How To Build Research-Industry Networks

Coins_convo
COINs 2010 Opening Conversation

Image © Alice Merkel on Flickr

How To Build Research-Industry Networks with Conversations, Communications, and Collaboration

 Written by Betsey Merkel

Research-industry networks develop knowledge in research and business for collaboration and capacity building. The COINs 2010 Conference is an example of how to build this type of strategic engagement for competitive network advantage.

As a co-sponsor of the COINs 2010 Conference, I-Open worked in collaboration with the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, and Wayne State University College of Engineering Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, in Savannah, GA USA.

This second international and highly interactive program presented training, workshops, paper presentations, and keynote conversations of research and industry leaders focused on aspects of the emerging Science of Collaboration. 

As a result of the committee's support, we were able to dedicate a six-month pre-conference period to share specialized communications and develop on-line  community.

Broadcast Conversations

I-Open introduced the concept of broadcast interviews and conference conversations to the COINs steering committee to strengthen programming and develop conference experience.  

We chose Livestream as our provider, having worked the toolset to broadcast Northeast Ohio conversations since 2006. Livestream offers a sophisticated  library widget (shown below) which is easily copied to blogs and websites.

 Within less than 30 days of uploading content to the COINs Conference channel, archive broadcast programming had attracted nearly 100,000 viewer minutes.

Technology tools, like the Livestream widget, enable sharing knowledge at levels appropriate to the development of networked collaborative communities.

What the Livestream Channel looks like when embedded: 

Communications

Frameworks are a good first step to organize strategic communications in environments that are otherwise information complex.  

Frameworks establish community values, roles and relationships. They serve as a high-level perspective on categories of investment, and offer starting points to community engagement.

The Swarm Creativity Framework was designed to loosely guide the organization of knowledge shared by the COINs 2010 conference community in support of the emerging Science of Collaboration.

 The Swarm Creativity Framework is a heuristic model of investment based on categories of knowledge  important to strengthen the discipline, Swarm Creativity.  Categories are associated here for the purpose of generating creative economies, of which collaboration is an integral capacity.

The Framework is featured in the COINs 2010 Conference Instructions document below and is a transfer of the Innovation Framework, a successful model of investment in Open Source Economic Development.   COINs 2010 Conference Instructions

 

In addition to what we share, how we share information is important.  

Contextual transmedia communications distributes information across dedicated social media infrastructure. Each platform has it's own thematic community, interests and preferred multimedia.

The publishing process used to engage with the tools, leverages values-based storytelling. This influences strategic thinking and social behavoirs of the 'meta' community.

The map shown below visualizes how information was shared to attract and connect COINs 2010 online community.

Coins2010_ctc

Collaboration

Collaborative workspaces develop community by sharing communications, connecting resources, increasing transparency, and organizing project work.  

Workspaces sustain and amplify conversations between meet ups so project development can continue. 

The Swarm Creativity workspace sponsored by I-Open for conference collaborators, is shown below.

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In Summary

The development of research-industry networks is paramount to engage locally based, globally connected economies for competitive regional advantage.

Further, investment in the strategic orchestration and management of dedicated process to support creative approaches to knowledge sharing is critical. This, coupled with data management, content marketing, and continuous technology innovation cultivate collective intelligence.

The COINs 2010 Conference offers a tested, comprehensive and sophisticated example of how research-industry conversations, communications and collaboration access the innovation capacity of community.

Working this way, universities and colleges can act in partnership with business and government, each occupying a unique leadership position within a larger, collaborative initiative.

My highest praise goes to the COINs Steering Committee, academic leaders from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Collective Intelligence, Savannah College of Art & Design, and Wayne State University's College of Engineering, who despite unknown outcomes, supported and adopted these creative ideas early in conference planning.

What's the value of one white paper?

Yesterday I received an unexpected e-mail greeting from a government IT leader based in Australia. While researching the Internet to lead a group of colleagues in a strategic project planning initiative, he came across the attached COINs 2009 conference presentation and offered these comments:

In "COINS: An economic development tool for education, economic and workforce development in Open Source Economic Development" the concepts are beautiful; if my workplace engaged in just 20% of them we would double communications engagement subsequently boosting productivity. Thank you for your paper Betsey, I am very pleased you wrote it."

Stories like these attest to why sharing on the web is a good idea. You can never know who or when the information you've shared will be useful. In networks, shared information has reciprocal value for anyone with initiative.

Serendipitous connections often begin with an element of collaborative leadership. For example, had it not been suggested to me to consider submitting a paper in 2009, I'm not sure I would have.

COINs 2010 conference brings a second year of sharing insights and innovations into the workings of creativity and collaboration. I hope you will join us for new conversations in Savannah and on the web - and definitely consider submitting a paper in 2011! 

Who knows what opportunity will bump into you?

- Betsey Merkel, I-Open

Learn more about COINs 2010 Conference here.