The unique approach of Ecosystem School 1.0 brought together different ecosystem actors (50 participants) from different governmental and public sectors to the shared co-learning and co-creative development process. The approach was highly phenomenon based and the co-learning process followed the logic of service design. Furthermore, the design sprint kind of implementation as such is an innovative solution at the governmental sector. This was different on what has been tried previously in governmental development. On the other hand, due to the co-created nature of innovation involving actors from the different organisations, the traditional questions such as an innovation owner are fuzzy, and the tools of Ecosystem School 1.0 are cc-licenced.

The need to solve wicked problems in the VUCA world is changing the ways of working at the governmental sector. Therefore, Finnish Work 2.0 Lab (Työ 2.0 Lab) initiative launched together with Vision Factory LtD the Ecosystem School 1.0 to bring together representatives of 11 ecosystems (50 participants) to co-innovate their development work.

The first implementation Ecosystem School 1.0 was done at the 9 months’ time (January- September 2022) and the lessons learnt including theoretical aspects and tools will be shared at the Living in Ecosystems – Value from co-creation platform November 2022.

This design sprint kind of implementation as such is also an innovative solution at the governmental sector. In addition, this enables each of 11 ecosystems to understand the expectations and motivations of different stakeholders within the ecosystem, which is crucial for making the systemic changes in future.

The stakeholders involved were researchers from VTT and Vision Factory (generating the theory), government actors and course leaders from Work 2.0 Lab/ State Treasury & Ministry of Finance (generating resources, internal views of the governmental culture and being truly agile innovators), educators from Vision Factory (turning the theoretical knowledge into practical Ecosystem School 1.0) and participants i.e. students (testing, using and giving feedback content and tools).

Understanding the value of ecosystem from the perspectives of all stakeholders involved is a crucial aspect. To sum up the learnings, it was recognised that ecosystems bring value at different levels; i) cities and local development agencies play a key role when policy-level visions are put into practice, ii) national ministries and programs are at the core of implementing national policy decisions and development agendas, as well as commitment to testing environments and national test beds.

Based on the ecosystem development stories (11) including both success and pain points of the development and the official feedback, the results and impacts are following:

• The growth of understanding of the ecosystem thinking and development.
• The growth of enthusiasm of expanding the ecosystem way of working and solving wicked problems.
• The growth of collaboration, co-creation and strengthening networks.
• The school boosted the ecosystems’ activities carried out by the participants simultaneously. Activities including more than 50 events, workshops, and stakeholder group discussions, more than 100 public statements, and new RDI-projects.
• The ecosystem development tools which enabled to create an development plan, to identify what kind of ecosystem is in question, to map ecosystem’s stakeholders and their needs, to create a value promise, and to map ecosystem activities.
• Ecosystems realised in a concrete way their strengths and weaknesses and how to tackle them better.

Based on the ecosystem stories and feedback the challenges encountered were following:

• Co-creation activities are not easy among the large group of stakeholders. This especially applies not so much to the ecosystem school participants but their ecosystems’ stakeholders.
• The difficulty to clarify on what kind of ecosystem is in question and to develop ecosystem’s value promise to its stakeholders.
• Resources (time, money and skills) within different stakeholders from different organisations.
• The development activities are not put in the practice.
• The balance between needing to have short term results and not being able to focus on a long-term development.
• To create intelligent measures to map the results of the ecosystem activities.

During the Ecosystem School 1.0 we also tested several digital co-creation tools and based on the feedback instead of having several tools we should be focused of having just a few to fully accomplish them.

The conditions necessary for this innovation were:

• Having strong theoretical background and converging different theory areas. For this innovation the theory areas were ecosystem, service design and co-creation theory.
• Having the governmental level resources and enablers.
• Having course leaders and educators involved who are ready to push the current boundaries, are open-minded and agile.
• Having the participants i.e. students who have the motivation to push their current professional thinking from the expert mindset to the participatory mindset and who ware also ready to push current boundaries, are open-minded and agile.
• The 11 ecosystems which needed the development.

To scale up and to institutionalise the Ecosystem School 1.0 simultaneously during the school a digital platform was developed. The platform name in English is Living in Ecosystems – Value from co-creation and it opens in November 2022.

Living in Ecosystems – Value from co-creation platform includes all the 11 ecosystem development stories involved in the school. Furthermore, it contains 10 ecosystem canvasses to support the development in an agile way, 9 ecosystem videos to guide the development journey, both success and pain points of the ecosystem development learned during the school, and links to the broader ecosystem knowledge. The content of the platform is cc-licensed; thus, it can be used openly in ecosystem development not only in governmental level but also elsewhere. The Ecosystem School will continue in 2023 on a governmental level and Vision Factory is planning to offer it into private sector actors also.

• Be open, agile and co-creative
• Learn from failures
• Do not try to make everything ready beforehand instead of co-create the innovation along the journey
• Create communication material that can be shared
• Enjoy when succeeding
• Be humble, listen and learn although being professional already

Finally, we want to highlight the importance of open mind-set and willingness to participate to the co-creation process. Although, the process and tools are now tested and the experiences will be shared, the development path of every ecosystem is different as they consist from unique partners, relationships and interaction between them.

Here this innovation was co-created among following actors:

• Liisa Virolainen, State Treasury and Virpi Einola-Pekkinen, Ministry of Finance (governmental actors, course leaders)
• Krista Keränen, Outi Kinnunen, Laura Väisänen, Hanna Voutilainen, Vision Factory Ltd (educators, content and visuals creators)
• Katri Valkokari and Kirsi-Maria Hyytinen, VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd); Krista Keränen and Outi Kinnunen, Vision Factory (theoretical background)
• Partcipants (50) of the Ecosystem School 1.0 (testers)

The innovation materials are currently in Finnish, but we are ready to create all of them in English if we get chosen.

Other relevant links:

• https://tyo-2-0-lab.fi/
• https://cris.vtt.fi/en/publications/collaborating-for-a-sustainable-future-ecosystem-guide