IMPLEMENTATION

1. COMMUNITY CHARACTERISTICS

It is important to consider the characteristics of the community in terms of its geographic, institutional, and economic characteristics, as well as the community's needs.

• Geographic conditions should be assessed to determine whether this technology would be suitable in the community's ecological environment. This includes assessing factors such as climate and geology.

  • Helps to assess what kind of materials can be used and whether they are accessible to the community or if there are potential alternatives that could be used.

• Consider institutional characteristics, such as whether there is stable local leadership and community organization

  • Ensure that the technology can be implemented within the community's legal framework (e.g. at the municipal, subnational, and national level)

    • Consider modifications that will meet technical and community standards

    • Assess whether funding exists to maintain this technology, such as installation costs, user training, and long-term maintenance

  • Institutional characteristics should allow for decentralization of participation so that various institutions and local groups will be able to work cooperatively on the project

• Assess the main problems, needs, and interests of the community to determine whether this technology is suitable to address them

  • Helps to determine relevant community participants and stakeholders who may want to be involved as well as their different needs​

    • For example, the energy needs of a school would differ from those of a household​

  • Determine which SDGs community participants would like to address​​

2. TALENT

Open innovation projects are characterized by multidisciplinary teams with mixed skill sets, such as innovative, experimental, and commoditized capabilities, and incorporates many different participants.

• Diverse and multidisciplinary knowledge is needed that includes both technical and socio-cultural knowledge

  • Examples of different stakeholders with various fields of knowledge and perspectives include engineers, consultants, community leaders, environmental experts, government officials, schools/institutions, and homeowners​

  • This knowledge should be adaptable and relate to specific community needs

• Broad acceptance criteria for participants

  • Anyone interested in getting involved with the project can contribute their ideas to how it can be implemented in different contexts​

3. IP MANAGEMENT AND CONTRACTING

Open innovation projects are facilitated through less rigid contracts in terms of IP ownership and participant engagement. Contracts are generally based on trust in the platform and mutual interest, allowing for more flexible use, study, distribution, and derivation of the technology.

• Define at an early stage how new, jointly created IP will be owned and how legal rights will be maintained

• Proactively identify exit strategies if goals or milestones are not met

• Build trust in order to retain the existing network participants and attract new ones

  • Ensure free sharing of information and transparency about IP management​

  • Encourage the extension of research efforts past the collaboration period by removing restrictions on IP use

  • Allow researchers to publish and use results and data

• The use of the technology must address a minimum of 3 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

4. PARTICIPANT IMPACT

Open innovation allows for participants to act as key influencers in the development process.

• A large variety of stakeholders should have input in the development of the project as end-users may have a limited perspective, rooted in their experience of daily routines, which do not promote radical or disruptive innovation

  • End-users should still influence most if not all of the innovation activity at various stages of the development process**​

• Consider the breadth of the stakeholder network that is involved in the process

  • Intense interactions with many stakeholders are time and resource-intensive, which may hinder the innovation process

  • Some companies could be unwilling to receive and share knowledge and intellectual property​

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**This project is ultimately being implemented for end-users, and so it will most directly affect their lives. Therefore, the opinion and perspective of end-users should be emphasized in order to guide the development and implementation process.

5. GOVERNANCE

This section outlines how the project can be governed in an organizational capacity to facilitate open innovation and sustainability.

• Stages of project development (4 stages):

  • Initiation​

    • Assembling stakeholders and project participants​

    • Outlining the scope of the project and identifying community characteristics and talent

  • Planning

    • Establish a tracking system to determine what needs to be done within a specified timeline

    • Design this iteration of the technology in terms of materials, size, etc. using feedback from all stakeholders and participants​

    • Refine and assess the project plan and technology so that it meets the needs of stakeholders and participants

  • Execution

    • Prototype and build the technology, creating different versions to finalize an iteration that best addresses the project scope and goals​

    • Implement the project in the chosen community

  • Closing

    • Document the process for other communities to use for future reference, including what went well and would could be improved​

• Local leadership should be the facilitators/initiators to organize the project (in the sense of project managers) as they will have the most resources to fund and organize the project, however end-users should be the key decision-makers​

  • All stakeholders should be informed at all times and information flow should be accessible

  • Decisions are iterative in all stages of project development and implementation

6. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGS)

This section involves assessing and auditing how well the technology addresses the target SDGs

• This technology could potentially address the following SDGs based on the purpose of the technology and how it fulfills community needs:

  • 6: Clean Water and Sanitation​

  • 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

  • 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

  • 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

  • 10: Reduced Inequalities

  • 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

  • 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

  • 13: Climate Action

  • 15: Life on Land

• Implementation of the project and how effectively it addresses the SDGs should be evaluated by an auditing team

  • Ensures that various aspects of sustainability, such as institutional, economic, environmental, and socio-cultural sustainability, are integrated early during development

  • The team should be made up of at least one member from each stakeholder group involved in the project, as well as by a third party that is not involved with the project, to mitigate biased evaluations

• The SDG-Check, taken from The SDG-Check: Guiding Open Innovation Toward the SDGs, is explained here

• Other company-relevant methods (such as the SDG Compass) can be used in conjunction with the SDG-Check to further evaluate the project and can serve as the basis for an enterprise-internal sustainability strategy