Building the global innovation ecosystem

IASP has been during the last 3 decades a global reference on science and technology parks, and read the opportunities and movements on innovation. The last achievement has been to include the areas of innovation as an expression of the evolution of the traditional parks, understanding the new role of cities in the urban, economic and social transformation.

One of the main items at our Board is to formulate the IASP strategy which should have the year 2020 as its horizon. There is nothing wrong with our current knowledge leadership strategy which has served our association very well for the past 6 years, but we want to underline the importance of reviewing it, and changing or updating whatever is necessary.

The first step in this process was to take the pulse of our membership regarding how our members see and perceive our association, and to that end, we asked everybody to submit their ideas in the form of the well-known SWOT analysis tool. Many good inputs were made and we now have the elements that will help us deliver our strategy.

We know that one of the key responsibilities of the Board is to manage our network in order to be in every moment in the right place, and in the process of globalization, IASP is and will be a key player on innovation.

Beyond being local innovation ecosystems, our parks must be global connectors of the global innovation ecosystem, and our network must be the global platform that connect our members, but also connect the network with global companies and global institutions.

For this reason the IASP Strategy 2020 includes:

1. Knowledge: share and increase knowledge; train park managers and staff so that they can better connect their local ecosystems with the global innovation system.
   
2. Schemes to increase mobility and connections between STP/AOI resident companies and institutions, with talent, technology and financial resources.
   
3. Set up a dialogue with the most important technology based corporations and connect them with our STP/AOI global network.
   
4. Formalise our relations with international institutions and organisations; strategic alliance strategy like UN and affiliates, Brookings, World Bank… and the relation with other networks in the field of innovation.
   
5. Increase our knowledge about new agents, new projects and models for the creation of innovation ecosystems. Identify these new agents and formulate our strategy towards them like living labs, fab-labs, co-working spaces, accelerators…
   

During this year 2017 we have celebrated IASP meetings in York, Lima and Michigan, with Tetouan and Recife still to come. Our network is a membership organization, and we will be helping everyone beyond the country of the member. The global flag of IASP is joining us, and IASP is the common house of our world community. The last IASP World Conference in Moscow was a very good example of the best of us, and I hope to see you in September in Istanbul for our next global event.