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Sharing Experience Europe - Policy Innovation Design

Thematic Workshop Cieszyn

On 4 and 5 November 2010, the SEE partners and their regional government representatives travelled to Cieszyn in Southern Poland for the fourth project workshop. Hosted by the Silesian Castle of Art & Enterprise, the theme for this event was ‘Bringing innovative ideas to the market more quickly’ and combined presentations from leading European innovation programmes as well as the hands-on workshop sessions. This topic was chosen because it is one of the priorities under the Regions for Economic Change, of the European Commission:

“Bringing innovative ideas to the market more quickly: SMEs operate more and more in international markets and also need to adapt more quickly to global developments. The capacity to adopt new technologies and methods (sometimes developed through research) is key for competitiveness, yet is still hampered by a range of factors.”

During the course of the workshop, we were able to highlight how design can contribute to bringing ideas to the market by exploring the use of design and its capacity for transforming ideas/research into products and services, and understanding how governments have been promoting it.

The first session featured five presentations:

The challenge of innovation – and why we should take the risk [Alexander Grots / Gravity Europe / Germany]

Accelerating innovation: From university projects to big businesses [Jonathan Ball / Design Associate / Design Council / UK]

Tuli-programme, experiences from Finland 2008-2010 [Sami Heikkinemi / Tekes / Finland]

Launching great design is frightening [Sergey Dmitriev / Sea Xray AS / Norway]

How to bring innovative idea to the market - Litracon experience [Aron Losonczi / Litracon Kft / Hungary]

During the interactive workshop on the second day, the partners unfolded in some detail various case studies of how design has played a role in bringing innovations to market, the development process that might have been followed and the part that government intervention can play in possibly improving this.