ERA in Networked Enterprise

The Need

Research on the Networked Enterprise field contributes to the EU Lisbon objective of making Europe the most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010, by supporting innovative forms of Business. Progress however in certain key issues has been hindered by several identified problems:

• Low concertion and integration of national research and innovation related strategies

• Relatively slow adoption of state of the art ICT by European organizations

• Failure of ICT skills, innovation and RTD development

This context stresses the need for coordination of research policies and initiatives at national, regional and European level, as a mean to tackle existing deficiencies and address Europe’s RTD performance in the field and promote the cooperation and the exchange of good practises at policy, research and innovation level.

The Scope

The ‘ERA Co-ordination Initiative in the field of Networked Enterprise’ aims to facilitate the networking among policy makers and key stakeholders and improve the European, national and regional co-ordination of the research policies and initiatives in the four key research areas of Networked Enterprise.

More specifically, the targeted four key areas of Networked Enterprise research are the following:

• ‘Collaborative Business Networks’ (CBN)- in order to enable networked organisations to be more competitive, innovative, open, flexible, and creators of value;

• ‘Digital Ecosystems for Business Innovation’ (DBE)- assuming that an increasing number of business networks are composed of interconnected participants, who depend on each other for their mutual effectiveness and survival through embracing harmoniously the value chain of research-innovation-deployment policy.

• ‘Ambient Intelligence Technologies for the Product Lifecycle – RFID’ (AITPL - RFID)- improving the knowledge of the product and production processes in order to develop new product concepts and related business models that can contribute to the modernisation of many industries from both manufacturing and service sectors with a special focus on RFID as the enabling technology towards the ‘Internet of Things’.

• ‘Enterprise Interoperability’ (EI) - in order to enable networked business by giving enterprises the means to seamlessly and securely interoperate with each other.

The Objectives in detail

To achieve this goal, the Initiative sets a number of specific objectives:

• To analyse the main European, national and regional funded research and deployment ICT policies/initiatives closely linked with the four key research areas mentioned;

• To analyse ongoing FP6 IST research and deployment project developments and policy-related activities in the Networked Enterprise & RFID Unit (INFSO-D4) with respect to ERA co-ordination, as well as the eventual priority actions, which could be defined by the clusters set up by the D4 unit;

• To compare the above FP6 project developments, policy-related activities, and priority actions with the above mentioned European, national and regional policies/initiatives in each of the 4 key research areas in order to identify synergies and key actions to be discussed with national and regional policy makers and representatives;

• To identify the national and regional representatives from the public sector and to initiate discussions to identify key actions in the research topics which are most relevant for the European, national and regional co-ordination;

• To identify potential members of the community of national and regional decision-makers, as well as experts;

• To identify the organisations that act as effective ‘knowledge hubs” in the key research areas of Networked Enterprise,

• To set up the interfaces between national and regional authorities, the Commission and the Networked Enterprise projects and clusters in order to define and contribute to the follow-up of an action plan;

• To organise workshops on the identified key actions (with European/ national/regional authorities, research programme managers, clusters), to address the possibilities to co-ordinate research and deployment efforts and to establish a final action plan that could contribute to the definition of priorities in FP7 (e.g. FP7-ICT Work Programme 2009-2010);

• To identify good practices and to define recommended actions to promote better knowledge flows and improved co-ordination at European, national and regional levels.
  

  The Expected Impact
  

  This initiative is expected to create the following impact:

  • Contribute to the understanding of the creation of better synergies between Networked Enterprise research / innovation programmes at all levels

  • Set up the basis for wider European collaboration in the Networked Enterprise field and assist avoiding duplication of activities

  • Improve co-ordination at European, national, regional level in the Networked Enterprise field

  • Introduce more distinctively the related key research areas in the European / national / regional policy agendas & priorities.

  • Create a long-lasting effect by introducing sustainable interfaces and structures to support networking, interaction and co-ordination among the Networked Enterprise community well after the contractual end of this Initiative.