Involving Students in Ideas Generation - a Bulgarian Case

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to make the researchers community familiar with the approach for involvement of students of the Technical University -- Sofia with ideas generation in a special Innovation Lab created by a leading Telecom operator. At the same time, it is a best practice example of the university -- business collaboration in innovation, involving also partners of the Telecom operator as mentors and facilitators. Such collaboration model needs to be explored and multiplied for strengthening stakeholders' collaboration and fostering building a real national innovation system. Therefore, the paper tries to present the case focusing in particular on the structure and roles in the Innovation Lab, and the methodology followed by the students' teams.

Headnote

Abstract: It is widely accepted that in the knowledge-based economy, knowledge and information have become key factors for success and competitiveness. At policy level in Europe are taken specific measures to boost research and innovation, and to take advantage of technology development world-wide. A long way was passed since the first innovation concepts emerged, and we are witnessing today rapid changes of business models of enterprises, changed perceptions and activities of users. With the development of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 applications, companies have many opportunities to gather opinions and ideas from their users and other interested stakeholders for the development of new products and services, as well as to get insight on users' behaviour and preferences. This helps organisations to take advantage of the 'wisdom of the crowd'. The changes in innovation models, and in particular the concept of open innovation attract the attention of researchers and practitioners. Many studies are devoted to these topics, whereas some focus on lead users involvement, others consider the living labs approach, while third present the ideas generation practice. The ideas competitions often focus on involving young people in innovation and taking advantage of their creativity and talent. This often requires collaboration of different stakeholders.The aim of this paper is to make the researchers community familiar with the approach for involvement of students of the Technical University - Sofia with ideas generation in a special Innovation Lab created by a leading Telecom operator. At the same time, it is a best practice example of the university - business collaboration in innovation, involving also partners of the Telecom operator as mentors and facilitators. Such collaboration model needs to be explored and multiplied for strengthening stakeholders' collaboration and fostering building a real national innovation system. Therefore, the paper tries to present the case focusing in particular on the structure and roles in the Innovation Lab, and the methodology followed by the students' teams.

Keywords: open innovation, ideas generation, students involvement

1. Introduction

Knowledge and innovation have become essential factors for sustainable development and competitiveness of organisations world-wide. Organisational learning through exploration of new knowledge and usage of the existing one is behind entrepreneurship of companies (Hayton 2005). The knowledge-intensiveness of economy today, the market volatility and the pace of technology change are among the main reasons for researchers to consider that organizational competitiveness depends to a greater extend on intangible resources, and knowledge in particular (Singh 2008). It is not surprising that many organisations have launched Knowledge Management (KM) projects in order to ensure their success - to innovate faster then competitors; to increase their efficiency and productivity; to enhance intellectual capital; and to preserve knowledge of employees in time of high workers' mobility (Du Plessis 2005), (Greiner et al. 2007), (Nunes et al. 2006).

Recent trends in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development have provided organizations and individuals with new opportunities for creativity, collaboration and knowledge transfer. The emergence of Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web (Web 3.0) has reflected in changes of business and innovation models. Nowadays, social media is increasingly supporting knowledge transfer and creativity, and actually, is behind most open innovation processes. The trends towards Internet of Things (IoT) and the wide use of new Internet- based applications have faced ICT companies with enormous challenges. Telecom operators, in particular, need not only to provide high-quality communication services, but also to consider how to preserve their competitive position on a market with high volatility, and to grasp the opportunities of the Future Internet. Looking into the future, companies avail themselves on the creativity and ideas of the users, and especially young people. Many competitions are organized for students world-wide, and on a national scale. In Bulgaria, for example, ICT students regularly attend Intel and HP contests (Gourova et al. 2012). Local operators are also looking for fresh ideas coming from the computer-savvy generation.

The aim of this paper is to present the open innovation practice at Bulgarian Telecom company and its approach to involve students in ideas generation. The paper provides initially an insight into the concepts of living labs and ideas generation as discussed by researchers, and then, focuses on the innovation activities of the company, and its practice in streamlining students' creativity and innovation for its own benefits. A special emphasis is given on the methodology used in the ideas generation and the results achieved so far.

2. The concepts of ideas generation and living labs

The shift from vertical to a horizontal production model has changed the innovation process towards open innovation, where end-users and external stakeholders provide additional benefits to organisations (Leven et al. 2008), (West et al. 2010). The concept of 'open innovation' reflects the strong emphasis on involving external actors together with organization employees in the innovation process, and thus, using the creativity of the 'crowd'. As Chesbourgh (2003) points out, 'open innovation is paradigm that assumes that firm can and should use external and internal ideas, and internal and external path to market as firms look to advance their technology'. West et al. (2010) consider that organizations are looking how to enable users innovation, and how to streamline it to meet organisational goals for development of new products. The added-value for organizations comes from the fact that their customers 'know different things than the producers' (Zwass 2010).

Many organizations have launched ideas competitions in order to gather users innovative ideas in the early phases of new product development (Gourova et al. 2009). Ideas competitions are a well-elaborated method for active involvement of users and integrating them in the organizational innovation and problem-solving activities for limited time duration. Irrespective of the way of implementation (online, offline or mixed), individuals or groups of them are encouraged to propose ideas, sometimes evaluate them, and the most active participants and the best ideas are rewarded (Ebner et al. 2009). The advantage for organizations is that they collect many new ideas without involving much internal resources (Riedl et al. 2010). Students are often the main target group of organizations by launching ideas competitions. On the one side, young people turned to be more creative and innovative then the older users. On the other side, organizations benefit also from the opportunity to find new talents and prospective employees, as well as to increase the awareness of young people on their own products (Ebner et al. 2009).

One of the most difficult issues is to evaluate ideas, whereas some of the widely used criteria for measuring ideas quality include (Blohm et al. 2010):

* novelty - assessed as original, unique/rare, uncommon/surprising, revolutionary, radical or trendy

* relevance - might provide clear customer benefit, attractive market potential, competitive advantages

* feasibility - if the idea is technically feasible, economically feasible or fits the initiator's image, more generally to be easy transformable into a commercial product

* elaboration - the idea should be precise, complete and exactly described, mature and well understandable.

Living labs represent a user-centric innovation methodology which could be deployed at all phases of the innovation process - product idea, concept, prototype or marketing. In living labs are utilised several methodologies and creativity techniques (Figure 1) whereas the collaboration is taking place predominantly face-to-face rather then using technologies for Collaborative Work Environments (CWE) as stressed by Mulder et al. (2010). The living labs, despite the methodology used, facilitate the innovation and refining complex solutions in multiple and evolving real life contexts, and are characterized by (Kviselius et al. 2008), (Svesson et al. 2009), (Almiral 2008), (Leven et al. 2008):

* variety of stakeholders - involve users, technology developers, researchers, use also own staff creativity in an open innovation environment in which they can interact and become co-producers of each other's value creation processes.

* ideas and problem-solving focus - facilitate new idea generation, identification of problems and solutions coming from users, and process them against predefined criteria.

* testing, experimentation and evaluation focus - grounded and linked to real-life settings and requirements.

* approaches - make products/technology available to users at their homes or create a home where users could stay.

3. Ideas generation in Bulgaria

3.1 Mtel innovation lab

The students' ideas generation is recently introduced in Bulgaria by Mobiltel (Mtel), a leading telecom operator in the country. The company follows the overall trends in telecommunications and offers to its clients the best quality. Faced with the strong competition on the local market, the company looks for opportunities to offer its clients a bigger diversity of services which could facilitate their everyday life and work. The company has a special Innovation Centre which guides its work on developing new products and applications. Some of them support the access to electronic books, and others look how to make smarter cities. At the same time, the company is open to partnerships with other stakeholders for developing their innovative ideas into real products. In its Test Zone it engages many citizens in providing their views on the tested new products (Mtel 2013).

For developing new ideas the company is taking advantage of students creativity as well (Vladkov, 2012). In 2011 it launched a new Innovation lab at the Faculty of Telecommunications of the Technical University - Sofia (TU). In the Lab are equipped 4 working places to support students developing their ideas. The major goal of the operator is to help and support TU activities related to innovation, research and development in the field of advanced telecommunication and information technologies and services. Common mission of the university and the Telecom operator is the encouragement of good students to develop themselves as leading specialists and professionals, by enriching their knowledge and enhancing their creativity and innovative thinking, giving them the opportunity to work with up-to-date and advanced technologies and tools under the tutorship and guidance of leading professors and specialists from the business and the university. The roles in the Lab, based on the intrapreneurship principles, are as follows:

* Initiator - with role on ideas generation to prototype: Students

* Manager/Champion - managing and coordinating, motivating teams: Mentors, Tutors

* Sponsor - defining working approach and goals: Company Innovation Centre

* Supporter - practical guidance and mentoring: The Business Institute, TU the company business partners,

* Judge - monitoring project progress and key indicators: Company Decision Making Positions

Mtel defines the patterns of work and the goals in details, follows the key phases of the implementation, provides and manages the funding of the project. It participates in defining the objectives at macro-level, monitors key performance indicators, and gives critically opinion and corrective to the project. Mentors and tutors are facilitating the work of the students and are providing them theoretical knowledge and practical guidance. The Business Institute and other business partners of the company are also supporting the work of the students (Mtel, 2012).

In the Innovation Lab work 4 teams, each consisting of 4 students, one company mentor and one company tutor (Figure 2). At the beginning of the programme, the company defines a topic for all 4 groups to work on ideas generation and development. The group work is facilitated by 2 representatives of The Business Institute, as a partner of the Lab.

Students are selected on bases of an open competition with thematic focus. In 2011, the topics were Remote Personal Health Systems, Multi sensor networks at home, Future Internet and Apps and Games, while in 2012 the focus was on "Connected world" and improving the everyday life using modern technologies such as Cloud, Mobile Applications, Big data, Social Networking, Green technology.

3.2 Ideas generation methodology

Generally, the approach for developing a new product in the Lab comprises business and technology development (Figure 3).

The process in the Innovation Lab is divided in 3 main stages taking in total 11-12 months (Figure 4):

* Stage 1: Idea generation, assessment and 'go' or 'no go' decision

* Stage 2: Customer development of the chosen ideas

* Stage 3: Prototype development of the chosen ideas

After each stage, the students' teams present their development so far. The presentations after Stage 1 and Stage 2 address representatives of Mtel and TU. The presentations after Stage 3 are open for outside audience and media.

The methodologies for Stage 1 and 2 are proposed and managed by The Business Institute in the role of facilitator of the business part of the Lab. The roadmap and the methodology are based on the following prerequisites:

* Numerous and various entrepreneurial workshops, delivered by The Business Institute as a representative of the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute;

* Practical entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial education in Masters Degree in Entrepreneurship and finance;

* Coaching and mentoring sessions by The Business Institute team as a strategic partner of LAUNCHub start-up investment fund (JEREMIE programme).

Methodology of Stage 1: Idea Generation and Assessment

Stage 1 is for ideas generation and assessment, based on which Mtel takes decision which of the ideas will go on to Stage 2 to be further developed. The format of Stage 1 includes series of workshops in which all working groups (students, mentors, tutors) participate, and as facilitators act representatives of The Business Institute. Each workshop consists of three main parts:

* Introduction of the topic and the tools used - explanation, practical examples by The Business Institute Faciitator (30% of the time)

* Practical work on the ideas by the teams (40% of the time)

* Discussion and feedback - practical discussion on the result of the groups work (30% of the time)

The workshops are based on a roadmap of a business methodologies and tools, selected and mixed by The Business Institute team for the purposes of the Innovation Lab. The roadmap underpins the Stage 1 programme (Table 1).

Methodology of Stage 2: Customer Development

Stage 2 is devoted to the development of the chosen ideas in business aspect. It is facilitated by The Business Institute representatives, based on the Customer Development methodology by Steve Blank, Stanford University (Figure 5). Precisely, Stage 2 is focused on the first two parts of the methodology - Customer Discovery and partially Customer Validation. Customer Development is provoked by the statistics that more start-ups fail from a lack of customers than from a failure of product development. The main goal of the methodology is to prove the "product-market fit" early enough before financial investment in the venture. The methodology is suitable both for entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial ventures. Customer Discovery is focused on "market-product fit". It is designed to prove that the hypothesis of the market problem solved, the product idea and the target segment of the business model are correct. Subsequently, the methodology encompasses iterations of meetings "inside the building" and such "out of the building" with market representatives, mostly customers.

Stage 2: Customer Development partially overlaps with Stage 3: Prototype Development, based on the prescriptions of the Customer Development methodology.

At the Innovation Lab, based on the Customer Development, the following steps are implemented:

* Articulate Business Model Canvas (BMC) hypothesis - refine the results of Stage 1

* Problem - test the problem hypothesis with iterations of meetings "out of the building" with market representatives (mostly customers) and meetings "inside the building" with The Business Institute facilitators to analyse the results and refine the BMC

* Product - test the product (Value proposition) hypothesis with iterations of meetings "out of the building" with market representatives (mostly customers) and meetings "inside the building" with The Business Institute facilitators to analyse the results and refine the BMC

* Customers - test the Customer Segments hypothesis with a clear focus on early adopters (lead users) with iterations of meetings "out of the building" with market representatives (mostly customers) and meetings "inside the building" with The Business Institute facilitators to analyse the results and refine the BMC

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - define MVP based on the iteration and test it with potential customers

At each step the groups are guided by The Business Institute facilitators' team, which provides report to Mtel representatives after each meeting about the development of the process, positive and negative outcomes with proposals for adjustment of the next steps.

With the aim that students get quick access to market representatives and customers, Mtel supports the process with contacts to its business partners in the respective areas. The latter meet the working groups for interviews and further identify and connect the teams with other suitable respondents.

3.3 Results

The Innovation Lab approach turned to be mutually beneficial for all participants. TU professors consider that "Such cooperation between academia and business is important and beneficial not only for academia but also for the Bulgarian society", and believe that this best practice example could facilitate the university-business collaboration and be a bases for future joint initiatives in research and innovation. For Mtel as well, this is an approach to shorten the distance between the business and the university, as well as assisting students' community developing its potential and implementing brave ideas. Actually, within 12 months the students gained new theoretical knowledge and practical skills - to generate ideas, develop models for ideas evaluation and analysis, concept formulation, presentation and defense of concepts, building hypothesis, preparing questionnaires, interviewing experts and potential users, etc. While many of them were motivated by their future career prospects, the impact was greater than expected - gaining new interdisciplinary skills, following the whole process from the idea to the real product and seeing how their ideas evolve (Mtel 2012).

The work of the Lab in 2011 gave already its results: the educational game "Magic Heros" (Figure 6), which is in Bulgarian and is appropriate for children over 3 years is already tested on "Mtel Test Zone" (http://testzone.Mtel.bg/) and can be downloaded from App store Google Play.

4. Conclusions

The paper provided an overview of the practice in a newly created Innovation Lab at the Technical University - Sofia by Mtel. Actually, the Lab has many elements of a Living Lab as it involves a users group in many phases of the open innovation. However, as the main actors are students and the objectives of the ideas generation are not only innovation, but also better preparing the future employees, the emphasis of the paper was to present the main processes and results of the Innovation Lab work. At the same time it should be stressed that young people are a prospective target group for open innovation. In fact, the feedback of the Innovation Lab participants points out that for students the creative challenge, the training, as well as the contacts with Mtel and the prospect for career, are with higher value then possible monetary rewards. Obviously, young people devote time and efforts in creative activities with the aim of developing the skills required by employers, but also for their personal satisfaction in realizing their ideas.

While companies are involving students in ideas generation for taking advantage of their creativity and talent, universities need to take advantage of the opportunities to establish stable long-lasting collaboration with the business community. The paper presents a best practice example of recent joint activities, which unfortunately are rare in Bulgaria, but have traditions at the Technical University - Sofia. Similar practices need to be examined and made publicly known in order to be multiplied. This is especially important for Bulgaria, where business - university collaboration according to several reports faces many barriers, and is limited mainly to education, whereas joint research and innovation projects are extremely rare.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the Innovation Lab team for preparing this paper.

References

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