

1 Introduction

According to the latest European innovation scoreboard, the EU’s average innovation performance has improved [1]. Although for the first time the EU’s performance has surpassed the USA, yet still China, Canada, Australia and Japan maintain a performance lead over the EU. In order to improve the innovation performance, the European countries should pay special attention to open innovation (OI)—one of the most important components of the European innovation system, “where all stakeholders need to be involved and create seamless interaction and mash-up for ideas in innovation ecosystems” [2]. A good example of companies strongly relying on external innovation is Google, Apple or Amazon— “according to BCG’s, Most Innovative Companies 2019 Report, 75% of the top 50 most innovative companies use incubators, 81 per cent leverage academic partnerships, while 83 per cent partner with other companies” [3].

Experiences gained from a number of research and industrial projects carried out in Central Europe (CE) lead to a conclusion that support for innovation is still rather limited in the scope, transnational cooperation is relatively poor, and there are still many barriers hindering industrial companies (especially SMEs) from cooperating with universities and research organizations [4,5,6]. The traditional, “local-based”, approach to innovation development and technology transfer does not support efficiently companies operating in advanced manufacturing (AM) sector. Therefore, to overcome the innovation barriers in CE regions, where AM is a strong branch of economy, it is particularly important to support industrial companies with providing the “innovation-friendly ecosystem” based on OI paradigm [7]. Development and implementation of models, tools and methods enhancing OI in advanced manufacturing is especially crucial, due to the reason that such solutions are—so far—rather limited and only fledging in Central European industrial companies. The flagship industrial examples of products developed on the OI basis include Zortrax M200—professional desktop 3D printer [8], Olli—the smart, safe and sustainable vehicle [9] or LM3D—the first highway-ready, 3D-printed car [10].

2 Literature Review on Open Innovation Phenomena in Terms of Advanced Manufacturing

One of the major challenges in modern manufacturing is the implementation of sustainable and at the same time innovative manufacturing systems [11]. According to Dassisti et al., one of the crucial goals of sustainable manufacturing (SM) is the development of innovative manufacturing processes and systems [12]. Zindani et al. indicate “three pillars that define the term sustainability: social directions, economic factors and environmental concerns” [8]. As Rauter et al. underline “innovation plays a crucial role by fostering a greater level of sustainability in company activities” [13]. “Many studies highlight the importance of innovation for sustainability as well as the goals of sustainable development” [14]. Hence, as social directions and innovation are of great importance for SM, it can be stated that, although in the literature countless ways and models for innovation development can be found, currently, in the era of Industry 4.0, it seems that the most adequate solutions supporting innovativeness of manufacturing companies are those based on OI and Open Innovation 2.0 (OI 2.0). OI can be defined as “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively” [15], whereas according to publications of European Commission, OI2.0 is “a new paradigm based on a quadruple helix model where government, industry, academia and civil participants work together to co-create the future and drive structural changes far beyond the scope of what any one organization or person could do alone. This model encompasses also user-oriented innovation models to take full advantage of ideas’ cross-fertilization leading to experimentation and prototyping in real-world setting” [2].

Business models which are based on open innovation paradigm are still shaping, and hence, there is a requirement to perform research towards building a dedicated environment, where companies could fully benefit from the new phenomena, tools and methods based on i.a. sharing economy, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and micro-working. This approach is also consistent with the concept of the regional innovation system, in which the innovation process is considered as a social phenomenon involving various regional actors [4]. It is based on the assumption that there is a subsystem generating the knowledge (science) as well as a subsystem exploiting the knowledge economically (economy) in order to contribute to the competitiveness of a whole region [16,17,18,19]. Important factor from the innovativeness point of view is also internationalization, due to the reason that combining different national competencies leads to release of innovation capabilities [20]. What is more, as Ahuja et al. underline, a very important element of sustainable and innovative manufacturing is human factor [21], which directly corresponds to the quadruple helix innovation model [22]. Therefore, it is expected that involving representatives of society in the manufacturing processes and facilitating them bottom-up activities will lead to enhancement of innovativeness of industrial companies. These activities may be for instance social product development [23, 24] or micro-working, which is a new form of working beyond organizational boundaries, created mostly by social media technologies, in which engagement in work is posted by organizations or individuals on a web-based and third-party platform in exchange for monetary remuneration [9, 25].

Last but not least, aspect related to open innovation environment creation is a concept of sharing economy [26], which has become widespread globally as an innovative service business model [27]. It can be defined as the “acquisition or distribution of a source coordinated by people for compensation or a certain fee” [28] or as “an umbrella term that describes an emerging consumption trend: online peer-to-peer economic activities for sharing among consumers through intermediary service firms” [27]. From an advanced manufacturing point of view, this business model is interesting not only in terms of competences and skills sharing, but especially in terms of industrial research infrastructure sharing because it may result i.a. in lowering the costs of infrastructure usage, increasing turnover, thanks to easier investment decision and testing advanced technologies without necessity to buy them first. The literature analysis and research performed within a number of European projects lead to a conclusion that creating a real living open innovation environment and supporting technology transfer in advanced manufacturing need bottom-up initiatives and activities.

3 Research Methodology

The main aim of this paper is to present, analyse and asses selected bottom-up models and approaches developed for enhancing open innovation and technology transfer in advanced manufacturing in Central Europe. In order to reach the defined goal, a research methodology has been developed and schematically presented in Fig. 1. Following the presented methodology, the research discussed in this paper is focused on analysis of three Central European projects dealing with technology transfer enhancement and support of OI environment development. According to Fig. 1, the three investigated projects will be introduced—namely SYNERGY, TRANS3Net and NUCLEI (all co-funded from Interreg Central European programme).

Fig. 1
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Scheme presenting research methodology

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Next, the models developed within each project and their implementation in the form of tools will be presented. Afterwards, an analysis of the tools will be performed, followed by the analysis of the event formats developed in each project. Finally, the conclusion will be formulated on the basis of the executed comparison. Each of the abovementioned projects was established as a bottom-up initiative of Central European consortium partners. In total, the analysis covers 12 regions from 8 countries. A list of countries and regions involved in each analysed project is presented in Table 1.

Table 1 Countries and regions involved in each analysed project
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The first investigated project will be SYNERGY (08.2017–10.2020), which stands for “synergic networking for innovativeness enhancement of Central European actors focused on high-tech industry”. SYNERGY’s main goal is to enhance innovativeness in European regions through strengthening linkages and beyond border cooperation to create synergy between SMEs, industry, research, intermediaries and policy-makers. The project scope is mainly oriented on advanced manufacturing with a special focus on the most promising modern industrial technologies. SYNERGY follows the quadruple helix innovation model [22], due to the fact that project partners represent not only entities based on triple helix innovation model—4 higher education and research institutions, 1 SME, 2 business support organizations and government as an associated partner, but also the project aims at direct involvement of the society through implementation of crowdsourcing, crowd funding and micro-working tools and pilot actions [7].

The second analysed project will be TRANS3Net (07.2016–09.2019)—“Increased effectiveness of transnational knowledge and technology transfer through a trilateral cooperation network of transfer promotors”. Its main objective was to shape conditions for building up a well-working innovation system in tri-national regions of border area between Germany, Czech Republic and Poland which is characterized by a low level of transnational cooperation between science and industry. TRANS3Net aimed at establishing strong ties and a self-sustaining cooperation between all key players relevant for knowledge and technology transfer and development of solutions overcoming the multifaceted obstacles concerning transnational cooperation [29].

NUCLEI (07.2016–06.2019) stands for “network of technology transfer nodes for enhanced open innovation in the Central European advanced manufacturing and processing industry”. The main aim of the NUCLEI project was to establish a transnational innovation management model in Central European regions and to create a transnational pool of knowledge that supports advanced manufacturing innovation beyond regional borders. Moreover, NUCLEI’s purpose was to assess the “distance-to-target” between the actual needs and technological interests of advanced manufacturing industrial companies and the technology transfer services currently provided by the selected excellence nodes concerned in the project [5, 30].

4 Analysis of Models

As presented in the research methodology scheme, after short introduction of SYNERGY, TRANS3Net and NUCLEI, the models developed within each project and their implementation in the form of tools will be discussed. Each model has been developed to support technology transfer and open innovation in advanced manufacturing in a little bit different way. Within SYNERGY project, the main tool that has been developed is synergic crowd innovation platform (SCIP). It is combined with the matchmaking tool, which enables the user to search, profile, cluster and reach innovation-oriented organizations based on their activities and experience gained from successful project realizations in order to enhance networking and linking regional actors from research, industry and intermediaries. SYNERGY’s approach is based on open innovation rules and especially, the quadruple helix innovation model. TRANS3Net is focusing mainly on enhancing knowledge and technology transfer in cross-border regions through direct linking “transfer promotors”. The implementation of this approach was done i.a. through development of two IT tools, namely (1) map of transfer promotors and (2) innovation web portal. NUCLEI on the other hand, aiming at changing the traditional innovation management services for Central Europe advanced manufacturing industries from a “local-based” support approach to a transnational pool of knowledge supporting innovation in businesses beyond own regional borders [5], developed two supporting tools—(1) transnational web-ATLAS and (2) technology digital periscope. Table 2 presents technological areas assigned to each project.

Table 2 Table captions should be placed above the tables
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Developed within SYNERGY project SCIP (http://synergyplatform.pwr.edu.pl) is a platform ensuring crowdfunding and crowdsourcing for innovative solutions for the Central European society. The platform is also implementing micro-working, which is an approach where community solves smaller tasks which are then reassembled into an overall result at the end. The SCIP enables its users to take part in a number of pilot actions including: “Simulated crowd funding”, “Vouchers for research and innovation projects”, “Rent-a-robot”, “Crowd innovation for companies”, “Design and prototype a model”—presenting a social product development approach. What is more, the tool contains the database of the high-tech infrastructure located in Central European regions and offers a possibility of infrastructure sharing through matchmaking the owners with those looking for the easy access to the advanced technologies.

Developed within TRANS3Net project, the map of transfer promotors (http://map.trans3net.eu) is an online tool including descriptions of transfer-promoting institutions that support science and industry in the implementation of collaborative research projects and in transferring knowledge and technology. It provides an overview about which of these actors are available in a geographical area and what they can contribute to such collaboration processes [31]. The second tool, the innovation web platform, includes the so-called technology profiles that describe available research results in a short, understandable and application-oriented way targeting mainly SMEs. Technology profiles serve as starting points for collaboration between science and industry [32].

Transnational web-ATLAS developed within NUCLEI project is a map that consists of the selected research institutions, small, medium, large enterprises and intermediaries. All entities are displayed with a pin on the map of Europe. The project has decided to colour code the pins according to the business field and to the technology field, respectively. The first map shows an overview of the entities, and the different colours mark the five technologies field addressed by NUCLEI. The tool has been created on the basis of pool of excellence. The second NUCLEI solution is technology digital periscope, being a “tool to support and speed-up the access to the existing state-of-the-art R&D results and products by their systematization and exportability. Results included in the periscope are from the field of advanced manufacturing and processing industry. Results cover highly important key enable technologies (KET) such as robots, production processes, ICT, electronics, modelling and visualization” [33]. If analyse all types of information which have been collected and then introduced to the abovementioned tools, they can be grouped into four main categories: organizations, projects, research results and infrastructure. Current records registered in the discussed tools are presented in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2
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Number of records in particular tools

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Analysis of Fig. 2 shows that the biggest number of records can be found in the SYNERGY’s tool—579 (289 organizations, 253 projects and 37 infrastructures). Second score refers to organizations which can be found in NUCLEI’s web-ATLAS (250). TRANS3Net project has identified 83, while NUCLEI 119 ready to commercialize research results. It needs to be clearly underlined however that all the abovementioned tools need users (critical mass) to be successful. As number of different platforms in Central Europe and worldwide is increasing rapidly, meta platforms creation should be considered. It would be much easier for a company if the knowledge and information which is so far dispersed in many sources could be approached from one meta platform. Nevertheless, bottom-up approach represented in all three projects shows that different types of organization see a common problem of hidden information locally and define a need of sharing this knowledge transnationally through online channels. Thus, particular networks of partners and their stakeholders start to become more open to international collaboration. It is especially important in advanced manufacturing sector which is quite specific and by definition rather reluctant to openness. All three discussed projects followed a holistic approach of creating an effective and innovative cooperation environment, therefore not only tools have been developed, but also dedicated event formats. Hence, another bottom-up approach investigated in this research is different event prototypes which were designed, developed and tested within the presented projects. Their role was i.a. to support efficient implementation of the abovementioned tools. Apart from other types of events, SYNERGY project developed and tested design thinking idea meetings and simulated sharing networking workshops, TRANS3Net project designed and implemented—TRANS3Net.visit, TRANS3Net.show, TRANS3Net.training and TRANS3Net.dialogue, whereas NUCLEI project proposed and validated–Open Seminars and Transnational Working Tables. Table 3 presents statistics of the particular events.

Table 3 Number of participants in particular events
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In total, within these events, the presented projects reached 1713 participants representing different target groups—i.a. SMEs, large companies, regional and national authorities, business support organizations (BSO) and higher education and research institutions. It can be stated that such initiatives are required to create living and working linkages of actors operating in advanced manufacturing in Central Europe. Especially, BSO and research organizations should be the responsible for creating trustworthy environment where together with companies’ innovations can be developed and technology efficiently transferred.

5 Conclusions

The main conclusion from the presented research is that different types of organizations see the common need to share the information about their resources, competences and experience transnationally. To answer this requirement, a number of tools and events have been created and validated within Central European projects. Next step should be an integration of this knowledge to make it easily available from one source for all potentially interested actors. What also needs to be underlined is that “cross-cultural understanding is the key to open innovation in an increasingly international setting” [3]. Participation of Central European entities in international or transnational networks can significantly enhance their level of innovativeness. It is expected that the tools and events presented in this paper will contribute to development of OI environment, technology transfer and support of sustainable manufacturing in Europe by:

  • closing the knowledge gap: due to a lack of both financial and human resources, the target groups (mainly SMEs) are struggling to track developments in advanced manufacturing,

  • promoting of new technologies and integration in new value chain,

  • supporting companies in becoming factories of the future by providing the necessary tools for responding to changing conditions and business model levels,

  • sharing knowledge, resources and exchanging experiences as an important basis for mutual learning, networking and efficient cooperation.