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Costs
The costs of an innovation platform vary greatly. The operational costs can range between zero to several thousands of dollars per year. Platform members also incur costs; all members have to commit time to the meetings and activities of the innovation platform. Costs to consider for sustaining an innovation platform are:
- Facilitator (salary or at least payment for incurred expenses such as travel)
- Venue and refreshments for meetings
- Travel costs of participants
- Per diems for participants to attend meetings (only if strictly required as this can create wrong incentives)
- Communication costs (e.g. phone bills, printing)
- Funds for experiments with new ideas
In principle, there is a good argument for public funds to be used to support start-up of platforms, provided that some co-funding (in cash or kind) from other stakeholders are in place.
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
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- Tackles institutional issues (e.g. difficulty to collaborate between organisations, policies, negative attitudes towards other actors)
- Strengthens capacity to innovate (adapt to change) of actors involved, which will remain after/if the platform ceases to exist
- Allows actors that are often ignored to speak up, if well facilitated
- Allows solving of problems where solutions depend on many actors acting together
- Dynamic: may change over time, and so remain relevant
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- Often takes time, will not lead to substantial change in a few months’ time
- Not adequate for pure technology dissemination
- Risk having meetings turn into “talk shops;” Needs to be steered towards action
- Depends on well-trained facilitators
- Difficult to deal with actors that are fierce competitors
- Unpredictable: difficult to promise deliverables to donors, because these depend on the interest and capacity of the platform members which change over time
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