STPs’ role as facilitators when innovation – advising organizations develop a common quality – assured innovation advising process

This study explores science and technology parks’ (STP) role as facilitators when an innovation advising organization network (IAON) within the health, social welfare, and medical technology sector (health-tech) develops a quality-assured innovation advising process (QAIP). The background is that more and more products using Industry 4.0 technology are being developed for the healthtech sector. The challenge, however, as recognized by an STP, is that the IAON’s members use individual innovation advise processes, which results in inaccurate advice to the SME and insufficient collaboration between the advising organizations when advising the same SME. In this study, one STP initiated and facilitated the work to develop a QAIP, which was developed stepwise through a series of workshops in an iterative process. This study indicates that STPs may play an active part in supporting IAONs developing specialized innovation processes for certain business and technology areas, although further studies are suggested.