The SME and AAL The importance of a vision


second Plenary session, his mop of extravagant blonde hair catching the spotlights and a knowing smile playing across his slightly craggy face, somehow another Powerpoint presentation just wouldn’t have seemed right – and sure enough as the director of SportKreativWerkstatt presented a vision of the future through the eyes of several well-observed characters and a few snappy jokes, it became clear that in terms of AAL presentations, we were watching innovation in progress. The idea was that Fozzy, as he likes to


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be known, was offering the audience a glimpse of possible outcomes of AAL activity and what could be – the point being that we don’t simply need to focus our efforts on the issues we face today, but we need to look into the future and develop a vision of where we would like to be in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time. And not only do we need to look at the solutions we may be offering, but also at the motivation for creating them in the first place as well, as what may stop us achieving our goals. SportKreativWerkstatt is an innovation


incubator, a company, as Fozzy puts it, “dedicated to making innovation happen”. It comes at this task from all angles, sometimes process design, other times moderating the structure of projects. Often they develop their own initiatives, finding partners and putting together consortia. “Essentially,” says Fozzy, “we make sure the right things happen at the right time with the right partners.” One aspect of this work is looking at


the role of motivation to any innovation’s success, a concept many projects fail to grasp. “It is essential to examine what would motivate people to use the things you will be developing,” explains Fozzy. “If you know this before you start development, then you can address it properly. Most times, you cannot find this out just by interviews or questionnaires,” he continues. “People won’t know if they will be motivated to use a particular mobile phone, for


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fter Professor Fozzy Moritz Eckehard had ambled slowly across the main stage at the


TV chairs, adding more technology from other partners. But the question remained what would motivate these people to move in the chair? Obviously, we are dealing with people who didn’t move, so we couldn’t get them down to a movement centre to test it, so the only way we could find out how to get people to use it was to take it to them. “So we set up lots of different


For more information about


Fozzy’s projects, please visit: http://www.si-screen.eu/ http://www.gewos.org/


example, if they don’t know what it is or how it works. We are trying to find out what motivates people to use something that is not yet there.” Of course this is a bit of a chicken


and egg situation – which comes first, the motivation to use something that doesn’t exist or the motivation to build something? “The motivation to build something


comes first and this is often based on need, and then comes the process to make it right,” stresses Fozzy. “We need to understand what motivation exists (if any) to use something that doesn’t exist.” Of course, this approach to


innovation is one that companies like Apple have been using successfully for years, but it is rarely applied with this commercial savvy outside that arena. Fozzy explains how he has applied this thinking to an AAL JP project and the success it brought. “We wanted to develop a movement


chair,” he explains. “To have a positive impact on the health of the elderly, we have to make those who don’t like to move at the moment, move more often, especially couch potatoes. If they move more, then they get fitter and that helps prevent a number of diseases and conditions. “We received funding for the project


and managed to engage with a big furniture company to produce these


functional prototypes of the new chair – some in which you do gaming, some in which you can feel some movement, some in which you are moved, some in which you can feel a certain element of training and some in which you are put into totally new positions! We had lots of approaches, which we tried out on the couch potatoes and from their comments and later in a reflection group, we got a much better understanding of what it is that would motivate them to start moving. And finding that, we find the key to the whole product’s success.” There are many more aspects of


successful innovation than simply finding out what your end user wants, particularly if they don’t know they want it when you start – but it is a good starting point according to Fozzy. Another is future visioning and he believes this is particularly relevant to the work being done by AAL partners. “We are now designing the future of


preventative health, how this will look in 10 years time, what kind of players there will be working in it, what institutions will be necessary and what kind of products and services will be needed,” he explains. “If projects are able to place their work into this context, then it gives them much better direction. You can innovate in any direction, anything is possible, but knowing how it will flow together, what the long-term direction will be gives you that long-term vision.” Fozzy believes this aspect of


development is vital for the success of AAL. Projects may have a target vision for their work, but contextualisation is vital. “We need to find out about motivations, stakeholders and their interests, we need to understand the barriers that exist to our innovation and what we can do about them, we need


AAL Forum 2011


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