Over the past two years, January 2022 - August 2024, the Erasmus+ partnership “Recovery of cultural heritage through higher education-driven open innovation“ (eCHOing) has worked with open innovation practices for collaborations between heritage professionals, students and citizens across five countries, focusing on small capacity building and new skills transfer.

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Final eCHOing Methodology for the implementation of OI collaborations.

It is delivered here as an Open access report but has to be cited as Angeletaki A., Rice P. 2024. PR3A1: eCHOing Methodology. The eCHOing project has developed a Methodology (cc) to enable the effective replicability of Open Innovation Project (OIP) initiatives driven by Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) for the benefit of Cultural Heritage Organizations (CHOs). e. It addresses all target groups of the eCHOing project: primarily staff at all levels and students of HEIs as the main beneficiaries and also stakeholders in the cultural and creative sector and small and medium-sized cultural organizations. This Methodology was produced as a draft within the Project Result 3, first in 2023 and was presented and implemented through a Learning Teaching week (LTTA) in April 2023 to all eCHOing members, and associated partners and students. It has then been implemented by the eCHOing partners in 28 different OIPs organized and performed by all associated partners as planned during the Project Result four (PR4) period.

The term ‘open innovation’ refers to a situation where an organization doesn’t just rely on internal knowledge, sources, and resources (such as its own staff or R&D) but also uses external sources (such as customer feedback, published patents, competitors, external agencies, the public) to drive innovation.

In the cultural heritage sector, it means initiatives or activities where institutions co-create or co-develop project ideas in collaboration with citizens, students and institutions from other sectors or industries. These activities can take many forms: for example, citizen science, crowdsourcing, actions for grassroot communities, hackathons, etc. ( see our open innovation guide). One of the objective challenges for designing a methodology for OIPs is how to choose a flexible structure which supports these very different kinds of potential activities. The approach implemented by eCHOing was to focus on the stages which capture the innovative nature of the intervention rather than pick any technology-driven intricacies which would require branching into different opportunities. The observations on the implementation of the OIPs confirmed that this was a sound approach as the methodology provided a framework to advance the activities as useful structuring placeholders rather than being unnecessarily prescriptive on details which might not have always been adequate depending on the nature of the innovation.

Several new tools were developed by eCHOing to familiarise its partners and APs on how OI can be used and to create a common understanding among participants on the general framework of the projects to be implemented:

1. Online Modules & Learning Objectives of OI Training to establish a common training platform.
2. A Mapping & Matching Guide to explain OI and present several concrete examples of similar projects.
3. An Interview Guide to facilitate the dialogue between partners
4. A series of eCHOing webinars and videos on various subjects related to tools and methodologies applied in the CCS and Academia for collaborative projects.

These are directed at all target groups of the eCHOing project: primarily staff at all levels and students of HEIs as the main beneficiaries and also stakeholders in the cultural and creative sector and small and medium-sized CHOs.

The series of the youtube videos showcases the work done by the students that have participated in the implementation of OIPs.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This deliverable reflects the views only of the author and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

All reports and tools are delivered here as project results and as Open Research work but has to be cited as advised in each report.

PR3A6: Synthesis of eCHOing methodology. 

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