RNI 2017 Summer School, 28-29th August 2017 - supported by IDEFI - InnovENT-E

Nancy, Grande Région Est, France

"Agile innovation: challenges for individuals, organizations and territories"

**** Fedoua Kasmi, CLERSE Laboratory UMR CNRS 8019, received the RRI Young researcher Price for : "Ecologie industrielle, milieu « éco-innovateur» et reconversion du territoire industrialo-portuaire : le cas de Dunkerque"

**** Sofia Patsali, BETA Laboratory - UMR-CNRS 7522, received the RRI Young researcher Price for : "Universities as lead users" (with Patrick Llerena and Stefano Bianchini as co-authors)

Call for papers:

The energy, ecological, digital, economic and social transitions are revolutionizing our approaches to companies, institutions and territories. Organizations must adapt their strategies, business models, projects and even redefine their role within their "ecosystem" to face the new challenges brought about by globalization and the expanding digital technology (“Ecosystem” refers here to all the entities that interact in a technological, economic and social environment. The metaphor "industrial ecosystem" can be used. This definition thus integrates natural world and artificial device, living and inert, biological systems and information systems, etc.) Companies need to undertake projects to transform their organizations, their working methods and their means of production while continuing innovative projects of new products and services development in order to remain competitive. Territories redesign their skills while imagining new resources to conceive and carry out their projects.  

These situations generate a high degree of uncertainty in their implementation and completion perspectives. The transformation of our society implies, therefore, managing the new challenges, the breakthroughs on the one hand of the development of innovations and on the other hand by the establishment of flexible and adaptive organizations, i.e. agile. Agility through agile methods and its manifesto advocates three fundamental values:

•  Individuals and their interactions, more than process and tools.

Indeed, from an agile perspective, the team is much more important than the tools (structuring or control) or the operating procedures. It is preferable to have a united team that communicates rather than a team of experts working in isolation.

• Collaboration with the clients, more than contract negotiation.

The client must be involved throughout the development. It makes no sense to negotiate and freeze a contract at the beginning of the project. While the client's demands can evolve with the understanding of his needs and the framework of possibilities. Clients, like all the stakeholders of a project, constitute its richness. Including them in the process is one of the pillars of a "robust agility".

• Adapting to change, or even embodying change, rather than monitoring a plan.

In an accelerated context, where the "ecosystem" can inhibit leads or offer new opportunities in short time, the initial planning and structure of the product or service must be flexible to allow adapting the customer demand (Or the market demand). It is necessary to be pro-active together.

The aim of agility is therefore to enable organizations to create value by making its operation more flexible by developing a culture of change and collaboration. Agility thus transforms organizations on three levels:

• On the implementation of innovative projects;
• On the establishment of a creative environment and accelerating innovation;
• On the more effective management of the innovation process: towards an agile innovation.

Agile methods are therefore supportive of innovative projects since they reduce the fears and the uncertainties by integrating them directly into the design and development process and even considering them as opportunities. Thus these projects represent a creative environment and accelerator of innovation that will make it possible to transform a starting idea into an innovative product, to refine it, to shape it according to the evolving requirements of customers or markets.

This summer school aims to introduce the world of innovation and agile methods to PhD students, researchers and practitioners. This event will allow us to exchange and share our feedback on the theme of innovation and agility applied in multiple fields. The emerging issues generated by these approaches will also be debated and we will try to answer the following questions: What is the value of Agility tools and concepts in enriching innovation processes? How to express the value of the actions carried out within the framework of an innovation project? How can an organization be responsive to the challenges of an innovative project? What are the impacts on the financing modes of innovation and on the commercialization and marketing (of innovation)? Finally, what are the mobilization methods of human resources?

The summer school will be held in two times: a research symposium related to theories of innovation and agility. Somme sessions will be particularly aimed at PhD students and young researchers whose work focuses on combining innovation theory, growth and development of new economic and social practices around agile innovation (e.g. economy and knowledge society, social economy) The second part of the summer school will be devoted to an Agile challenge linking creativity and agile methods.

Being a multidisciplinary meeting, the conference welcome researchers in economics, management, engineering, history and sociology.

The RRI Summer School "Agile innovation: challenges for individuals, organizations and territories" proposes to address the following notions:                            

• The application scales in the innovation process
• Application domaines and their specificities 
• Required conditions (e.g. tools, methods, technologies, spaces, organizations)
• Required skills,
• Integration with respect to the existing, modalities of change towards an “agile innovation

 Application topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Cities and territories transformation
2. Information communication technologies and innovation
3. Knowledge management and innovation
4. Contribution of the Intermediary Objects in the design
5. SMEs and innovation
6. Agronomy and innovation
7. Healthcare and innovation
8. Entrepreneurship and start-up acceleration

Participants

The summer school welcomes all researchers and encourages PhD students and young researchers to participate.

The summer school will offer keynote sessions with guest speakers, special sessions on key topics and a dedicated poster session for PhD students. A plenary session will conclude the two days. These two days will be complemented by cultural events. Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th August will be exclusively dedicated to cultural activities (program in progress).

Find out more about the RNI http://rrien.univ-littoral.fr/

The Research Network on Innovation (RRI) was established to develop a better understanding of the knowledge based economy, the university-industry linkages, the intellectual property rights issues and innovation. The network develops joint research projects, consulting activities, editorial activities and organizes scientific events.