
OPEN INNOVATION AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
- On 02/10/2018
The skills in the field of international development and the resources available are often not sufficient or adequate to face a correct selection of the different available technologies, nor to implement viable solutions directly applied in every context in each country around the world.
In the areas of development cooperation intervention, the constraints are more stringent than in other contexts and the recommendation of solutions should come from a broader and participatory process rather than from the traditional process of the commercial sector.
The suggested approach of the OPEN INNOVATION applied to the field of the international development goes towards willing to design and develop, for example, an Open Innovation platform able to promote the co-creation of solutions, the reuse of existing technologies, local development and implementation and, finally, the replicability of good practices.
All this with the clear objective of facilitating the dialogue between the world of technology and organizations working in the field of international development, in particular those operating in difficult geographical areas, emphasizing local needs and transferring them to a wider audience of potential actors, even individuals, who have developed insights about a possible solution or know an efficient one from previous experiences.
It will therefore be intended to promote the study of action models and pilot projects to test new technological solutions in the field of international development and social innovation.
Then, promote the re-use and adaptation of existing technology products and services in the countries targeted by the development initiatives of non-governmental organizations and research entities and commercial companies, for example.
It is therefore essential, at this point, also to promote the use of data mining (which is set of techniques and methodologies that have as their main goal the extraction of useful information from large amounts of data – eg databases, data warehouses etc …-, through automatic or semi-automatic methods, scientific, business / industrial or operational use of the same ones) applied to social innovation and international development, promoting a coalition between the stakeholders from the international development and industry or business in general.
OPEN INNOVATION wants to promote a culture of innovation (represented by research laboratories and manufacturers of digital engineering, start-ups, incubators and research centres) in the areas of interest of organizations working in the same field, in this case in international development.
Compared to the above, the initiatives should be developed around four thematic areas with perhaps related pilot projects: Digital Fabrication, Open Innovation, Data for innovation and social development and training, information, scouting of local innovators.
The challenge of innovation (technology) for development is first of all a cultural challenge, on which NGOs, commercial entities and research bodies can play a role of propulsive actors and catalysts.
GENERAL OBJECTIVE of the Open Innovation as helpful approach for the International development is to spread the culture of innovation across the world, with particular attention to the transformative potential of ICT for development, favoring the meeting and exchange among multidisciplinary subjects (companies, NGOs, foundations, universities , research centers …) and bringing out the local innovative realities, already operating in the countries of the Global South!
SOURCE: http://www.crisscrossed.de/data/10_trends_in_open_innovation.epub