Good practice:

Research and Innovation Service Pathway strengthening the Regional Innovation Capacity

The need to develop customer-centred service models especially for publicly owned research and innovation infratructures (RIIs) has been identified in many European, national and regional contexts. Design of service models should build on close collaboration with all quadruple helix stakeholders, i.e. businesses, public sector, academia and ultimately also citizens. The co-created service models embed the required agility for wider utilisation of RIIs among all ecosystem stakeholders as well as intense and continuous capacity building of talents.

RII Service Pathway for TAMK FieldLab describes the service model towards customer-oriented co-creative guidance throughout the test before invest pathway as part of the wider Sustainable Industry X (SIX) initiative. Developed good practise aims to increase industry competitiveness and it is implemented by opening university-based infrastructures for wider use and to jointly deploy agreed service model creation process.

Main stakeholder and beneficiary of the practice is the manufacturing industry in Tampere Region, especially the SMEs and midcap companies. Feedback from the RII service model creation process and pilot results highlight the importance of open research and innovation environments. Specific features of the RII service model arising from the needs of the quadruple helix stakeholders include transparency, ensuring long-term capabilities, dynamics and funding, ecosystem creation and risk sharing.

Strategic commitment of all organisations and the related allocated human resources for co-creation, co-design and continuous implementation.

Successful service model creation process, pilot results and received feedback imply that bridging the gap between research and innovation can be achieved. Key elements of RII service model creation process were well adapted, pilot results and key learnings were shared and evaluated. RIIs must become self-sustained and recognised value providers in the region’s innovation ecosystem. This can only be achieved by continuous development of their business and service models

Industry should be encouraged more to exploit regional RII resources and services. Simultaneously, RII owners need to build and align their offering towards service orientation. This good practise describes one way of describing the collaboration with RII users in form of service pathway process description. It promotes customer orientation and the understanding that users are in different level of expertise and experience, having different ambition levels. Thus, each customer requires different services in terms of support and timeline. In addition, more ambitious level of joint use of expertise and equipment must be extended to cover all RII providers in the region, country and even abroad. Widely implemented the good practise provides huge potential in terms of learning, innovation and growth solutions.