The first MARIE Stakeholder group meeting was on 16th May at the University of Tampere. The group of stakeholder members was collected from the key organisations related to the Open Innovation Platform policy but also with a close relationship with responsibility. The group consists of representatives from the City of Tampere, University of Tampere, Tampere Region Economy Development Agency Tredea, VTT, The Finnish Institute of Bioethics, The Federation of Finnish Enterprises, Ekokumppanit Oy and Council of Tampere Region.
The objective of the first meeting was to get together to get familiar to each other but also to talk about why the group exists. The group was built to discuss and develop a new more responsible innovation policy agenda in Tampere Region. During the first meeting we talked about the concept of RRI so that everyone has the same definition for it and understands it the same way.
An objective for the first meeting was also to engage the stakeholders for the development mentally. When hearing the other stakeholders telling about their RRI activities and news, it inspires also to start initiatives in your own organisation. It was also important to go thru the agenda and timetable of the MARIE project for the stakeholders to know what the following years will bring.
This first Stakeholder Group meeting started with a launch event which was an opening lecture of Globelics Academy. Globelics Academy brings together frontier researchers within innovation studies with PhD-students from developing countries, both to inspire and qualify their work and to help them to join high-quality research networks in their field of research.
The stakeholders were very actively participating to conversations related to RRI and what kind of projects and work is done around it in the region. Many of them had their own experiences and perspective for it which made the conversation fruitful and interesting. The group includes some members that are very professional in RRI which is also very good for the MARIE staff to learn from their experience. Mika Nieminen from VTT presented some of the tools created in projects related to RRI during the last years. It was very important to get to know what different organisations have been doing to be able to find the possible GPs outside the MARIE partnership.
Based on the Local Stakeholder Group meeting there are good and professional knowledge and experience on responsible research and innovation in Tampere region. Many stakeholder organisations have the same thematical issues in their focus. These interests are now put together in this group to provide a common understanding and vision on the regional RRI and how it should be improved in the future. The group will meet again in the end of this year.
