On the Occasion of the Regional Innovation Award on Circular Economy, ShineBright on the region of Västerbotten, in Sweden that presented its project The Innovation Loop – an ecosystem for Open Social Innovation.
The main purpose is to create the best possible atmosphere and excellent opportunities for ideas and innovation to flourish.
The Innovation Loop is designed to create sustainable regional social development. It is an open platform that wants to engage every sector of society – students, politicians, scientists, seniors, entrepreneurs, etc;-. – and give them the opportunity to be the change they want to see in the world. The process is then simple to adapt for both national and international regions, communities and organisations.
The initiative, led by citizens, takes part in concrete actions. Frequent meetings are organised to share public/private innovation and creativity.
The process mainly identifies current needs among the public. Once settled, the Innovation loop translates their needs into sustainable and innovative concepts and prototypes. The process finally leads to smart services, products and methods serving the entire community’s interests, private individuals, companies, organisations and the public sector.
Continual development of the program itself is part of the Innovation Loop’s with constant addition of new partners and individuals. Adding their experience and skills transforms and improves the methodology. Online platforms enable continual idea and innovation activities, the exchange of know-how and good practices across national and organizational borders. More importantly it aims to include recent immigrants in innovation efforts.
Circular economy is a recurrent Innovation Loop theme, so far leading to more than four concepts and initiatives. This has led to a collaboration with Region Jämtland/Härjedalen in an innovation initiative that unites Region Västerbotten, Region Jämtland/Härjedalen, Sör-Tröndelag and Nordland in Norway with Österbotten in Finland and which focuses on the circular economy and digitalisation.
The process involves dozens of new companies and organisation every year who join the co-creative innovation endeavours. In addition to this, around 500 private individuals.
For more information check out the Innovation Loop website ! You can also watch the OSIRIS project movie for insight and comments on the Innovation Loop on the Västerbotten Region Youtube Channel !
The next Regional Innovation Award will take place in 2018 and will be dedicated to the Silver Economy in the context of AER SEED project.
Photo credits: Jon Flobrant @Unsplash https://unsplash.com/@jonflobrant
