INEDIT along with the projects OpenNext, iProduce, DIY4U funded under Horizon 2020 call Open Innovation for collaborative production engineering came together for a collaborative workshop in on-line format to showcase the projects and the different approaches following the Open Innovation concept.

The event was aimed at networking, sharing about the activities and long-term vision, challenges of the projects and strategies to tackle them.

Projects use the open innovation and collaboration approach to disrupt diverse industries in their respective focus:

• INEDIT creates an open innovation European DIT ecosystem for sustainable furniture co-creation. It channels the creativity of consumers, shapes it through designers’ professional skills, and makes it viable by leveraging on the expertise of production specialists to deliver sustainable, smart, and personalized new products in a shorter time to market.
• In OPENNEXT the industries in focus include eco-friendly mobility, consumer electronics, and built-to-order furniture. So far open innovation has been mainly limited to ideation and design validation. The project’s approach considers all stages of product design and development and is based on open design processes. This creates new possibilities of how to co-create customer-centric, sustainable, and viable products with customers, citizens and innovative makers.
• The ambition of DIY4U is to address the blockers of product customisation, personalisation and small-scale manufacturing and capitalise on the business opportunity by developing an Open Innovation digital platform and Fablabs for collaborative design and small-scale production of personalised or customized soft matter FMCG. The concept will also be adopted in paints & coatings, food & beverages, cosmetic, pharmaceuticals, etc.
• iPRODUCE aims to deliver a social manufacturing platform to enable more interaction and collaboration and support user-driven open-innovation and co-creation.

The Project Officer of INEDIT gave an overview of the EU context, noting that local production and distributed manufacturing are important approaches for several reasons:

1. It increases resilience of the supply chain;
2. It reduces pollution and material waste as on-the-spot production would reduce transport and avoid the mass production and storage of objects in warehouses.

Participants of the workshop expressed their interest in further discussion of the topics such as IPR strategies for different types of open innovation projects, open innovation spaces, mass-customization, and open source hardware. These topics will be in focus on further exchange among the projects.