Session at Clusters 2007 - Global TCI Conference

The TCI Global Competitiveness Conference 2007 - this year hosted by Portland, Oregon, USA - featured a session on the Innovation Communication System, chaired by me.

The session introduced the novel concept of the Innovation Communication System (see original blog posts explaining this concept here and here) for the second time to the business cluster community. The first time was at the TCI Global Conference 2006, in Lyon, France.

Clustering is moving in the direction of regional innovation systems, so the concept should be extremely relevant. This assumption was confirmed by very positive reviews from the audience.

Here is how the session was presented in the conference program:

Clusters and innovation ecosystems are attention economies. There are a lot of ideas, but attention is scarce. Media and communicators are "attention workers," generating and trading public attention. They are key players in the "innovation communication system," a new central concept in clustering and competitiveness.

The panel represented various parties in the innovation communication system:

• Introduction/ presentation of the Innovation Communication System concept: David Nordfors, Stanford University
  
• Innovation Communication: Melissa Harris Thirsk, Waggener Edstrom, Seattle
  
• Innovation Journalism: Eric Eldon, VentureBeat, Silicon Valley
  
• National Innovation Policy: Jan Sandred, VINNOVA, Sweden
  
• National Cluster Initiative, including Innovation Journalism as a component: Amir Jahangir, CSF/USAID, Pakistan.

Cal State University puts Injo on curriculum

Here is some exciting news from Raul Reis, Associate Professor & Acting Chair of the Journalism Department at California State University, Long Beach. He has put Innovation Journalism on the curriculum for this autumn. Raul is a pioneer, this is the first time Injo is offered to undergraduates at a US University.

For more info, get in touch with Raul directly.

Raul's story about the Injo course in his own words:

The Department of Journalism at California State University, Long Beach, is offering for the first time this fall a course on Innovation Journalism. I had the idea to create and teach the course during the Fourth InJo conference at Stanford last May. To be honest, I didn’t know much about InJo before I attended the conference. I had heard the term before, but didn’t quite grasp what made the concept different from good, old-fashioned, news coverage of technology. I have to say that IJ-4 changed my perspective on InJo, and broadened my horizons on the topic. The most striking thing about InJo for me is its ability to approach innovation in a more holistic way, looking at how different aspects of the innovative spectrum overlap and complement each other. As a result, instead of looking at the latest gadgets or software programs as isolated end products, this wider approach to innovation tries to look at them in a more comprehensive way, examining each step that took to get to a particular technological advance; the impact that new technologies or products might have on society and the market; the political, social or environmental forces that might be at play; and even the overall benefits that might be accrued from this particular development. Moreover, InJo forces journalists and students to think outside the box, and cover not only technological developments, but also innovation in areas such as science and the environment, new social trends, creative government and public policy, and the business world, just to list the mot obvious ones. Since most of my students are advanced undergraduate journalism majors, many of them seniors, I wanted the course to be hands-on—instead of talking about InJo’s definitions, for example, I want them to be InJo reporters and editors. For this reason, the course is organized as a hands-on workshop, where students, working in pairs, produce multimedia packages that cover innovative developments, trends, products, and ideas. Those multimedia packages have to blend platforms and media, including video, photography, hypertext, graphics, and audio. The motto for the course is: “Instead of talking about innovation, show us innovation.” The students and I are also producing a web site, where all stories and packages will be posted, and a collective blog, an ongoing conversation about some of the issues and topics we discuss in class. Whenever needed, we take class time to work on different programs and software, to try to bring everyone to a similar technical level. Students have responded really well to this last point, with savvier students making themselves available as a resource for more tech-shy classmates. The department and faculty have been very supportive of this InJo initiative, because all of us understand the importance of media and technological convergence, and we want to prepare our students to face a marketplace that expects them to hit the ground running. I’m especially excited about this new field, and hopeful that this special course will be successful and translate into a permanent teaching and research area for us.

Course blog: http://innovationjournalists.blogspot.com/
Course web site: coming soon

Five Year Funding of Finnish Injo Fellowships

The Innovation Journalism Program at Stanford University will get more Finnish fellows for next five years. Helsingin Sanomat Foundation and Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, have agreed to pay the necessary fees, travel expenses and living costs for three Finnish Innovation journalism fellows per year for six months, starting February 2008. The total sum of money invested for five years is approximately 700.000 euros.

The announcement was made in Helsinki on Sep 20 by the President of the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation Heleena Savela (on the photo).

The five-year funding by the leading Finnish private media foundation and the government innovation foundation is another milestone for the growing recognition of the concept of innovation journalism and the program at Stanford. The success follows the work of Seppo Sisättö and Turo Uskali in spearheading innovation journalism in Finland.

The Finnish Injo-grants are aimed at professional journalists, who have worked at least five years. Journalists can apply the first three fellowships from the Foundation until 31 October 2007.

According to Foundation, by the end of September 2007, the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation has awarded grants in the amount of 3,329,470 euros. In all, 31 projects and undertakings are given support. The Foundation will further provide some one million euros in grant money this year.

Links:
http://www.hssaatio.fi/en/grants_announcements.html
http://www.hssaatio.fi/apurahat_ajankohtaista.html (in Finnish)
http://www.sitra.fi/en/About+Sitra/sitra.htm (Sitra)

Strategic Innovators (India) runs Innovation Communication Systems essay

The essay "PR and the Innovation Communication System" by Nordfors, is republished by "Strategic Innovators" ( July - Sept 2007, Volume I | Issue 3), a quarterly Indian refereed journal on contemporary strategic management trends. The essay is also available on Innovation Journalism (INJO-3-5).

The essay printed in "Strategic Innovators" is available here in pdf:
strategic%20innovators%20nordfors.pdf

"Strategic Innovators" is published by The IIPM Think Tank, an independent, India-centric research body, is inspired by Dr. M.K. Chaudhuri's vision of India as an economic powerhouse in the 21st century. The IIPM Think Tank is committed to enhance public awareness of policy issues an economics and management and to engineer solutions that will fulfill the 'Great India Dream'. By publishing the finding of its research, and though the active participation of its senior researchers in the media and policy, it aims to bring new knowledge to the attention of policy makers.

Strategic Innovators (India) runs Injo Essay

The essay "PR and the Innovation Communication System" by Nordfors (INJO-3-5) has been selected for publication by "Strategic Innovators" ( July - Sept 2007, Volume I | Issue 3), a quarterly Indian refereed journal on contemporary strategic management trends.

The essay printed in "Strategic Innovators" is available here in pdf:
strategic%20innovators%20nordfors.pdf

"Strategic Innovators" is published by The IIPM Think Tank, an independent, India-centric research body, is inspired by Dr. M.K. Chaudhuri's vision of India as an economic powerhouse in the 21st century. The IIPM Think Tank is committed to enhance public awareness of policy issues an economics and management and to engineer solutions that will fulfill the 'Great India Dream'. By publishing the finding of its research, and though the active participation of its senior researchers in the media and policy, it aims to bring new knowledge to the attention of policy makers.

Enterprise Estonia Injo page

Enterprise Estonia has published a page on Innovation Journalism, summarizing their activities in the field. The page is authored by Ene Kull, who is working on introducing the concept of innovation journalism in the Estonian innovation ecnomy. Enterprise Estonia is the national Estonian agency for innovation and entrepreneurship. Ene's Estonian Injo page is available here.

Eesti Pävalehti (Estonia) story on InJo

The Estonian journalist Tiit Kändler has published a story on the EJC Innovation Journalism Conference in the Estonian news outlet Eesti Päevaleht, including some comments about yours truly. PDF-version available here:
eesti%20injo%20070801.pdf

EJC to arrange more Injo conferences

Here is the executive summary of the conference "Innovation Journalism - Detecting Weak Signals". (originally posted by European Journalism Center - EJC who also have a comprehensive summary )

I want to thank the EJC for putting together a smashing three days at their headquarters in Maastricht. Under the helm of their visionary director, German broadcast veteran Wilfried Rütten, the EJC team brought together a very interesting group of people, maintaining interesting discussions around the clock for three days. It is great news that the EJC has decided to organize a second conference on Innovation Journalism, in 2008. Here is the summary in their words:

The tune of society’s conversation with itself sounds increasingly like punk rock music, said Stanford University researcher David Nordfors at the European Journalism Centre’s three-day conference on innovation journalism. Nordfors, who coined the phrase ‘innovation journalism’ in 2003, heads the Innovation Journalism program at Stanford, run by SCIL and VINNOVA.

To Nordfors, mainstream media today comes off a bit like a commercial rock band such as Led Zeppelin. And to the common man sitting way back in the cheap seats, such rock legends look and sound a bit out of focus.

More fun and accessible to the everyman are local punk bands, the indie groups rocking out in local public houses, he said. They are closer to real life, and much more direct in their message. And they don`t need big trucks for lighting and sound equipment to get their message across, thus making the point that everybody can “perform” if they have something vital to say. When “punk” first cropped up in the late seventies, many saw this as a paradigm change that turned music into a more democratic endeavor, away from big corporations and big money.

Innovation journalism, as Nordfors presented it at the July conference, is concerned with the paradigm changes of today, stressing the importance of technological innovations and addressing the necessity of media coverage of these developments. Innovation and innovation reporting are seen as catalysts for social transformations, tools by which innovations will become more readily disseminated across society.

For many present-day journalists working at traditional media outlets – and the concerned publishers eyeing their account ledgers – the idea of this a shift remains terrifying.

“A lot of journalists feel threatened within their traditional structures,” said Wilfried Rutten, director of the EJC.

More than 20 media experts from around Europe and the United States convened in Maastricht, the Netherlands, to discuss innovation journalism and the innovation ecosystem. The EJC partnered with the Amsterdam-Maastricht Summer University, Stanford and Deutche Welle to host the conference.

Most of the speakers, like Evgeny Morozov, the director of new media for Transitions Online, used their presentations to point out innovative developments in new media.

Morozov argued for the wisdom of the crowds, endorsing a bottom-up innovation process stemming from the diverse knowledge distributed among a growing number of people who are socially networking across the so-called blogosphere. Individual experts producing blogs, and the masses using use platforms such as Facebook, Flickr and YouTube, are further positive aspects of community.

“As technology gets smarter, paradoxically we see more and more emphasis put on the role of human interaction,” he noted.

Nordfors stressed the benefit of innovation in a democratic society and the need to understand the horizontal nature of innovation processes through innovation journalism, which treats innovation as a topic and follows its development across various wavelengths, be they technology, business, politics, etc.

In the vertically-structured newsrooms of today, it can be difficult to isolate the concept of innovation and add it as a buzzword to society’s daily dialogue.

Daniel Sokolov, a Vienna-based freelance journalist writing about tech and innovation news, advocated good, old-fashioned community involvement as a way to connect the dots of vertically-structured news beats. He pointed out the importance of talking about trends, trying to get a larger picture, crossing geographic borders. Journalists sometimes have an easier time spotting innovation in societies other than their own, he noted.

Sarah Schantin-Williams of IFRA Newsplex, a consulting group, pointed to several newsrooms, mainly the Daily Telegraph, which have recently reorganised in order to be more innovative. This reorganisation will allow them to be more up to date by focussing on a 24/7 updated news schedule the web allows. Moreover, by integrating more user comments, newspapers can widen their scope to be more inclusive of community aspects Also, by adding video, they are free to leave the narrow constraints of paper based information and can go for a richer and more engaging multimedia experience.

Newsrooms need to focus more on ideas and planning if they’re to produce multi-media packages, she said.

Deutsche Welle, the German broadcasting corporation that employs about 1,500 people from over 30 countries to produce programming in 30 languages, is trying to reach its audience on many platforms, said Wilfried Runde, the head of innovation projects.

Above all, Deutche Welle considers itself a content leader – not just a broadcaster, he said. Of increasing importance is considering how the DW product looks or sounds on various news aggregators and media players – be they iPods, mobile phones or laptop computers.

Stefan Jenzowsky, a Berlin-based marketing consultant formerly of Siemens, and Manfred Moormann, head of broadband entertainment and services at Telekom Austria, represented the telekom industries.

Jenzowsky drew inspiration from both Ron Hammer and the U.S. steel industry.
Mainstream media integrating new media into existing coverages can provide a platform for community, convergence and entertainment – a la Ron Hammer.
Mainstream media outlets need to integrate existing new media technologies into their coverages because integration provides, for any business, an insurance policy for the survival of the company, he said.

“Shares are traded on the assumption of the future performance of that company,”Jenzowsky said after chronicling the manner in which mini mills were able to become successful in the American steel market.
Moormann, who is best known for creating a platform for user-generated content in Engerwitzdorf, Austira, said that to him, innovation is foremost about finding economic applications for inventions. Inventions must have impact – like that of YouTube – if they are to be considered innovation.

Nearly all presenters lamented the lack of a business model mainstream media companies can employ in order to adapt to and be profitable in the innovation ecosystem.

Roland Strauss, a founder of the European Innovation Dialogue, said the image of innovation itself needs a makeover.

“Those who deal with it say innovation is the most important thing for our future – but the citizens don’t care,” he said.

The Mission of the EID – one of many groups trying to create networks of regional-level innovators in the interest of bringing their products or concepts to the EU level – is to be a one-stop shop for innovation – so key to achieving the goals laid out in the Lisbon Strategy of 2000. He spoke with great hope about developments in the works, such as the European Institute of Technology, a European answer to MIT.

Laws governing new media can seem at times about as clear as mud – and the lawyers and lawmakers the proverbial sticks in that mud. Michael Kams, an attorney from Hasche Sigle, and Eric Karstens, an expert in media regulation in the EU, held forth on legal constraints on innovation. Developing laws and policies which can roll with the times won’t be easy, both noted – but it is possible.

Most of the participants of the three-day conference in Maastricht, the Netherlands, came away with a positive view of innovation, EJC director Wilfried Rütten surmised.

He said that the EJC is likely to hold another innovation conference next year. A date has tentatively been set for early September.

Innovation Journalism Conference in Maastricht

Here is the documentary website of the INJO event in Maastricht, "Innovation Journalism: Detecting Weak Signals" organised by the European Journalism Center and Amsterdam Maastricht Summer University in collaboration with the Injo program at Stanford and Deutsche Welle.

Speakers at the event (in random order): Wilfried Rütten, Director, European Journalism Centre, Maastricht, David Nordfors, Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning, John Burke, World Association of Newspapers, Sarah Schantin-Williams, IFRA Newsplex, Jan Bierhoff, Director, European Centre for Digital Communication, Wilfried Runde, Head of Innovation Projects, Deutsche Welle, Marian Semm, IBM, Jörg Sadrozinski, Tagesschau Online, Stefan A. Jenzowsky, Trommsdorff + Drüner, Innovation + Marketing Consultants, Berlin. Former Vice President, Strate and Head of Business Innovation Siemens Communications, Manfred Moormann, Head of Broadband Entertainment and Services, Telekom Austria, Ekkehart Gerlach, Managing Director, Deutsche Medienakademie, Roland Strauss , European Innovation Dialogue, Strauss & Partners, Michael Kamps, CMS Hasche Sigle, Eric Karstens, European Journalism Centre, Daniel A.J. Sokolov, Journalist, Vienna, Evgeny Morozov , Director of New Media, Transitions Online, Prague

The EJC event site contains the program, summaries of talks and discussions, photos, videos etc, including the interview posted here below:

European Journalism Center - Injo Conference Press Release

Press release by EJC
Innovation Journalism: Detecting Weak Signals
Maastricht - 20 July 2007

The European Journalism Centre will from 25-27 July at Avenue Ceramique 50 host a group of media experts from Europe and the United States at its seminar, “Innovation Journalism: Detecting Weak Signals.”

“Innovation Journalism” is a major new concept shaping the future of the media landscape. It stresses the importance of technological innovations and addresses the necessity of better media coverage of these developments. Innovation and innovation reporting are seen by many as significant catalysts for social transformations. Innovation journalism can be a tool by which innovations will become more readily disseminated across society.

The conference will assess the impact of the early signals from the realm of innovation journalism and will look at the impact different actors in the innovation space can have on developments. It will also discuss the new ways in which information is now being generated and distributed by citizens and journalists alike.

The EJC has partnered with the Amsterdam-Maastricht Summer University, Stanford University and Deutsche Welle to bring about 15 industry experts to Maastricht for this three-day conference. Stanford’s David Nordfors, a pioneer of the concept of innovation journalism, will open the conference when he delivers the keynote speech at 3 p.m. Thursday.

The seminar will address in particular innovation developments within the European Union, seeking to identify what can be learned from both winners and losers in the innovation space. Discussions will also be held on integrating innovation into working newsrooms.

Speakers will include: Claude Erbsen of “Innovation Media Consulting”; Wilfried Runde, head of innovation projects at Deutsche Welle; John Burke of the World Editors Forum; Roland Strauss of the European Innovation Dialogue with Strauss & Partners; Rufus Pollock of Cambridge University; Marian Semm, a senior consultant for media and entertainment publishing at IBM; Manfred Moormann, the head of broadband services for Telekom Austria as well as speakers from Ernst&Young and KPMG.

To download the complete programme, click here.

Injo Conference in Slovenia

The documentation from the regional European Injo conference in Slovenia is now available online.

The conference was very well arranged and successful. It was attended by top people from all parts of the Slovenian innovation system, including influential journalists, business people, academics and politicians, not least the EU commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potocnik, who's speech at this event is available in the conference documentation and here.

The first Slovenian innovation journalism awards were presented at the event. Apart from those earlier presented on this blog, the big news was "The Golden Pen", which supports participation of a Slovenian journalist in the international Innovation Journalism Fellowship Program 2008. The prize is funded by the foundation Ad Futura.

The conference included presentations of the Slovenian innovation journalism projects funded by the Slovenian technology agency TIA, including some very stimulating work by Slovenian school children, who reported on innovation processes in their local community.

I was fortunate to be able to participate in the conference together with my colleague Jan Sandred, Injo Fellow 2004, now with the Injo program at VINNOVA in Sweden.

The conference was organized by Vibacom, headed by Violeta Bulc (picture).

EU Commissioner Potocnik: EU Needs Innovation Journalism

Here is a video of the EU Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potocnik, delivering a speech in favor of the concept of innovation journalism. The transcript is here as a web page, and here as a pdf: Potocnik-injo-speech-14June2007.pdf

The speech was made on thursday June 14 at the regional innovation journalism conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The conference, a part of the Slovenian innovation journalism initiative, was arranged by Vibacom, the company founded by Violeta Bulc, who is spearheading the introduction of the injo concept in Slovenia.

As Potocnik refers to in his speech, in February I had the pleasure of a one-on-one with him in Brussels. Violeta and John Hagard, Swedish ambassador to Slovenia, had raised his interest in injo, leading up to an invitation to me to go to Brussels and tell him more about it.

Why should he be interested? As society becomes more innovative, it makes sense that it becomes more important to communicate how knowledge becomes valuable for people.

Another reason for interest is concern: Europe is losing competitiveness in the global innovation economy. Here is a BBC story on it from a few days ago, including quotes by Potocnik. The Lisbon Agenda from March 2000 aims at making the European Union (EU) the most competitive economy in the world and achieving full employment by 2010, i.e. within less than four years from now. Innovation is the key component of it. But in January 2006, former Finnish PM Esko Aho presented the EU "Aho Group Report", sounding the alarm bell, saying that Europe is not on track.

In unusually straight language, the Aho report pointed at a large gap between political rhetoric about the knowledge society and the reality of budgetary and other priorities. It urged Europe’s leaders to take radical action on research and innovation "before it is too late".

Here is where Injo comes in: (check out the earlier post on this blog: Injo Elevator Pitch - Why Democracies Should Care). For a democratic society to focus on the innovation economy, independent journalism needs to cover it. But news rooms are usually organized as traditional production line organizations, where each news beat is a separate line. Innovation crosses the traditional news beats (tech, business, politics, culture news), and is therefore a difficult for traditional news organisations to cover. So even though innovation is the leading driver of economic growth, it will be under-represented in the news. This is a strong reason to why the stumbling progress of the Lisbon Agenda has not reached the broader public discussion in the EU. Everything looks fine on the surface in European society, while it is slowly loosing its edge.

Good independent innovation journalism could make it possible for EU citizens to discuss their competitiveness in the world economy, and enable the democratic processes in the EU to address the issue.