2017 Call for Associate Enterprises

TCBL HANDBOOKS

THE 2017 CALL FOR ASSOCIATE ENTERPRISES

Co-funded by Horizon 2020

ANNEX 5 TO TCBL D 4.2, 15 JULY 2017

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INTRODUCTION TCBL is creating a global movement for a sustainable T&C industry by building a community of innovators and enterprises that share common goals and values. As TCBL becomes an umbrella ‘brand’ representing those values, the procedure for the selection of business to become part of that community gains great importance.

This guidebook illustrates the terms, procedures and results of the 2017 Call for Associate Enterprises, the mechanism through which TCBL labels its community members. This was the second of four yearly Calls foreseen in the TCBL project workplan, and builds on the experience of the previous call with the following main changes: • • •

The application form was more focused on the applicant’s interest in TCBL activities Evaluation criteria were simplified to make the process clearer The evaluation process was streamlined for a more fair and efficient procedure

In this way, we hope to be making a step forward towards a procedure that reinforces the TCBL community on the one hand while requiring less time and effort on behalf of the Call managers and evaluators on the other.

This guidebook is intended for: • • •

Those who participated in the 2017 Call and wish to learn more about the process Associate Enterprises interested in participating in the evaluation procedure Those interested in become an Associate Enterprises through participation in future calls

The guidebook is structured according to the following sections: • • •

A description of the goals of the TCBL Calls for Associate Enterprises A description of the 2017 Call procedure A summary of the results, including a listing of the 58 new Associate Enterprises

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OBJECTIVES

A central feature of the TCBL approach to scaling up and out is the Associates Programme, which aims to overcome the gap between the EU-funded project partnership and open business ecosystems in the “real world” by “gradually extending the interacting components of the business ecosystem through yearly Calls for Expressions of Interest.” 1

THE FIRST CALL IN 20162 The objective of the first Call in 2016 was twofold: 1. Select and define a minimum set (target of 60) of businesses with whom to carry out the first “internal” cycle of pilot experimentation. This implied identifying the desired features of the overall set of businesses, namely including the variety of sizes and innovation strategies and a sufficient mix of supply chain “positions” in order to be able to “compose” different value chains based on different pilot scenarios.

2. Test the tools and procedures of a transparent evaluation process that, while it may have been unnecessarily burdensome for the needs of the first Call, would become more important in the successive calls. The criteria here included: an appropriate mix of objectivity and subjectivity, guaranteeing openness and transparency while also takinginto account first-hand knowledge of candidates, and scalability, with a process that could handle an increasing number of candidates over time while being open to a broadening of the governance principles.

As regards the first point, the evaluation criteria for the Associates programme overall are as follows: • • •

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The ability to instantiate and validate one or more of the innovative business models developed in TCBL A capillary geographical diffusion of the network of TCBL ecosystem actors A mixed typology of organisations, including for instance home workers, artisan workers, loosely organized innovation communities, small businesses, clusters and value chain networks, and large-scale enterprises in manufacturing, marketing, and distribution.

Enrichment of the ecosystem’s trans-disciplinary and trans-sector trajectories, including the involvement of organisations across the innovative TCBL value chains.

Transferability of the TCBL business models from T&C to other areas, such as footwear, furniture, and other design-based consumer goods sectors.

These points constituted the guiding framework for defining the selection criteria for the first call.

During this process, however, the distinctive features of the TCBL Associates Programme emerged with regards to a “traditional” call evaluation process, for instance as with H2020 Calls for proposals. The differences that emerged are highlighted in the following table.

Traditional Call Money is being distributed to the most worthy candidates.

TCBL

The value proposition offered is mainly based on joining an opportunity-based community.

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TCBL contractual Description of Actions p. 14.

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Including text previously published in TCBL Deliverable 4.1.

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The 2017 Call for Associate Enterprises TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Traditional Call

TCBL

The number of selections is defined by the limited amount of resources to distribute.

The number of selections is based on the ability of TCBL partners to support the dynamics of interaction between them.

Candidates are in competition with each other

Candidates are selected on the basis of their propensity to collaboration, with no fixed ceiling.

Candidates present innovation projects that they will carry out as planned if their bid is successful.

It is expected that innovation projects will be defined and designed after selection.

Projects are carried out with a pre-defined consortium or set of suppliers.

Projects in TCBL are carried out together with partners that are “discovered”3 from within the business ecosystem following selection.

On-going projects have little or no interaction.

Selected candidates become Associates, a bounded ecosystem that promotes interaction within an innovation community.

Projects follow a fixed time frame with external monitoring and evaluation.

TCBL supports self-evaluation of pilot scenario participants for open-ended experiments that scale up to the “real” world.

Guiding framework for defining selection criteria.

In essence, the shift is from a situation where “we” are offering an opportunity and candidates qualify to be worthy of that offer, to one where candidates are being asked how they intend to contribute to an ecosystem that they themselves are being offered the possibility to build. We support the construction of this ecosystem and the collaborative innovation initiatives that animate it, rather than supporting the individual companies participating in it as such.

To this end, it was decided that rather than ask candidates to present a specific project idea (with the evaluation based primarily on business viability), TCBL would ask candidates to describe their approaches, aspirations and potential contribution to business model innovation.

This in turn was defined by the translation of the 7 TCBL principles4 into operational criteria appropriate for evaluating candidates.

CHANGES FOR THE 2017 CALL The 2016 Call for Associate Enterprises was very successful, given that with a target of identifying 60 enterprises over 120 applications were received and 78 new Associate Enterprises selected. The main insights gained during that process included:

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The term “discovery” is used similarly to “Entrepreneurial Discovery” in ERDF Smart Specialisation.

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http://tcbl.eu/join-us

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The 2017 Call for Associate Enterprises TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs •

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The extremely high acceptance rate was explained by the fact that those willing to register on the website and then complete a full Application Form were likely to be already aligned with the TCBL goals and principles.

It is difficult to find the right balance between objective and subjective judgements. Most applicants are familiar to the TCBL community and interested in engagement, while on the other hand not all application forms were well written often due to language issues.

The evaluation by teams (7 teams each assigned a set of proposals) appeared to be overly cumbersome and not lead to a fairer judgement than, say, a random distribution of evaluators to each proposal.

It was important to keep the evaluation process as open and multi-perspective as possible, involving those not directly involved in business support activities with an external view on what the ecosystem needs.

The evaluation process emerged as a valuable moment in building community and shared understandings, it is important for each Associate to know that their selection involved TCBL partners in a careful analysis of their proposal and for project partners to learn about operational businesses in territories other than their own.

OBJECTIVES FOR THE 2017 CALL The objectives for the 2017 Call remained similar to the first Call, with some differences: •

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The target for the 2017 Call was lower and the value based community approach of the 2016 Call appeared to be successful. The 2017 Call was thus used to test the sustainability of network expansion, committing a lower level of resources specifically to the Call and counting on the enlistment effect of partner and Lab activities as such, together with the dissemination effect of the website and social media activity.

The 2017 Call could take advantage of a more mature development of the WP4 pilot framework, in particular the definition of the Business Cases, and thus focused attention also on more concrete expressions of interest and engagement in business activities.

The application form and evaluation procedure were streamlined to make the process faster and lighter for all involved.

In coherence with these objectives, the 2017 Application Form 5 was re-designed to: • • •

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Ask some basic information about the applicant and his/her business affiliation Ask about the degree of interest in and potential contribution to each of the six Business Cases.

Simplify the questions concerning the TCBL principles.

Available at: https://issuu.com/tcbl/docs/2017call_applicationform

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The 2017 Call for Associate Enterprises TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

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CALL AND EVALUATION

Launch of the Call was delayed as compared to the 2016 Call, due to the need to launch the Business Cases following the 18 months review. Completion of the Call procedure within the #TCBL_2017 conference June 20-21 was nonetheless made possible by a series of factors: • • •

A less extensive promotional campaign was planned.

Candidates were generally familiar with TCBL and its activities, so a shorter opening period was possible.

The evaluation procedure (see below) was significantly streamlined.

The Call was thus published on 24 April with a deadline for pre-registration of 5 May and submission by 12 May (extensions were granted up to a week for special cases). Promotion of the Call included the following channels: • • •

An invitation flyer6 was produced, explaining the call procedure and evaluation criteria.

A specific page on the project website7 also provided similar material and updates.

The ‘Last Week on TCBL’ newsletter provided regular updates.

Project partners further promoted the Call locally among their business communities, as reported in “Associate Enterprises in TCBL Territories 2017”.8 Notwithstanding the delay and the lower degree of publicity, the 2017 Call was again successful beyond our expectations. As against the target of 40 new enterprises, 93 organisations registered for participation and a total of 63 application forms were fully completed.

EVALUATION CRITERIA As announced in the Call invitation, the evaluation of applications was based on three main criteria: relevance, coherence, and value-added.

RELEVANCE The applicant must fit in with the role of Associate Enterprise. This means it should be producing and/or selling goods and/or services in the T&C sector, or wishing to do so in the near future. This can include fashion designers, tailors, textile mills, cotton growers, retail outlets, etc: anyone who can potentially become part of a T&C value chain. In particular, we are interested in how they can fit in with one or more of the Business Cases (see http://tcbl.eu/enterprises) and/or one or more project ideas they propose.

It is probable that some of the proposals you will read are from applicants who would best be directed to another role in TCBL, e.g. as a Lab, Service Provider, or Advisor. If you think they should not be an Associate Enterprise but some other role, even if the other aspects are good, score a 0 on Relevance and leave a note in the comment box on the Summary page; if you’re not sure, score a 3 and again leave a comment.

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Available at: https://issuu.com/tcbl/docs/2017call_invitation

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http://tcbl.eu/2017-call

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Available at:

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The 2017 Call for Associate Enterprises TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

COHERENCE The applicant must demonstrate coherence with the values and principles of the TCBL community. (This was the only criteria for acceptance in the First Call.) There are questions specifically related to the 7 TCBL Principles (see http://tcbl.eu/join-us), where this year we ask applicants to highlight where and how they can contribute to the community. We are thus not necessarily looking to rate “goodness� on each count, but above all consideration of the issues, commitment to improvement and experience in at least some areas.

VALUE ADDED A strong applicant adds value to the community, by reinforcing its innovative character and enriching its diversity. Added value can come from an innovative product-service approach, geographical provenance, a particular role in the value chain, new methods or processes, or any sign of being able to contribute to collective innovation process in a special way. Of course a desire to collaborate and innovate together must also transpire. This is perhaps the most subjective evaluation criteria, so base your judgement also on your experience with the TCBL community to date.

EVALUATION PROCEDURE Rather than organise evaluation teams as in the 2016 Call, three groups of five evaluators were identified. Five represented the new partners, five are leading the Business Cases, and five are leaders of WPs other than 3 and 4. This way we aim for a balanced and open view on each of the evaluation criteria.

The evaluation teams were different for every proposal and composed of three evaluators each, one from each category, leading to combinations of different teams with different combinations of reviewers. This aims to provide a more balanced approach as compared to the fixed teams of 2016. The 2017 evaluators were as follows: New Partners

Business Case Leaders

WP Leaders

Caterina Ailesei

Takis Lybereas

Dieter Stellmach

Guy Buyle

Bill Macbeth

Fridolin Wild

Eric Barchechath

Besnik Mehmeti

Marco Paini

Martina Gheri

Ista Boszhard

Michele Osella

Anastasia Pistofidou

Maria Adele Cipolla

Simon Delaere

Thanos Contargyris and Jesse Marsh coordinated the call and evaluation procedures.

Each application was assigned to one of the evaluation team combinations, making sure that the applicant is not from the same country or region (in the case of Italy) as one of the evaluators from the first two categories. The applications were all stored in Survey Monkey, the platform that managed the on-line form. The evaluation instead took place on a shared Google Doc spreadsheet file, structured with a tab for each of the three criteria (this in order to average the scores on the summary tab), and a column for each of the 15 evaluators. The proposals were listed on each row below.

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The 2017 Call for Associate Enterprises TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

SELECTION When the three evaluators for a proposal completed their scores, the average vote for each of the three criteria and the total score were calculated on a Summary Sheet of the Google Spreadsheet document.

In the first calculation leading up to the first telco, proposals below the lower threshold (2,5 for each criteria and 8 for the total) were marked Out, proposals above the upper threshold (3,5 for each criteria and 12 for the total) were marked In, and proposals between the two thresholds were marked Borderline in the relevant column of the Summary sheet. Proposals to be considered for another role in TCBL (with Relevance = 0 for at least one evaluator) will also be flagged. This was intended to speed up the process and allow evaluators to focus their attention only on the cases requiring discussion. Indeed, the evaluation of all 63 proposals was completed in only two telcos (as compared to five in 2016 over a month and a half). The overall timetable for the evaluation procedure was as follows: •

• • • • • •

May 12 – Deadline for submission of applications. We can still accept a limited number of applications from those directly being followed by partners if the procedure was started before the deadline, until a final cut-off date of May 18th.

May 15 – Applications uploaded to MyMinds and assigned to evaluation teams.

May 19 – Post-deadline applications assigned to teams and the Google Doc updated.

May 22 – All individual evaluations completed and inserted into the Google Doc. May 23 – First telco, identification of categories, first quick consensus.

May 29 – Revised individual / team scores inserted into the Google Doc. May 30 – Second telco, final decisions on remaining borderlines.

It is important to underline that the final results of the evaluation process – adding up the criteria, the scores, the thresholds, etc. – are a simple yes/no answer, so while the description of the process it made transparent the process itself remains confidential. Those who are not accepted receive suggestions for improvement from the evaluators, and not know how close their score was to passing. Those who are accepted should not become aware whether their score was high or low, they should only know they have been accredited as a TCBL Associate Enterprise. We do our best to anticipate what an applicant will do, but their actual performance is not necessarily related to how well they can communicate.

OUTCOMES Of the 93 pre-registrations, 63 completed Application Forms were compiled. This is in part due to drop-out, but also the fact that many potential applicants were encouraged to join the TCBL ecosystem but steered towards other Associate roles, notably ICT service providers and potential Business Labs. The evaluation procedure again steered 3 of the applicants towards different roles, while judging only 2 to be insufficiently aligned with TCBL goals and objectives but encouraged to apply in 2018.

This means that a total of 58 new Associate Enterprises was accepted to join the TCBL network. This is again well beyond our target of 40, and again with a very high acceptance rate.

The fact is that it continues to be true that those who show enough interest in TCBL to complete the procedure and compile the Application Form are in general already well aligned to our objectives and principles.

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The 2017 Call for Associate Enterprises TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

The state of the TCBL network, including all roles, is shown below for 2016 (first Call) and 2017, as a result of this Call plus parallel activities for enlisting new partners, labs, and service providers.

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The 2017 Call for Associate Enterprises TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

DOCUMENT INFORMATION REVISION HISTORY This document is Annex 5 of TCBL Deliverable 4.2, “T&C Business Systems: Internal Pilots”, of 15.07.2017. Authors: Athanase Contargyris (MIRTEC), Michele Osella (ISMB), Maria Adele Cipolla (eZavod), Michela Bergamin (UCV), Jesse Marsh (Prato), Paolo Guarnieri (Prato), Richard Axe (TCoE), Ruth Farrell (TCoE), Darko Fercej (eZavod), Ana Sampaio (Sanjotec), Luca Leonarsi (ARCA), and Dieter Stellmach (DITF). This document in particular was authored by Ruth Farrell (TCoE). The contribution in particular is authored by Jesse Marsh, City of Prato.

REVISION Version 1

DATE 15.07.2017

AUTHOR Jesse Marsh

ORGANISATION

DESCRIPTION

City of Prato

Full draft

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This deliverable contains original unpublished work except where clearly indicated otherwise.

Acknowledgement of previously published material and of the work of others has been made through appropriate citation, quotation or both.

COPYRIGHT This work is licensed by the TCBL Consortium under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, 2015-2016. For details, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ The TCBL Consortium, consisting of: Municipality of Prato (PRATO) Italy; German Institutes for Textile and Fiber Research - Center for Management Research (DITF) Germany; Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (ISMB) Italy; Skillaware (SKILL) Italy; The Oxford Brookes University (OBU) UK; imec (IMEC) Belgium; Tavistock Institute (TAVI) UK; Materials Industrial Research & Technology Center S.A. (MIRTEC) Greece; Waag Society (WAAG) Netherlands; Huddersfield & District Textile Training Company Ltd (TCOE) UK; eZavod (eZAVOD) Slovenia; Consorzio Arca (ARCA) Italy; Unioncamere del Veneto (UCV) Italy; Hellenic Clothing Industry Association (HCIA) Greece; Sanjotec - Centro Empresarial e Tecnológico (SANJO) Portugal; Clear Communication Associates Ltd (CCA) UK.

DISCLAIMER All information included in this document is subject to change without notice. The Members of the TCBL Consortium make no warranty of any kind with regard to this document, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The Members of the TCBL Consortium shall not be held liable for errors contained herein or direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing, performance, or use of this material.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The TCBL project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme for research, technology development, and innovation under Grant Agreement n.646133.

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