Grin.co-creations
GrinCo is a project developed in the context of the “Dare to Challenge” workshop by Betty Tsakarestou in Panteion university of Athens, where we’ve been encouraged to challenge social circumstances and offer viable solutions to digital and physical communities through innovation. Our project aims to be the first local open innovation organization that works in a co-creation digital and physical environment. Our goal is to change consumption and production patterns in Greece from self-interest actions to community and worldwide interest actions by following the co-creation economic system. Our digital platform serves as a meeting point for stakeholders to brainstorm, share ideas and collaborate in our physical labs of creativity.
A social entrepreneur’s motives are, of course, what differentiate himself/herself from someone that falls under the broader definition of a “regular” entrepreneur. To elaborate further, as mentioned in an article by Roger L. Martin & Sally Osberg called: Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition, his/her motives can only be altruistic. This little yet huge detail is what I believe defines our team in general as well as myself as an individual. Creating value for the society as a whole “drowns” any of our ambitions aimed at making a personal profit.
Meanwhile, venturing down the rabbit hole of Dr. Tsakarestou’s course, meant that my team (Romana, Narine, Ivan, Jason) and I got familiar with UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and started debating about which one had triggered our interest the most.
Our choice was based on two criteria. First, the goal would need to be quite viable, even outside the class’ theoretical boundaries. Then, it would have to face head on certain social issues, which are relatable for every member of our group.
After many inconclusive conversations, we finally found our answer in the form of the twelfth SDG, defined by the Oslo Symposium in 1994. Sustainable consumption and production ( SCP) is about “the use of services and related products, which respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life while minimizing the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as the emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle of the service or product so as not to jeopardize the needs of further generations”.
Fundamental problems that are important to us, such as renewable energy sources, unemployment, environmental pollution and the financial crisis, as well as flaws in business and finance models were addressed by this single goal that we believe can leave the lasting impact we wish to pursue. Additionally, the necessity to achieve this goal is respected both globally and domestically. As proof of SCP’s worldwide appeal, at Rio+20, Heads of State strengthened their commitment to accelerate the shift towards SCP patterns with the adoption of the 10-Year Framework of Programs on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns (10YFP), in paragraph 226 of the Outcome Document «The future we want».
Regarding the Greek reality, during the 2nd European Conference on Public Innovation Contracts, Yorgos Stathakis, Greece’s Minister of Finance, talked about the Fund of Funds, which is being co-created by Greece’s Ministry of Finance, Growth and Tourism and the European Commission and intends to use up 320 million euros from the European Investment Bank and the ESPA to reinforce collaborations between the research and business communities, in order to combat issues caused by the low amount of investments in our country’s innovation sectors, as well as the “brain drain” phenomenon.
The situation in Greece.
The necessity to create sustainable consumption and production patterns was recognized by the Observatory of Financial and Social Updates which part of The Labor Institute of the Greek General Confederation of Labor.
In its twenty-eighth study called “Financial crisis and productive restructuring in Greece: The role of the processing Industry”, published in February 2014, authors Yorgos Argeitis and Maria Nikolaidi underline the two main issues this sector is facing. Lack of Investments and a technological handicap.
Investment inadequacy
The data in Chart 1 show that the share of manufacturing investment in total investment in the economy is the lowest among the EU-15 countries. Specifically, during the 1995–2009 period, it averaged 7.2%, when in almost all other countries the figure exceeded 10%.
Chart 2 shows that in the period from 1995 to 2009 investment in high and medium industries to high tech ranged weighted average in Greece close to 15% of the GVA of these sectors. This rate is generally low compared to other EU-15 countries, but not one of the worst performers What, however, of particular importance is that, as seen in Figure 3, the fixed capital investment in high and medium to high-tech industries is not temporal, as a percentage of GVA, significantly higher than those in low-tech industries.
This is particularly important because it seems to interpret the failure of the high and medium to high-tech sectors in Greece to gain a strong position in the manufacturing industry in the country and to play a key role in the growth of GVA, employment and net exports.
The data in Chart 4 reinforce the view that manufacturing investments in high and medium to high-tech sectors lag significantly in Greece. As we can see, the share of these investments in total manufacturing investment during the 1995–2009 period was almost always lower than the proportion of investment in low-tech industries
The slow technological transformation of Greek processing certainly relates largely to the specific structure of investments.
Summarizing the above, through the evidence presented it appears that, during the course of the past two decades, the processing industry in Greece was not able to enter a phase of dynamic growth and investment reinforcement. The desired increase of investments in high-tech sectors was limited, which seems to explain to a considerable extent the rigid technological transformation of manufacturing output in the country.
It is noteworthy that in these high and middle to high-tech industries some growth in investments was observed that led to a degree of positive performance, particularly with regards to the figures relating to net exports. This is an indication that the significant increase of investments in these sectors could have significant benefits for the trade balance of processing and the global economy in general.
The technological gap and its characteristics
The Greek economy as a whole is defined by big deficits in terms of investment in technology, innovation and research. This is clearly shown in Figures 5, 6 and 7. The costs for research and technological development (RTD) in Greece is the lowest among the EU-15 countries (Chart 5). In particular, during the 1988–2007 period, RTD spending as a percentage (%) of GDP was equal to 0.5% in Greece on average, when in the EU-15 the same figure was much higher (1.84%).
The overall poor performance of Greece in technology and innovation manifested in the number of Greek triadic patents filed in 2008. Overall, there were only 1.2 per 1 million of population, while the average in EU-27 was 29.7 (see. Figure 6).
In addition, researchers in Greece take up a very small percentage of total employment, lagging considerably in comparison to the average in the EU-15 (Figure 7). Based on averages gathered from the period of 1995 to 2007, researchers in RTD in Greece account for 0.37% of total employment, when in the EU-15 the percentage is 0.63%. This handicap appears to be related to the low number of researchers in enterprises. In the government and higher education, the number of researchers shows no major deviation from the average for the EU15. This fact reflects the lack of relevant investments from the business sector, which has resulted in low utilization of the country’s human resources in research related to technology and innovation.
How to face this challenge
At this point we know what we want to do and what we want to produce but do not know how we will. Many ideas and business models have been proposed that do not cover our needs for business sustainability, social impact or the ability to overcome the difficulties mentioned above, until we started to look at the idea -business model of co-creation.
With co- creation we could overcome the lack of investments.-The majority of investments goes to research and creation and with the business model of co-creation, research and creation is done with community involvement and we could address the brain drain phenomenon in the country, enabling expression of creative minds.
And of course we could change the consumption and production patterns of the Greek industry through our presence or by creating a competitive environment in the Greek reality that will lead to increased investments in innovation and research.
What is co-creation?
Co-creation is defined as the practice of collaborative product or service development: developers and stake-holders working together.
Co-creation is a form of Open Innovation: ideas are shared, rather than kept to oneself. It is closely connected to — and mentioned alongside — two other buzz-words: ‘user-generated content’ and ‘mass-customisation’.
Over the past decade or so an enormous amount of knowledge has become accessible, changing traditional business processes and the way companies innovate. Also, educated consumers want more involvement with the products they buy. On top of that, the ‘1% Rule’ is now emerging: it is found that 1% of people in any community generate the majority of the creative output in that group. Many co-creation initiatives have been launched to deal with this changing world and some have been successful for some time, but for most companies, co-creation is pretty new. Opening-up can be scary: most companies hesitate to share ideas and strategies with people that are not on their pay-roll. Quite a natural reaction, but in the end it’s the results that count: new products, new profit pools, new ways of thinking, new energy. Unfortunately though, co-creation is not a silver bullet. There is simply no such thing as an air-tight innovation process: there’s no guarantee that ideas will succeed. What you will always get out of it though, are great meetings of minds, fresh perspectives on business and inspiring ideas that will guide you in the right direction. So why not:
- Unlock the world outside and bring it inside- Cross-pollinate with other industries
- Connect and bond with partners, customers, consumers
- Identify good stuff out there
- Develop breakthrough new ideas
- Bring excitement to the floor
THE FOUR TYPES OF CO-CREATION
There are many ways to go about Co-creation, and which to choose depends on the challenge and objectives at hand. There is always 1 initiator, i.e. the party that decides to start the initiative.
This can be a company or just a single person. One (or many) contributors will be joining along in the process, but the initiator determines who can join and under what conditions. There are two central dimensions that define types of Co-creation:
Open-ness: Can anyone join in or is there a selection criterion somewhere in the process?
Ownership: Is the outcome and challenges owned by just the initiator or by the contributors as well?
These two dimensions lead to the 4 main types of Co-creation:
Club of Experts, Crowd of People, Coalition of Parties and
Community of Kindred Spirits
gClub of experts.
The ‘‘Club of Experts” style of co-creation is best suitable for very specific, time-pressured challenges that demand expertise and breakthrough ideas. Contributors meet certain specific participation criteria and are generally found through an active selection process. Quality of input and chemistry between participants are key to success. ‘No-box’ thinkers are the ones you want to have in any project.
Crowd of People.
Also known as “Crowdsourcing”, this form is all about the Rule of Big Numbers: anyone can join. For any given challenge, there might be a person ‘out there’ with a brilliant idea that deserves considering. Using online platforms, people can rate and respond to each other’s suggestions. There is often a marketing and seeding component/objective attached to the process. Crowdsourcing
Coalition of Parties
In certain complex situations, a “Coalition” of parties team up to share ideas and investments (Co-branding is also an example of
Coalition-style co-creation). Each of the parties brings a specific asset or skill to the party. Technical breakthroughs and the realization of standards often happen only when multiple parties collaborate — especially important when capital expenditures are high. Key success factors include sharing knowledge and creating a common competitive advantage.
Community of kindred spirits.
The “Community” form is most relevant when developing something for the greater good. Groups of people with similar interests and goals can come together and create. This model — so far — works mostly in software development and leverages the potential force of a large group of people with complementary areas of expertise
What is grin.co-creations?
To summarize, at this point our team knew:
Why we do what we do: To ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns that improve the quality of life and challenge today’s status quo.
How will we do it: by co-creation, as the practice of collaborative product or service development
And what we are going to produce: products that improve the quality of life according to the guidelines of RIO-20
So how exactly our project will work.
1) Community. First of all we must create a community. Our Grin.co-creations.org platform will provide the digital space, with the right atmosphere to achieve results so that creative minds can connect and create.
2) Selection. Every three months one idea for a product will be chosen by our team and the community after voting. This idea will be our number one goal with all the creative minds working together in a co-creation experience.
3) Creative rights. Every participant will hold on his creative rights depending on his or her contribution to the product .
4) Manufacturing. Every part of the product will reach the consumer in a kit-box with full instructions for assembling. In cases of a big need of products local micro factories will be created
5) Repeat steps 2) 3) and 4) again and again
Naturally, our project is just getting started but our team (Romana, Narine, Ivan, Jason and me) seems to have the necessary knowledge and drive to turn into a reality. Besides we have the help of our fellow students in the «Dare to challenge, creative lab» and our mentor Mrs. Betty Tsakarestou. Soon more stories of our progress and ideas will come to fill in any questions and explain in a better way our work.
