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Abstract: For a number of different reasons the cooperation between Digital Innovation Labs (e.g. FabLabs) and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is currently not being used to its full extent. This paper reports on the results of an applied research project in Italy and Austria that aims at supervising, stimulating and assisting the cooperation between Labs and SMEs with a number of pilot projects that have been executed on different locations in two countries. It sheds light on the challenges and direct as well as indirect benefits of such a cooperation for all involved partners. The findings of the specific projects are used to derive a generalized Cooperation Model for FabLabs and SME ("CoMod"). This model can be used to provide guidance to other Labs and SMEs to realize the benefits of a collaborative Innovation project. For the Knowledge Management community, the project demonstrates, that the collaboration between Labs and SMEs involves significant amounts of tacit knowledge, which can be made more visible using our model.
Keywords: FabLabs, collaboration, innovation, knowledge transfer, rapid prototyping, SME
1.Introduction
The cooperation between Digital Innovation Labs and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is currently not being used to its full extent. This paper subsumes different types of Labs under the term „Digital Innovation Labs" (or Labs for short). We include more production oriented Labs, aka Fab Labs as well as Labs that focus more on the innovation process or digital technologies. A common aspect of all relevant labs is their focus towards the creation of new and innovative products and services as well as the general availability for small and medium sized enterprises (SME). Mortaraa & Gontran (2016) give a good overview on the different type of Labs that are available for companies.
There seem to be a number of reasons that lead to this situation: (a) Despite the fact that Labs offer interesting resources and knowledge, SMEs are often not aware of those resources, sometimes not even of the existence of the Labs themselves. (b) Sometimes the SMEs do not know how they could initiate and successfully execute a project together with a Lab. (c) Likewise most of the Labs see themselves merely as a resource provider and not as a facilitator for the generation of new...