Open Innovation 2.0, the Refugee Crisis and EU Startups and Technology Entrepreneurs Ecosystem
After watching a BBC documentary yesterday about the refugee crisis in the EU, one question come to my mind, and it is
How can we use information systems, information and computer science, new media and informatics to tackle the refugee crisis in the EU?
Such a question led my thoughts to the ICT business ecosystem (including EU startups and technology entrepreneurs). Every day, I read of breakthrough technology, new services and products, new rounds of investments, new mergers, new exists and so on.
Journalists say it’s chaos in Europe. How can we reduce and manage the chaos? Very simply, by improving information flow across the system. And the ecosystem of ICT businesses has the necessary tools to handle and improve information flow to reduce confusion and inefficiency.
So knowing what we can do and having the tools to do it at our disposal, we have to ask these questions
· Are we doing anything?
· What can we do?
· Where can we start from?
· Who will do what?
· How do we organize to do it?
· And so on…
Currently, we as a society use available tools to sort out even more complex problems. The only difference is that sorting those problems can result in profits and company market valuations.
Does that mean that only those purposes can steer us as a society, or system?
The EU is talking about Open Innovation 2.0; I think this is great opportunity to test such a proposal.
According to the white paper, published by the EU
Open Innovation 2.O (OI2) is a new paradigm based on principles of integrated collaboration, co-created shared value, cultivated innovation ecosystems, unleashed exponential technologies, and extraordinarily rapid adoption. We believe that innovation can be a discipline practiced by many, rather than an art mastered by few.
Find the full document here
http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=2182
At the moment in the EU there are around 1.2m companies in high-tech manufacturing and knowledge intensive services, and there are more than 50,000 startup founders in the F6S database. Let’s say that each one can mobilize only one additional person. That enormous. Altogether, it’s probably one of the largest systems of ICT professionals in the world. At the same time Europe is facing the largest human crisis since WWII and its aftermath. I’m sure we can do something, especially if the OI2.0 ecosystem plugs in academia, government and the public.
In 1937 Joseph Needham (1), addressing theory of integrated levels, pointed out that:
The mechanism of an organization is found at the level below, its purpose at the level above.
So if we have purpose (which is the fundamental of every existing system in the world), organization, structure and process will emerge easily.
We can use the simple available free tools, such as Medium, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, we use every day to start an ecosystem that could tackle the current humanitarian crisis.
But the question is can/will we do it? Our actions will actually reflect our purpose.
Comments, ideas, actions?
(1) Needham, J. (1937) Integrative levels: a revaluation of the idea of progress. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
