200SMEchallenge Practical Guide for Innovation Agencies to adopt and scale up Open Innovation scheme. The UX Challenge Playbook

This guide results from a project funded by the European Commission aimed to set up, execute and evaluate the impact of a new scheme for supporting user-centered open innovation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (200SMEchallenge - more info in the final section). This scheme consists of an open innovation initiative that can be activated by innovation intermediaries (innovation and development agencies, business representative associations, higher education institutions, technology transfer institutions) to allow SMEs in sourcing solutions to new product development and innovation challenges by leveraging on the contribution of young design talents (students, startups, young researchers). The initiative, which we have called UX Challenge, especially focuses on finding solutions to problems in the digital realm, by means of user-centered design methodologies and techniques applied to the design and development of software, digital applications, and human-machine interfaces. The UX Challenge was first launched in Trentino (Italy), in 2017, with the aim of fostering knowledge transfer and cooperation between top-level researchers and technology in HCI - human computer interaction, the companies from a flourishing ICT industry cluster, and a number of startup and service providers specialized in user-centered design.

The guide was written to share experiences and allow innovation and development agencies to learn more about user-centered open innovation, and how to practically set up and launch new initiatives for supporting its adoption in SMEs.