The V-Cycle for system innovation translating a broad societal need into concrete product service solutions: the multifunctional centre Apeldoorn case

In this paper a system innovation project is presented in which a sustainable future vision with a long-term perspective was developed and translated into short-term commercial innovation opportunities, which in turn can benefit the longer-term vision of society. The case described is a three-year innovation project, in which TNO worked together with a local care organisation De Woonmensen, and a SME company My Bodyguard BV. Starting with the challenges related to the aging society, future visions were developed that focussed upon the need of elderly people to continue living independently for a longer time, instead of moving to an expensive in-house care facility. During the process, the long-term vision was translated into short-term innovation concepts or solution elements on the individual user level, which focussed on the problem of elderly patients wandering off and getting lost. On the micro technological level, this resulted in the development of a personal localization system to enable caregivers to know where a certain patient is, based on a combination of GPS and GSM technology, the ‘Guide Me’ system. The four challenges addressed in this analysis focus on the relation between the broad future vision and the separate solution elements, the detailed design of the solution elements, the distinction between the design, implementation and evaluation of the elements, and the changing role of actors during the system innovation process. To deal with these issues, the V-Cycle of system innovations model was introduced that distinguishes between the various complexity or abstraction levels of the system in combination with the time perspective needed for change. Introducing this model proved to be helpful to clarify the four issues mentioned and was found to be a useful tool to evaluate system innovation projects after they were implemented, as well as supporting the projects before and during their implementation.