Royal Philips Electronics and VTT have opened an InnoHub in the city of Espoo, close to Helsinki to generate innovative ideas and translate these into profitable businesses. The two companies have an equal role in the cooperation. The InnoHub is situated in the Active Life Village (a non-profit company catalyzing innovations). This enables easy access to experts in other innovation organizations in the same building as well to the whole region, supporting strongly an open innovation environment concept.
It is envisaged as a one-stop shop for the entire innovation process, from generating ideas, to concept development, prototyping and testing of products and services. The real-life setting enables testing of products between various locations and stakeholders. Both multinational companies and SMEs can engage with the InnoHub’s experts and support services. All Nordic and Baltic companies are able to tap into Philips’ and VTT’s innovation experience for entire innovation projects as well as additional specialist support in certain phases of a project that has already started.
The innovation process steps will be executed in short-cycles. The insights of the various specialists operating in the different stages of the innovation process will be continuously fed back to the parties involved. InnoHub is focused on tangible deliverables that can be tested on their performance. By doing so, every specialist will be challenged to show the added value of his or her contribution, to confront others with their own constraints, and to cope with the limitations of others. This kind of result-oriented approach also leads to respect for each others’ disciplines in a learning organization.
Companies can benefit from the InnoHub by becoming members and paying a yearly contribution to obtain services or by commissioning ad-hoc projects. User-centric development and end-user validation testing prior to product release will help companies to reduce the time to market, development costs and field call rates. Current discussions concern projects on interconnectivity of products and services and a number of SMEs have shown an interest in conducting part of their innovation work in the InnoHub.