InnoPlant eng
Project leader:
Erik Pineiro
Time period:
2008-2011
Email:
erikp@kth.se
Project description:
InnoPlant.pdf
In this project, researchers, county councils, hospitals and manufacturing companies collaborate in order to develop new methods for user involvement and increased innovation capability.
InnoPlant concerns the understanding and development of innovation-fostering forms of collaboration between the medical technology industry and the Swedish public healthcare sector. More specifically, the project focuses on the interaction between company employees, end-users and purchasers in public healthcare. The industrial goal is thus to develop these forms of collaboration to increase the innovation capability and the sustainable competitive advantage of the organizations. The goal of academia is to increase the understanding of the emergence and realization of these collaboration forms as well as their effects.
The medical technology industry is represented by three large medtech companies (Getinge, Maquet and ArjoHuntleigh), and the public healthcare sector is represented by two county councils (Stockholms Läns Landsting and Region Skåne). Each organization (companies and county councils) is also running their own local innovation project concerning the collaboration between industry and the public healthcare. These local projects are also objects for research. To establish a mutual learning between the participating organizations, a learning network has been established. The learning network involves all the representatives from the organizations meeting 3-4 times a year to share experiences and findings from their local projects and to be inspired by expert guest speakers.
Within the project several different research approaches are applied. One example is a survey, developed to investigate how a company’s connections to users and purchasers in the healthcare sector influence the innovation outcome of groups in the companies. Another example is a workshop series where the researchers investigate how dignified products can be developed in collaboration with potential users in the healthcare sector. InnoPlant is also monitored by ethnological researchers who investigate the culture that arises in the interaction between researchers, company representatives and people from the healthcare sector in this type of project. InnoPlant started in the fall of 2008 and extends over a period of three years. [April 2010]
(as shown in Project Portfolio Nov'09)15.01.2009. 23:49