Understanding and assessing IoT ecosystem sustainability
22/03/19
< Project overview >
This project developed evaluation metrics for measuring Pitch-In project outcomes and innovation ecosystem sustainability in a manner that could be utilised for other IoT and wider technology innovation projects.
The metric was utilised to assess all Pitch-In projects at beginning and end to review how best to proceed in terms of selecting future projects, identifying innovation ecosystems that were likely to be sustainable without intervention and innovation ecosystems that could have their sustainability increased with some intervention.
The project involved the following steps:
Development of an innovation and eco-system sustainability metric suitable to assess objectives, benefits and outcomes throughout the life-span of a project.
Application of this metric to all Pitch-In projects at the start and finish of each project.
Application of this metric for other IoT projects that were underway to increase sample size and to obtain additional insights into success factors, barriers and enablers for sustainable innovation ecosystems involving higher education institution (HEI) partners.
Comparison of projects with both high and low metric value to better understand the different barriers and enablers they faced, whether adopting a standard set of practices/guidance could support initial project selection, and assess the extent to which existing innovation ecosystems were sustainable.
Outcomes
A final report was produced that explained the metric development, its initial testing, the results and insights (enablers, barriers, decision support opportunities, intervention opportunities) provided as a result of the evaluation. The metric was applied at initiation and completion of projects to assist with self-assessment and evaluation.
Project lead
Professor Jonathan Linton – Academic Lead for Pitch-In’s ‘managing the implementation of IoT’ theme at the University of Sheffield.