Business Innovation Centers as communities of entrepreneurs: the Sachsen project

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Business Innovation Centers as communities of
entrepreneursthe Sachsen project
Seminar Community Networks for the Local Economy
Development
Stefano Micelli University Ca Foscari of
Venice e.mail micelli_at_unive.it
Milan, 11 February 1999
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The economics of social communities
The concept of community has become a buzzword in
the business community.

• Beside the theory of learning we agree on, do we
  have an effective economic theory about (virtual)
  communities?

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The WINT community

• The WINT project has been conceived by the
  Business Development Center Sachsen to achieve
  two main goals
• Rethinking coaching tools for the development of
  new local entrepreneurs facing growing economic
  and technological complexity
• Lowering training costs by empowering final
  users, assigning them a key role in the system
  design

Key word community of practice
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The evolving role of WINT members
Community life cycle
Entrepreneur role
Firm life cycle

• Conception
• Take off
• Business Development

The business idea is presented and discussed
External
1. Step admission insidethe community
User
The entrepreneur and a dedicatedcoaching team
redefine the project
2. Step coaching
Key player
The firm grows and developsits presence on
relevant market
3. Step proactive role
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WINT community management tools

• The community offers a bundle of services that
  can be divided as follows
• information tools (search engines, selections of
  classified documents, yellow pages, collaborative
  filtering)
• cooperation spaces (on line consulting,
  personalized document workflow management,
  restricted discussion groups, explicitly managed
  discussion groups)

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WINT community members
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The Web interface 1/2
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The Web interface 2/2
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WINT the groupware and the web
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Results from the pilot program
Guidelines for development
Empirical evidence

• The entrepreneurs actively participated to
  community life, contributing to archives
  development.
• Experts and consultants played a key role in
  activating users participation
• The most used services communication and
  interaction areas where dialogues are
  continuously edited.

• An active community requires a considerable
  management effort.
• The activity of content certification by
  community managers is fundamental to catch users
  attention.
• A considerable part of community management
  should be dedicated to interfacing other
  communities.

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The Leeds Virtual Science Park

• The Leeds Virtual Science Park (VSP), an
  initiative of the University of Leeds provides an
  on-line, Web-based environment for its tenants.
• The VSP uses a familiar physical metaphor as
  its interface. Clients rent space on the Park in
  order to set up a tenancy to support the
  development of their business.
• Services offered include Knowledge Resource
  Rooms, On-line tutorial support, Group discussion
  forums, Offices for academic and industrial
  mentors, Access to the full range of expertise
  and knowledge resources publicly available within
  the VSP

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One of the Virtual Rooms of the VSP Leeds
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The BarcelonaNetActiva experience

• Barcelona Activa - a private municipal company
  from Barcelona City Council - has created a
  Virtual Busines Incubator, a web-based tool for
  innovation and knowledge
• This community provides its tenants with four
  main service areas
• information databases
• business cooperation systems
• distance learning environments
• community services

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The Portal of BarcelonaNetActiva
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A converging path

• Virtual Business Innovation Centers seem to be
• strongly rooted in a specific geographical area
• activated by end users eager to share business
  experience with other entrepreneurs facing
  similar experiences
• managed with a constant support a well equipped
  back office
• focus on users learning experience to provide
  newcomers with the older entrepreneurs experience