A national programme by and for all top sectors to strengthen the role of experimental environments as key methodologies for mission-driven innovation.
Bridge function between drawing board and practice
Innovation cannot exist without experimentation. Environments in which new solution directions are developed, tested, substantiated, refined and prepared for application are indispensable for realising the major societal missions that are central to Dutch mission-driven top sectors and innovation policy. They are rightly key enabling methodologies, innovation accelerators that have impact in the form of economic and social effects. The Broadly Supported Programme Experimentation Environments is a national programme by and for all top sectors to strengthen the role of experimentation as key enabling methodologies for mission-driven innovation.
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Experimentation environments
Experimentation environments have a prominent place in the Knowledge and Innovation Agendas drawn up around the social missions from the top sectors. The Netherlands has a high density of such environments, with varying names and emphases. They span what is often called the valley of death of innovation, the step from new technology or solution to application in practice. They form the setting for design-based research: the approach to complex challenges that leads to solutions through work while providing insight into the nature of the problems to be solved.
The challenge
There is an urgency in the innovation field to further align environments for experimentation with mission-driven innovation. Missions involve complex, long-term transitions that call for both technological and social innovation on an ongoing basis. The aim of the programme is to (further) develop environments for experimentation as key methodologies in such a way that they best fit the complex and long-term nature of the transitions envisaged by missions.
The Netherlands benefits from well-deployable experimental environments that optimally help to progress and deliver on social issues that not only we, but also the rest of the world, are facing. The programme aims at robust, cross-sector embedding of experimental environments in the innovation infrastructure that develops around the societal missions.
Objective
Where should the energy be focused? Research and practical experience repeatedly reveal that within experimental environments there is a tendency for the wheel to be regularly reinvented. Knowledge (accumulation) about the functioning of these experimental environments is also fragmented, and too little is still known about the extent to which these labs are replicable in the very diverse missions and application areas within mission-driven innovation policy. On top of this, existing labs - both large and small - regularly express a desire to share more knowledge and build together, but lack time and resources. The approach here is bottom-up, starting from the experimental environments.
Programme activities
An active approach with actions, interventions and projects with a strong applied or design-oriented character and with demand-driven research fits the aforementioned tasks. The BGP wants to support experimental environments and involved stakeholders who want to make progress in four areas:
- An accessible and practical understanding of experimentation environments as methodologies
- More synergy and coherence
- Support for longer-running experimentation environments
- More parties connecting and benefiting.
Team BGP
Nieuws over Exceed