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BRG Analyses
Eero Ottila, Fujitsu Tampere
eTampere and company expectations
When eTampere first beckoned five years ago, everyone raced to Tampere Hall so as not to miss out on building a new oasis of knowledge society in Tampere. Companies were in attendance too – representatives of local operations as well as a significant number of high-ranking people from companies at the forefront of Finnish ICT. Businesses were keen to climb aboard a movement whose distinction was guaranteed by the academics appointed to direct each sub-programme.
When things were set in motion, the anticipated calls for tender failed to materialize. The projects seemed to be ready planned by others and had too little to do with companies’ product development roadmaps. Complaints began to be voiced, directed first towards the city: isn’t the city going to place any orders? Then to the directors of the sub-programmes: didn’t companies have any role to play in this endeavour?
Despite widespread criticism, suggestions from companies concerning what should be done were few and far between. However, eTampere’s management reacted and began listening somewhat more to the business world. Many events emerged at which research information was handed out to companies and various possibilities presented. Surveys, too, began to be directed more and more at companies. Among others, eSME was created, which turned out to be an excellent tool for taking small companies into the world of the small e. The activity of the eSME continues under the wings of the Pirkanmaa Entrepreneurs. Another success was eAccelerator, which found and created new companies. Goals were set high and the work continues.
Now that the final words on eTampere have been said, what were companies left with? There was great enthusiasm and at the same time mild disappointment that the programme wasn’t something for businesses expecting more company-oriented projects. Perhaps it would have been appropriate in the very beginning to define that this was primarily a project for research communities to draw research funding to the region.
Companies did gain something, however. No-one can claim that the programme didn’t have a significant attention value or that the region’s magnetism did anything but strengthen; though it can be said that these factors didn’t benefit companies so much.
The big issues were that many new companies emerged as did new, permanent jobs and significant and pioneering research projects that will carry us into the future.
The business world is certainly expecting continuation as well as a chance to influence new initiatives at least partly on its own terms. The business world also expects a clearer and more visible contractor’s role from the governmental player so that it, too, could genuinely invest in future solutions. The idea that eTampere’s host city should also be among this country’s foremost lives on.
“Critical evaluations are the result of unrealistic expectations concerning scientific research. Setting things in motion takes at least a year because of funding cycles and the challenges of recruitment. In accordance with the business policy aims, one can ask whether the research has been of benefit to companies. Finalizing research results takes time, and applying the results in practice is a process in its own right.”
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eTampere has boosted knowledge society research into electrification and digitalization from three perspectives: changes in everyday life and work in the knowledge society, the generation of business, and the development of user-oriented technology. The programme acted as a funnel that has steered research resources into knowledge society related themes and provided start-up capital for defining research subjects and launching research projects.
In the eTampere programme, research has been carried out in three sub-programmes: the Information Society Institute, eBRC, and the Technology engine programmes. Research has also been conducted in other sub-programmes, but their main focus has been on the generation of practical applications.
The role of research in the eTampere programme, which is based on tripartite cooperation, has been to establish dialogue between the society’s decision-makers by seizing interesting phenomena in the knowledge society. Research has added depth to the interaction and the debate that steers knowledge society development. Knowledge society research has brought researchers together around a current theme and directed research towards questions that are important to the development of the Tampere Central Region. Research has thus supported the realization of the business policy’s aims, i.e. that Tampere is a recognized advocate of knowledge society thinking and activities in Europe. In addition, cooperation between the three parties has increased. For governmental and private service developers, research has produced new concepts and modified their understanding of ongoing change. In the programme, the government sector has been able to pilot various services offered to Tampere residents in which information and communication technology have been utilized as recommended by the results of research.
The eTampere programme proves that business policy can direct research activity and achieve change in the region’s activity. However, the business policy’s five-year period is too short for achieving large-scale social change by means of research.
The objectives set for the research implemented in the eTampere programme were the generation of multidisciplinary knowledge society research, achieving a position as Europe’s leading research unit in the field of electronic business, and the generation of development expertise in the Tampere Central Region for technologies required in the future. The aim has been to establish research in the field and build an internationally renowned concentration of research.
As a business policy programme, eTampere has raised the management of research as a subject for debate. Challenges to the management of scientific research stem from two directions. On the one hand, the researchers themselves are motivated and thus possess a personal drive to forward research, particularly so with those working on their doctoral dissertations. Another challenge arises from the fact that researchers’ individual aims disperse communal effort. This force for dispersion in research sets management demands in regard to uniting fragmented aims to form a basis for operation.
Apart from steering scientific research, a research manager’s tasks include interest group management. This includes generating international visibility and strengthening social impact.
The institutionalization of research can be perceived as a sign of success since in this way activities aren’t left in disarray. In this respect the aims of the eTampere programme weren’t totally fulfilled. Research was successfully directed around current themes but in such a short period of time it never developed into an independent institution, a school of its own.
“The basic problem of eTampere was one rather typical of development programmes: the implementation of an ambitiously drawn up programme was sought with funding from others. When the ultimate power of decision over resources remains where it already was, and when there are many contradicting aims for the use of the money, people end up doing what they are used to doing. If a programme has quantitative aims, they are achieved by recording the work carried out within the programme which would have been carried out regardless.”
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The basic idea in the organization of the eTampere programme was that partners who entered a contract with the city concerning the programme, such as universities, committed themselves to the programme’s aims and to participation in funding the sub-programmes they were responsible for. The steering of the programme and sub-programmes was implemented by a steering group appointed by the city and the Business Development Centre. How the programme’s aims were reached was monitored through detailed project reporting, the compilation of which was the task of the eTampere Office. The office’s role also included the development of cooperation between the sub-programmes and the programme’s general coordination and marketing.
The programme was characteristically a research programme and the aim of producing novel electronic services, filed in its targets, was only partially fulfilled. One side of the problem was that research focused mostly on basic and follow-up research into technology, the general development of knowledge society and the development of electronic business, but not the applied development of welfare services.
Another side of the problem was that the development of electronic services, which was the city’s own responsibility, relied too heavily on each sector’s own activity. Infocity or the eTampere Office were unable to steer this development – with means such as resource allocation – to other sub-programmes. Infocity’s share of the programme’s total budget was 4% and that of the eTampere Office less than 2%. This means that there was no customer in research who would have provided the main course for the activities to follow nor research themes relevant for the development of knowledge society services. For example, the challenge of implementing a wireless hospital would have offered quite an extensive and diverse development entity, and in the early 2000s it was still a relatively unexplored theme.
The basic problem of eTampere was one rather typical of development programmes: the implementation of an ambitiously drawn up programme was sought with funding from others. When the ultimate power of decision over resources remains where it already was, and when there are many contradicting aims for the use of the money, people end up doing what they are used to doing. If a programme has quantitative aims, they are achieved by recording the work carried out within the programme which would have been carried out regardless.
Decentralizing the responsibility for implementation in the eTampere programme through cooperation agreements subtracted means from the programme’s overall steering. There was no ability to interfere with the detachment of the sub-programmes, which was already visible during the programme period. Even though the targeted, and achieved, project volume was in Finnish standards relatively high, the activities were dispersed across such a wide area in terms of content that its immediate impact is difficult to identify. A smaller number of measures, perhaps just the size of the city’s own total investment of 15 million euros, focused and coordinated strictly for the development of knowledge society services, would probably have produced a more visible result that would also have been easier to evaluate. Naturally the significance of the work carried out in different areas may now be even more significant when viewed in its entirety. The weapon of choice this time was the shotgun, resulting in impressive performance and a clamour that carried quite some distance. So far the smoke hasn’t sufficiently cleared to see how many pellets finally hit the bull’s eye.
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