INNOVATION HUBS AS THE DRIVING FORCE OF ENTERPRISES INNOVATIVE DEVELOMENT

Анотація

The transition of Ukrainian economy to innovation development model sets new challenges and requires from enterprises to use new approaches in ideas generating and creating innovation products. Thus, there should be worked out special management practices for setting up new types of organisational structures. Innovation hub can become the platform for collaboration of scientists, engineers, investors, creative young people and other types of stakeholders in different innovation projects.

There can be found different approaches for the definition of an innovation hub. One of them identifies innovation hubs as social communities or work space or research centres that provide subject-matter expertise on technology trends, knowledge and strategic innovation management, and industry-specific insights [1]. The main goals of innovation hubs are co-working with partners, exchanging ideas, seeking feedback, learning and sharing connections. These hubs enable active knowledge transfer between researchers and business experts, on the one hand, and industry, government and representatives of academia, on the other hand. Here, decision makers can meet and brainstorm with scientists and business experts and discuss their complex business challenges [1].

The three key competencies of innovation hubs are [2]:

Discovery ‑ “A discovery capability involves activities that create, recognize, elaborate, and articulate innovation opportunities. The skills needed are exploratory, conceptualization skills, both in terms of technical, scientific discovery and external hunting for opportunities.”

Incubation ‑ “…the incubation competency involves activity that matures radical opportunities into business proposals. A business proposal is a working hypothesis about what the technology platform could enable in the market, what the market space will ultimately look like, and what the business model will be. Incubation is not complete until that proposal ‑ or, more likely, a number of proposals, based on the initial discovery ‑ has been tested in the market, with a working prototype.”

Acceleration ‑ “Acceleration activities ramp up the fledgling business to a point where it can stand on its own, relative to other business platforms in the ultimate receiving unit. Whereas incubation reduces market and technical uncertainty through experimentation and learning, acceleration focuses on building a business to a level of some predictability in terms of sales and operations [2].”

Innovation hubs can be associated with such organisational structures as science parks, technology parks, incubators etc. However, they combine new methods and forms of co-location, co-working and co-creation. The main the approaches utilised by innovation hubs, which can be used by innovation managers in their practice, are:

1) embracing fluidity and diversity;

2) focusing on impact;

3) encouraging serendipity;

4) creating a sense of community;

5) intensifying collaborative innovation;

6) dynamizing the innovation process;

7) enabling, rather than forcing, innovation [3].

Hence, innovation hubs combine the main functions and characteristics of different innovation organisational structures, but their peculiarities can serve innovation managers in utilising new approaches for ideas generating and creating innovation products.