About ITEI
Fostering innovation is a cornerstone of ITEA 2. However, despite the abundant state of the art on innovation management we have found that there is not an established Software Innovation Body of Knowledge. To help in filling this gap, ITEI researchers are developing a framework to articulate the different methods, tools and approaches from the state of the art around an empirically identifi ed set of practice areas.
Moreover, we are searching solutions to assist companies in aspects of decision making within these innovation practice areas (e.g. deciding the degree of openness, how to stimulate the adequate culture between its people, how to create an environment that encourages the experimentation; how to focus the innovation process), and tailoring towards their specifi c context.
We are witnessing how companies are transitioning from the contemporary innovation model towards a more open innovation model. Innovation processes are opening up, through exchange and brokering of technology resources and through applying social innovation networks. The concept of an open innovation establishes relationships between a company and individuals, within and outside the company, that share knowledge, insights, ideas and have an interest in issues relevant to innovation.
Today’s enterprises can leverage their externally facing communities as a signifi cant source of competitive advantage. Thriving communities of customers, partners, and developers provide valuable customer, competitive and market intelligence. In addition, companies can save millions of euros in service and support costs through self-service knowledge portals, while improving customer and partner loyalty and developer mindshare.
ITEI researchers believe that a key to building a vibrant community is to power it by an adaptive community platform that can evolve with the needs of the community, emerging technology trends, and social behavior. An adaptive community platform is one that incorporates user-generated content through collaborative publishing, enables open content aggregation and syndication, and offers seamless integration with best-of-breed business process management, communication and web 2.0 technologies. Thus, the goal of the ITEI project is to produce a next-generation social enterprise collaboration platform, with a powerful intuitive user interface, offering a feature-rich, adaptive social platform with sophisticated and out-of-the-box collaborative working capabilities.
