Boosting innovation across sectors and borders

iStockphoto

Driving innovation across sectors and borders requires a shared foundation. ekip develops innovation policy recommendations based on Innovation Building Blocks the key factors an ecosystem needs to perform, such as funding, infrastructure, skills, and access to knowledge.

The aim for ekip is to create a common language and support structure that enables transformation across entire regions, while ensuring that Creatives are fully embedded as drivers of innovation, alongside other sectors.

“Within ekip, we have had to establish a shared basis so that we can collaborate across different innovation areas, industries, and geographical boundaries,” says Katarina Scott, Senior Developer at Future by Lund.
“This is essential when working with innovation ecosystems across Europe, where people come from different linguistic, cultural, and sectoral starting points.”

Revealing the Innovation Building Blocks

Innovation Building Blocks help clarify which elements are required to transform an area such as the right resources, effective infrastructure, and access to knowledge.

“Innovation Building Blocks is about identifying the ingredients needed in an innovation ecosystem,” Katarina Scott explains.
“It is a classic approach used by policymakers and company management to ensure that all necessary components are in place for development and transformation.”

This approach is not only relevant for innovation teams, but also when building innovation districts and cross-border collaboration environments that need to be attractive from a broad, international perspective.

By examining the building blocks, it becomes easier to identify what is missing, where the ecosystem is strong, and where hidden resources exist such as laboratories or testbeds that could be opened up to more people and sectors.

“It takes skills and capabilities to create environments where collaboration is natural, respectful, and forward-looking,” says Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth, Coordinator of ekip at Lund University.
“Places where interaction becomes constructive and genuinely fruitful.”

Resources are essential for innovation but they are not always found where you expect them to be, especially for Creatives.

“When resources are brought together and presented within a thematic area a portfolio they become more visible, more attractive to investors, and spark greater interest,” Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth explains.
“Universities often have lab infrastructures that are not easily accessible. But if we organize them collectively, they can become important building blocks for Creatives within innovation ecosystems.”

Policies with Different Goals

Working with Innovation Building Blocks has highlighted a key difference between cultural policy and innovation policy.

Cultural policy often focuses on supporting individual artistic work and productions. Innovation policy, on the other hand, focuses on what is created and how it can be scaled. While cultural policy protects artistic expression, innovation policy is concerned with how solutions can be multiplied, transferred, and applied elsewhere.

“One unexpected result from ekip is how clearly we see the tension between cultural policy and innovation policy,” says Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth.
“But this tension also creates opportunity.”

“If we can use both policy logics together for example by treating performing arts productions as testbeds for new technologies we may have found a new kind of superpower,” she adds.
“That simply gives us more building blocks to work with in the innovation ecosystem.”

ekip refers to this approach as Innovation by Production a way of innovating where artistic production is also used as a platform for developing solutions with scaling potential.