Collaborative Innovation, Collaborative Capabilities and Value Co-creation in an Industry 4.0 Context: An Empirical Evidence.

Digitalization and Industry 4.0 present a fundamental technological disruption, requiring the industry, research and government institutions to revisit their roles in the triple helix of innovation ecosystems. In particular, actors in this environment need to understand the logic of value co-creation and alignment of value-systems during interaction and collaboration. The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of these topics through investigating the triple helix and collaborative capabilities in the Industry 4.0 ecosystem context. It investigates the Reboot IoT Factory project, a 13-million-euro research project with seven leading manufacturers, four research partners, and tens of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). This qualitative single case study presents the projects novel, experimental operating model that can result in effective collaboration, but also establishes requirements for collaborative capabilities in order to co-create value and innovations in the innovation ecosystem. The results demonstrate that research projects can be conducted in a dynamical way to address quickly emerging research needs, to implement fast trials and to scale up developed solutions. Yet, this type of operation requires adopting the ecosystem approach with mutual trust, intensive collaboration, and the identification of common aims among the project participants. The principles of the presented co-innovation model can be applied for designing innovation ecosystem projects.