Innovation Environments

Abstract
This paper is intended as an opening of a dialog on how to apply platform thinking in the development of innovation environments. It will brie y describe a new STP (Science and Technology Park) concept called 3GSP (Third Generation Science Park), which is gaining momentum in Finland. The paper explains the fundamental changes that are currently taking place in the global innovation environment and explains why platform thinking is becoming an essential element in ecosystem development. The theoretical background and classifications of platforms are described and the benefits to be gained from STP perspective are highlighted. The paper emphasizes especially the role of so called ‘competence platforms’ and explains the main characteristics of a fully working competence platform. The role of competence platforms in understanding serendipity and as a fundamental factor in building the team is also highlighted. The paper analyses from STP perspective several practical examples, where platform thinking supports the emergence of new innovation environments, including Urban Mill (Finland) and Meetberlage (Netherlands). The requirements for comprehensive competence platform services are presented and their potential to support community building and therefore ecosystem development is illustrated. This analysis will provide STP practitioners with new models for applying platform thinking and will help to establish co-creation, open innovation and serendipity management practices. The case studies presented will help STP management teams to evaluate the benefits of competence platforms in different contexts.

STEAM labs (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) are practical and interdisciplinary learning environments. When students are working in these labs, learning is built through multiple streams of information that span the entire environment. There is always a lot of collaboration between students, teachers and between them and devices, kits, and tools. To understand the construction process of this knowledge network, a methodology for mapping information flows was developed. Maps can provide important information for knowledge management in these environments. Our objective was to study how space shapes knowledge flows and how students can redesign these flows according to project needs. The professor presented a closed project on robotics to 16 students. The researchers used an ethnographic methodology, observing students in the environment and writing down their observations in a notebook. These data were entered into a software, which generated the interaction map. The network analysis pointed out 3 elements that should be highlighted: (a) isolation, (b) hubs, and (c) the role of the central bank. Each one was related to a feature of the space that contributed to the dynamics of information exchange in the environment.

Our study analyzes the ways in which communication and media are integrated into creative industry environments, by observing the different phenomena that technological mediation produces in Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Labs). Operated by the exploratory-descriptive-explanatory method and applied in six laboratories located in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, it appears that communication is integrated into such environments through projects, practices, and communication professionals. Forms of action processed by Mediatized Organizational Communication which, moreover, articulates the semantic fields of dissemination, bonding, and cognition (SODRÉ, 2012) to constitute fourth existential bios that contribute to the structuring of Fab Labs, namely, environments of the creative industry.