The search of radical innovations offers a kiss of life to the Finnish forest industry
Author Heini Vassinen
Published on May 12th in categories Blog.
A few weeks back I read an interesting article ‘Puuklusteri elää sittenkin – Forest cluster is still alive written by Jyrki Kettunen (Talouselämä 15/2011). In his article Kettunen also mentions the RAMI program, where Vectia had a key role in managing the program as a whole. Inspired by Kettunen’s article I would like to share some of my experiences from this 18 month long journey full of fascinating work.
As we all know, the Finnish forest industry is going through a breach, after which its traditional success factors may not be enough to survive in a global competitive environment. New weapons are thus needed in order to find growth opportunities outside the current core business. One way to explore new business ideas is to question the industry definition and redefine the markets – what could there be beyond wood, pulp and paper?
To find an answer for this tricky question Forestcluster Ltd set up a research and innovation program called Radical Market Innovations, or better known as RAMI. The program aimed at identifying new growth opportunities for the Finnish forest cluster outside the current core business.
The RAMI program was initiated in May 2009 with an academic research phase, where Vectia was responsible for ensuring that the results would meet the requirements set by Forestcluster Ltd. The objective was to build a foundation for the innovation work by mapping out the current capabilities and value networks within the forest industry as well as consumer practices and customer processes. We met each research team on a regular basis, and heard insightful observations regarding e.g. innovative re-use of packages in the outskirts of India, the evolution of paper practices throughout the centuries and transformation of packaging value chains in Japan.
The results of the academic research fed the innovation work, which in practice was done in four 2-day InnoLabs, which Vectia designed and organised in order to generate radical ideas. To prepare the InnoLabs we collected research results, statistics, trend forecasts, news, case studies, articles and journals, advertisements, photographs and other visualising materials such as grocery packages. We got a lot of positive feedback on creating an innovating atmosphere (and having two days full of fun work!) and got amazing results consisting of over 2 300 individual ideas (instead of 1 500 mentioned in Kettunen’s article). Based on these 148 more detailed descriptions of selected ideas and initiatives were produced. This was way above the targets set and exceeded all expectations. Altogether, the InnoLabs looked pretty much like this:
To ensure that all the hundreds of brilliant ideas would not just collect dust in Forestcluster Ltd’s archives, we combined the results from all four InnoLabs and spent quite few hours in identifying special and common innovation ideas and interesting business opportunities together with representatives from the industry. The short list of further refined ideas has been provided to all owner organizations of Forestcluster Ltd – and I have heard that the companies have really taken on working with the ideas.
So now I’m just waiting for a sprayable can of GoreTex-like fibre clothes to take with me on summer hiking trips – or something even more radical!
Comments
Mika Koskinen, on May 13th,Yes, although it’s been shown long ago, that innovations must also be managed, we still have people around us doubting that. I guess one of the causes was the poor quality of the innovative education/training workshops. To just offer a tool for the job is not enough, there are many mediators for creative work, which one has to take into considerations when planning an event like you had. Congratulations!
Heini Vassinen, on May 16th,
Thank you! We found it both challenging and inspiring to design ways to manage an innovation process without restricting or guiding the participants thinking too strongly. Additionally we believe it is crucial to work on the ideas afterwards in order to prolong their lifetime and increase the possibility of idea realisation.