Event-based Innovation and city branding

EVENT-BASED INNOVATION

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Using deadlines for major sporting events as a driver of innovation processes, involving companies, knowledge institutions, education and/or society in general.

Using sporting events as a vibrant platform for launching or testing new technologies, products and/or services that are the result of these processes.

Using the attention on sporting events also to create awareness of new technologies, products and/or services that are tested or launched in conjunction with the event.

About Event-based Innovation


Event-based Innovation should be seen as a targeted contribution towards the efforts to create a model and a tradition of using innovation to increase the return on the investments made by state, regions and municipalities in major sporting events.

The event is considered as a base that, in addition to the awareness generated through a spectacular sporting event, also forms the focal point of value creation through focused and well-organized innovation processes.

For hosts and organizers of sporting events, and for the sport itself, Event-based Innovation is an opportunity to work with a renewed approach to the value that sporting events represent.

Why Event-based Innovation?


Event-based Innovation should be seen as an attempt to increase ambition levels when setting goals for hosting sporting events in Aarhus. Right now, it reads something like: “greater visibility through more and larger sporting events.” It is not enough.

There’s a need for a crystal-clear link between the desire for more and bigger events and the other obvious assets of the city. It should also read something like: “more visibility and jobs as a result of multiple, larger and more relevant innovations based on more and bigger sporting events in Aarhus.”

What it is!


Event-based Innovation is not about the innovations taking place in conjunction with major sporting events. It refers to procedural skills and to a readiness that could make Aarhus particularly good at facilitating and driving innovation processes in relation to sporting events.

What it isn’t!


Event-based Innovation does not spring from the illusion that we have found the stone of wisdom and thus are able to save the world; or, for that matter, even from the ambition to attract 75,000 (well-educated) inhabitants by 2030.

Conversely, it is an expression of a strong belief that we all have a duty to consider how we can incorporate innovation into our lives, starting with the things we work with on a daily basis. The latter is, after all, the only “raw material” of great demand that we have – and competition is becoming increasingly fierce.

Be realistic but (very) ambitious


Event-based Innovation in Aarhus can rather quickly be a well-established aspect of how we organize and focus on events, rather than something that needs to be rebuilt from scratch. We already have a world-class, vibrant IT environment, and are accustomed to and trained in collaboration across sectors. Aarhus has a great starting point and can lead the way.

It’s a matter of focus


Through the EVINN project, we will work with innovation within the dissemination and communication of sporting events.

The priorities are: 1) event dissemination, 2) organization and 3) security before, during and after an event. The basis is IT as a tool to create visibility, insight and/or relationships between relevant things and persons.

Visibility, insight and relationships between individuals have different meanings depending on which strand is focused on, but there are plenty of opportunities to achieve synergy between all three priorities.

About the EVINN project


We introduce what we have chosen thus far to call “the EVINN platform”. It consists of eight themes.

Within that framework one or more themes can be the focal point for specific projects. This can change so that all the themes play a role in the specific solution being tested and exposed by the project.

Where concrete solutions will always be temporary, the aim is to create a generic EVINN platform that can live on and serve as a starting point for collaborations and further projects, even after the completion of the current project.

The EVINN Platform


Event dissemination Security

Organization

“the EVINN platform”


Sensors

Data processing

Data presentation

Network

Interaction and gaming

The EVINN platform - eight themes

Operation and collaboration

Business Models

1

2

3

4

56

7

before under after

Efficacy Analysis8


Sensors are about the technology needed to disseminate relevant information from the sporting event. Itʼs about where they can be placed, how they are placed and their maintenance. Itʼs about the deployment and thus the design of equipment, including integrating sensors into the equipment that athletes use. Itʼs about design and integration of sensors in the equipment for the arena.

Data processing is about computational models and algorithms that organize what can sometimes be huge amounts of (live) data. Itʼs all about server and client setup, operation and maintenance.

Data presentation is about specific applications, but also visualization techniques and teaching methods; i.e. how data are presented and where, when and why they are presented. Itʼs about the design of equipment, which will reinforce the impression of carrying on specific sports. Itʼs about language and shaping concepts that add to and enhance the experience and/or lead to renewed insight.

Data transmission is about types of networks, and combining the different types of networks needed to establish online (live) transmission of relatively large amounts of data. Itʼs about specific setups, stability and security in the delivery.

Interaction and games are about design, and hence the creation of aesthetic and engaging experiences in relation to sports events. Itʼs about how to exploit online social properties with increasing commitment and retain the audience. Itʼs about how on-site games can be integrated into an existing sports venue and thus intensify the experience and increase engagement.

The EVINN platform applied to “event dissemination”

Operation and collaboration is about the procedures for content production, and thus also about how professional and amateur, sender and receiver can co-operate and/or complement each other in covering sporting events. Moreover, itʼs about models of how minor and major players, and sometimes volunteers and amateurs, can undertake the entire production.

Business Models is about new ways of viewing, improving and monetizing the “value proposition” that exists within the framework of the dissemination of sporting events. Itʼs about the relationship between the value proposition and the purchaser of the product. Itʼs about the payment and the cost structures associated with the dissemination of sporting events. Itʼs about the infrastructure that supports the business models.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

before during after

Efficacy Analysis ...8


“The EVINN platform” can be applied to all three priorities: the themes will have different meanings within these priorities, but, as clearly stated, there is significant overlap and thus a basis for interventions, solutions and products that cut across them.

“The EVINN platform” is about how, in a world in which IT is becoming ever more useful and ubiquitous, we can make sport – broadly speaking – visible, understandable and sharable. The concept therefore consists of an important technological aspect, but also greatly emphasizes teaching technical and pedagogical aspects, as well as social aspects.

“The EVINN platform” largely uses existing technologies, services and pervasive computing infrastructures in bringing new and relevant data to the surface, and in finding new ways in which these data can be made understandable, and definitive means by which they can be shared and thus serve as a basis for increased commitment.


EVINN - progress

2012

Objective 1: building the EVINN platform

Objective 2: experiments based on the EVINN platform

Objective 3: propagating the EVINN platform

2013 2014

WP 1 WP 3 WP 4 WP 5 WP 6 WP 7 WP 8 WP 9WP 2


Through the EVINN project, the Kattegat-Skagerrak region will build a community that makes it possible to further capitalize on sporting events throughout the entire area.

The EVINN platform will be the basis for creating a tradition of event-based innovation processes involving skills across the Kattegat-Skagerrak region.

Perspectives


Documents

Event-based Innovation and city branding