BUSINESS INNOVATION NETWORK BASED ON BUSINESS
RULES OF AN ECMM OPEN INNOVATION PROCESS AREA
Iker Martínez de Soria and Xabier Larrucea
ESI-Tecnalia, Parque Tecnológico 204 E-48170 Zamudio, Bizkaia, Spain
Keywords: Business innovation network, Open innovation, Business rules, SBVR, ECMM, Process area, Collaborative
innovation process.
Abstract: Nowadays, innovation and collaboration are becoming new and important sources of competitive advantage
for enterprises. Prestigious investigations (Chesbrough, H., 2003) outline that the most productive method to
get good ideas lies in involving different persons with different experience, background and practical
knowledge. New tendencies in innovation, like Open Innovation (Chesbrough, H., et al., 2006) conceive
innovation as an open system where both internal and external agents take part in the system. In accordance
with this new paradigm, innovation sources can be, and usually are, out of the frontiers of the organization.
In this context, the aim of this position paper is to present a set of business rules compliant to SBVR
standard and a strategy for using SBVR rules in order to define a business guide. In this sense a business
innovation network is created to help enterprises to expand their markets using innovations based on one
open innovation process area that belongs to the maturity model oriented to collaboration ECMM, which is
being currently developed in the context of COIN IP project (IST-216256).
1 INTRODUCTION
Financial crisis is one of the most widely used terms
in the last days in our newspapers, and lots of public
and private strategies propose Innovation as the
solution to overcome this recession situation. There
is now a new reality for business, from which
nobody can run away: clients want a product or a
service more and more personalized, and this is
impossible to get within the traditional and rigid
supply chain model. Known organizations like Nike,
Toyota, Apple or Google (Prahalad, C.K., Krishnan,
M.S., 2008) are applying new and open innovation
practices to deploy this model with successful
results.
Indeed, collaboration is one of the global trends
in business nowadays. Pushed by the strength of
emerging competitors and increasingly demanding
customers, organizations are engaging into
collaborative practices in order to face those threats
through cost reductions, increased flexibility and
focusing on core competences (Santos, I., Schuster,
S., Vergara, M., Alonso, J., 2008).
In the COIN IP project, an Enterprise
Colaboration Maturity Model (ECMM) is being
currently developed in order to help organizations to
evaluate and improve the capability for collaboration
of an enterprise inside its collaborative network and
to support collaborative and interoperability
practices (Martínez de Soria, I., Alonso, J., Orue-
Echevarria L., Vergara, M., 2009) even though it has
not been taken into account a way of adapting the
collaborative business practices to allow enterprises
to create a business innovation network through
common business rules. The Semantics of Business
Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) (Object
Management Group, 2008) is a language for
business modeling that has such property.
The aim of this position paper is to present a set
of business rules compliant to SBVR standard and a
strategy for using SBVR rules in order to define a
business guide. In this sense a business innovation
network is created to help enterprises to expand their
markets using innovations based on one open
innovation process area that belongs to the maturity
model oriented to collaboration ECMM. For that
purpose, the next section summarises the challenges
of this position paper. Section 3 describes a brief
state of the art and section 4 details the business
rules for the Open Innovation process area of
ECMM. Finally, the last section discusses
conclusions.
223
Martínez de Soria I. and Larrucea X. (2010).
BUSINESS INNOVATION NETWORK BASED ON BUSINESS RULES OF AN ECMM OPEN INNOVATION PROCESS AREA.
In Proceedings of the Multi-Conference on Innovative Developments in ICT, pages 223-226
DOI: 10.5220/0003046102230226
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

2 CHALLENGES
In the today’s global economy, the utilization of
ICTs has an essential role for enterprises and
administrations (cf. egovernment part) to re-engineer
their business models and practices and increase
productivity and competitiveness. The integration of
ICTs in business is considered as an acceleration
factor for innovation, productivity improvement as
well as an important tool for sustainable
development and cohesion (Pierre Audoin
Consultants, 2009). Thus, to be effective, an
innovation has to be simple and it has to be focused.
Even the innovation that creates new users and new
markets should be directed toward a specific, clear
and carefully designed innovation process.
Therefore, as a process, innovation also needs to be
managed and many challenges must be faced up to
(Iturbe, J., Bediaga, A., Sánchez, D., López, S.,
2008):
 “Innovation must Constitute a Basic Process
in the Business”. Innovation is not a random
process. Innovation constitutes an
organisational capability that needs to be
developed.
 “Innovation must be Participative”.
Innovation is based on the acknowledgement
of people, since the success depends strongly
on the implication from the employees.
In order to address these challenges, this article
depicts how a collaborative business practice related
to open innovation can be defined with SBVR
vocabulary giving the chance of creating a business
innovation network which will have one ECMM
process area based on business rules in common.
3 BACKGROUND
3.1 The Notion of Open Innovation
The notion of open innovation comes from Henry
Chesbrough, a Berkeley professor at University of
California that has gained international fame through
his book “Open Innovation – The new imperative
for Creating and Profiting from Technology” that
appeared in 2003. He describes how companies in
the 20th century have invested heavily in internal
R&D and hired the best people, enabling them to
develop the most innovative ideas and protect them
with intellectual property (IP) strategies.
3.2 A Brief Description of ECMM
The Enterprise Collaboration Maturity Model
(ECMM) has as main objective to analyze, measure,
and propose improvement practices for increasing
the capability of an organization to be able to
collaborate and interoperate through seven domains.
Each domain contains several process areas
which are distributed through four maturity levels.
This position paper is focused on the Open
Innovation process area that belongs to Innovation
domain as the basis of defining business rules using
SBVR.
3.3 An Introduction to SBVR
The Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business
Rules (SBVR) is a new standard for business
modelling of the Object Management Group
(OMG). The standard provides a number of
conceptual vocabularies for modelling a business
domain in the form of a vocabulary and a set of rules
(Object Management Group, 2008). One of the
techniques used by SBVR structured English are
font styles to designate statements with formal
meaning. In particular,
 the term
font (normally green) is used to
designate a noun concept.
 the name
font (normally green) designates an
individual concept.
 the verb font (normally blue) is used for
designation for a verb concept.
 the keyword font (normally red) is used for
linguistic particles that are used to construct
statements.
4 BUSINESS RULES FOR OPEN
INNOVATION PROCESS AREA
OF ECMM
4.1 SP1.1: Define Business Objectives
for Partnering
1-Operative Business Rule
It is obligatory that each enterprise of business
innovation network has at least three objective
criteria that is base for partners selection
Supporting Fact Type
business innovation network
has enterprise
enterprise
has objective criteria
objective criteria is base for partners selection
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Related facts
objective criteria
is market or competence or income
or customer
4.2 SP1.2: Select the Open Innovation
Scenario
1-Operative Business Rule
It is obligatory that each enterprise of business
innovation network has open innovation scenario
Supporting fact type
business innovation network
has enterprise
enterprise
has open innovation scenario
Related facts
open innovation scenario
is advanced innovation or
collaborative innovation
or user innovation or
crowdsourcing
4.3 SP1.3: Align the Business Model of
the Entities
1-Operative Business Rule
It is obligatory that business innovation network
specify what common goals are assigned to the
network and must occur before network creation
date/time
Supporting fact type
common goal
is specified by business innovation
network
common goal is assigned to network
common goal
occurs before network creation
date/time
network creation occurs at date/time
Related facts
The noun concept
‘network creation date/time’ is a
role
that ranges over the noun concept ‘creation
date/time
’
4.4 SP2.1: Create an Open Innovation
Teamwork
1-Operative Business Rule
It is obligatory that business innovation network has
open innovation teamwork
that is responsible for
exactly three tiers operation and must be reviewed by
stakeholder of network at review date/time
Supporting fact type
business innovation network
has open innovation
teamwork
open innovation teamwork
is responsible for tiers
operation
open innovation teamwork
must be reviewed by
stakeholder
network
has stakeholder
review occurs at date/time
Related facts
tiers operation
is core tier or operation tier or outer
tier
The noun concept ‘stakeholder’ is a facet of the noun
concept ‘person’
4.5 SP2.2: Define the Complexity of
Open Innovation
1-Operative Business Rule
It is permitted that open innovation process involves
external collaboration
that is responsible for
manager
Supporting fact type
open innovation process
involves external
collaboration
external collaboration is responsible for manager
Related facts
The noun concept
‘manager’ is a facet of the noun
concept ‘person’
4.6 SP2.3: Plan for Open Innovation
1-Operative Business Rule
It is obligatory that business innovation network
has
open innovation plan that includes each business
goal that is defined in specific practice 1.3,
teamwork that is defined in specific practice 2.1 and
must be documented by stakeholders and reviewed at
the review date/time
Supporting fact type
business innovation network
has open innovation
plan
business goal
and teamwork are included in open
innovation plan
business goal
is defined in specific practice 1.3
teamwork is defined in specific practice 2.1
open innovation plan must be documented by
stakeholders
open innovation plan has review date/time
review occurs at date/time
Related facts
The noun concept
‘stakeholder’ is a facet of the noun
concept ‘person’
The noun concept
‘review date/time’ is a role that
ranges over the noun concept
‘date/time’
BUSINESS INNOVATION NETWORK BASED ON BUSINESS RULES OF AN ECMM OPEN INNOVATION
PROCESS AREA
225

4.7 Specific Practices Evaluation
1-Operative Business Rule
It is necessary that specific practice X.Y
has…
 SP1.1: more than one evidence
 SP1.2,1.3,2.2,2.3: exactly one evidence
 SP2.1: at least two evidence
…that is base for the mark
of business
innovation network
Supporting fact type
specific practice X.Y
has evidence
business innovation network
has mark
evidence is base for mark
Related facts
evidence
is…
 SP1.1: business goal or objective criteria
 SP1.2: open innovation scenario
 SP1.3: strategic common goals
 SP2.1: open innovation teamwork or
responsibilities or reviews
 SP2.2: relation
between location and
collaborators
 SP2.3: open innovation plan
The noun concept
‘specific practice X.Y’ is a
category of the noun concept ‘specific goal X’
5 CONCLUSIONS
This position paper presents a definition of business
rules, based on the SBVR standard, applied to the
Open Innovation process area of the ECMM
maturity model in order to allow enterprises to join
to a business innovation network in case of fulfilling
the presented business rules. Finally, the SBVR
offers many research opportunities to support the
launch of collaborative practices based on business
rules adapted to international frameworks or
maturity models among enterprises which are
willing to conduct open innovation business around
common goals out of the frontiers of the
organization.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been partly funded by the European
Commission through IST Project COIN:
Collaboration and Interoperability for Networked
Enterprises (IST-2007-216256). The authors wish to
acknowledge the Commission for their support. We
also wish to acknowledge our gratitude and
appreciation to all the COIN project partners for their
contribution during the development of various ideas
and concepts presented in this paper.
REFERENCES
Chesbrough, H., 2003. “Open Innovation: The New
Imperative for Creating and Profiting from
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Innovation: Researching a new paradigm”. Oxford
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Prahalad, C.K., Krishnan, M.S., 2008. “The new age of
innovation. Driving co-created value through global
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Santos, I., Schuster, S., Vergara, M., Alonso, J., 2008.
“Assessing readiness for Enterprise Collaboration and
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conference 2008, Lisbon.
COIN Consortium (IP-216256). 2007. “Collaboration and
Interoperability for Networked Enterprises”. Annex I
– Description of Work.
Martínez de Soria, I., Alonso, J., Orue-Echevarria, L.,
Vergara, M., 2009. “Developing an Enterprise
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Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) – Interim
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Pierre Audoin Consultants. 2009. “Economic and Social
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Iturbe, J., Bediaga, A., Sánchez, D., López, S., 2008.
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