Grass Roots Innovation Management

Basic Concepts, Definitions and Implications

Prepared and presented by Professor Tim Turpin, Centre for Industry and Innovation Studies

Outline of the Lecture

1. Basic concepts and definitions 2. Some examples of innovation in which to discuss these concepts and illustrate how they can help with managing grassroots innovation. 3. Ownership (?) of knowledge and what this might mean. 4. S&T Policy 5. Project tasks

But First
The context in which we are concerned with innovation studies:
what are we concerned with and why? There are policy implications and very practical implications for producers. Some of the work with which we are engaged illustrates the implications of innovation studies.

Centre for Industry and Innovation Studies (CInIS)

Innovation Policy:
Enhancing Skills Recognition Systems in ASEAN OECD Study into Workforce Skills and Innovation
ASEAN-Australia Development Cooperation Program
SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AND MOBILITY WITHIN ASEAN (Enhancing Skills Recognition Systems in ASEAN)

Centre for Industry and Innovation Studies (CInIS)

Technology Innovation:

A typical modal of the innovation process

Learning

Pro-active linkages

Innovation strategy Search Strategic selection Innovative organization Implementation

How does this model differ for grass-roots innovation?

Innovation
A business definition: the introduction of any new or significantly improved good or service and/or implementation of any new or significantly improved operational and/or organisational/managerial process. So we can have:
Product innovation: and/or Process innovation:

Innovation
Also, there may be:
Incremental innovation: which proceeds with small but progressive changes; or, Radical innovation: which introduces a totally new product or process.

The technology involved may be complex and sophisticated such as in development of the digital camera, or it may be simple and easily reproduced, such as a mouse trap.

What are some of the core features of grass roots innovation?

Knowledge (local and beyond)
Knowing and understanding of problems

Creativity (ideas, play, experimentation)

Understanding how creativity and knowledge can be applied

Resources
needed for converting ideas and knowledge into application and problem solving

Application (using, transferring, distributing)

Making use of the innovation by self as well as by others.

as e Id Information Kno wle dge

Innovation

Application/ Production

Lets consider some practical examples of grass-roots innovation.

Think about the ideas, information, learning, the problem and the searching for solutions, the knowledge and the skills that underpin this innovation.

Some questions from the film clip

What types of knowledge were used here? What is being transferred: what to where? Can you identify the grass-roots community? Who might be the potential producers?

Some Concepts and Definitions

Knowledge: types of knowledge Information: forms of dissemination Innovation: products and process Knowledge transfer Knowledge communities Innovation Grass-roots innovation

A General Message
People are inherently creative, as they seek new ways to solve problems and put ideas into practice. The intensity of effort to this regard is usually mediated by potential for use. A key issue for grass-roots innovation is for society more broadly to benefit from grassroots innovation. Unfortunately this is usually driven from a topdown process. Grass-roots innovations seeks to achieve benefits from the bottom-up.

But
In all cases, for innovation management some thought needs to be given to markets as drivers of innovation. Sometimes there may be market failure and in these cases there is the need to think about the role of government and possible interventions to overcome the market failure.

Lets consider a few examples

Table clothes made from pineapple fibre Sun hats for travelling tourists Agricultural production in off-shore locations

Information and knowledge

Knowledge and information have curious properties:
They can be sold and enter other domains but they also remain within the domain of the producer they do not have zero-sum qualities.

Knowledge can be defined in a simple way as a capacity for social action.

Knowledge empowers its possessors with the capacity for intellectual or physical action.

Information
Information on the other hand is presented through structured and formatted data it remans passive until used by those with the knowledge ti interpret and process it. The transfer of knowledge takes place through learning. The transfer of information takes place through duplication

Information
Information is knowledge reduced to messages that can be transmitted and serve to reconstitute knowledge at a later time or place and by a different individual or group of individuals. But not all knowledge can be codified as information.
Think of a recipe and consider some knowledge that might not be included in the information.

Tacit and Codified Knowledge

Tacit knowledge is associated with skills or know how and ideas; it is embedded in human action. Codified knowledge is explicit, it can be spelled out and is embedded in designs, specifications, technologies and literature.

Codified knowledge
9Knowledge and ideas embedded in machines, blueprints, instructions, patents and so on. It can be moved like physical products to new locations and deployed. It can also be adapted and incrementally developed. But that is part of a process of innovation and also requires tacit knowledge. The more complex the technology the deeper the skill base required to operate, service and maximise use of the technology. The status of codified knowledge in a country can be measured with indicators such as machinery imports, licensing agreements etc.

The concept of tacit knowledge:

9 Technology has many tacit elements that require a new user to build skills, knowledge and institutional routines. This includes experience know-how as well as know-how gained through formal training. Mastery of these tacit elements of knowledge is needed everywhere but is particularly important for developing countries where enterprises lack the initial base of technical skills on which to graft new technology.

Individual and collective knowledge

Systems of intellectual property rights (patent, copyright, design law etc) have provided for individuals, firms or organisations to be endowed with the legal right to own and exploit explicit knowledge. More recently the concept of community ownership has (somewhat problematically) attempted to provide for community ownership of

Knowledge Communities
An important part of the process of generation, accumulation, and distribution of economic knowledge is achieved through communities acting as a nucleus of competence through the daily practices of the community (Amin and Cohendet, 2004). Knowledge is reinforced, legitimised, reproduced and transmitted through community action.

Lets talk about processes.

Production processes ?

Handling processes

All of these have the potential to benefit from innovation

Innovation Drivers
Firm based innovation strategies
To sell a product or service

Grass-roots innovation strategies

To improve a product or a process

In both cases they require some sort of incentive.

The Innovation Imperative: some important questions

Is innovation undertaken to solve a problem (for example to remove coal from a deeper open cut location) or, is it intended to generate profits from the sale of new products or processes? Is it core business or is it a productive spin-off, leading to new or different business?

Intellectual Property Rights

The core legal framework protects intellectual property rights in three main ways:
Patents and trade secret laws serve to protect the owner from unlicensed use of technical information; Copyright laws protect rights of creative expression; Trademark and design laws protect the use of symbols signs and shapes in which products or services are packaged.

Copying and Adaptation

SMEs in East Java now produce good quality leather-ware. At one time, they simply copied Western designs. Their employees would watch the carousels at the airport, waiting for examples of the latest designs from the most fashionable designers. They made exact imitations, copying the brand name too. After warnings from the Indonesian government, they changed their brands so that these merely resembled fashionable brands. They have now begun to adapt the designs as well, and with change in design, they have also begun to use their own brand names. . For development, copying is a creative, innovative and useful process

What is S&T Policy?

9 National S&T policy is about knowledge and how to capture the benefits of knowledge - local and global - for national benefit. 9 S&T policy is not just concerned with high-tech it is concerned with deepening the knowledge base in all sectors old and new.

Who are the users?

And who are the potential producers? Lets have a look at two examples.

A project Task (1)

1. Consider the innovation described in the two clips. Describe the nature of the problem and the process that led to the innovative outcome. 2. Who were the various interest groups that might have been involved. Who are the potential users? Who might be some potential producers?

A project Task (2)

3. What sorts of knowledge and information were required to create the innovations. 4. Does the market stimulate a demand for such innovations? 5. If there is a market failure how might policy intervention replace the market in this sort of case?

A project Task (3)

6. You are a government official responsible for innovation in this area. What information would you need to design a policy that would encourage these sorts of innovations? 7. What might be some of the key features of an innovation management strategy that seeks to raise knowledge, provide access to information and promote commercialisation/ application of these sorts of new processes or products?