Networked Innovation in Collaborative Environments

The NETWICE IP aims to study, develop, evaluate and deploy a social and technical infrastructure that enhances informal learning and networked innovation by professionals. It is grounded in the need of contemporary professionals to innovate continuously in order to stay competitive. NETWICE views professionals as networked individuals, who use extensively online social networks to leverage their collective knowledge and create value. In the knowledge society, network contacts are becoming an increasingly important source for collaborative knowledge creation and for a more valuable engagement in innovation projects. Learning, in the sense of both individual and collective knowledge building and sharing, is positioned as supporting the innovation process. NETWICE will provide an integrated set of supportive software tools as well as a conceptual model for effective management of the learning process in open, networked environments. These environments will facilitate collaborative, distributed innovation, support creativity techniques or store the results of creativity sessions to make these available for later use. The toolset contributes to an advanced, visually-rich environment, which facilitates networked knowledge-building and knowledge- sharing, including individual informal learning and collective learning management. Technically, this toolset will form an open architecture that incorporates advanced Web 2.0 services, including profiling services. It will be accessible via an evolving software ecology. It builds strongly on the large-scale integration of outputs of previous projects, integrating them so that they can be explored in real-world testbeds. NETWICE will establish itself as the reference point on networked open innovation in collaborative, work environments by creating communities of interest to facilitate uptake of the toolset, during and after the lifetime of the project.