The OMiLAB Digital Innovation Environment is a collaborative research and exploration space designed to conceptualize, create, and experiment with digital business models and ecosystems. It is a physical and virtual laboratory with hardware and software to facilitate co-creation and experimentation for digital innovation in various application domains. Stakeholders have a space that enables them to co-create and design innovative ideas and dive into the exploration process of digital prototypes.
Description
The OMiLAB Digital Innovation Environment is a dedicated space for teaching, research, and experimentation designed to create and realize digital innovative concepts, methods and business models. It is a physical and virtual laboratory equipped with hardware and software to experiment with and evaluate innovative approaches in various application domains. Stakeholders from multi-disciplinary backgrounds have a space that enables them to co-create and design innovative ideas, materialise them in proof-of- concept implementations, and evaluate their feasibility. The OMiLAB Digital Innovation Environment is located at 26 institutions, in academia and industry, known as OMiLAB nodes, that form together a multi-disciplinary distributed physical laboratory network across 12 countries mainly in Europe, with a presence also in Asia.
Laboratories often bring together different stakeholders, fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing in a dedicated space with tools, which support co-creation and can lead to more comprehensive innovative proposals. The understanding of physical infrastructure requirements, legal and compliance aspects, and other factors that influence digital business models is crucial and can be explored within a laboratory space.
Each laboratory has its unique core focus and capabilities, while sharing some common structure (processes, methodology, equipment), given by 3 foundational pillars. Open-source tools have been developed and add to the possibilities of this environment to facilitate co-creation and experimentation for digital innovation:
+Pillar I - Create Business Ecosystems: it focuses on the co-creation of digital business models through collaborative workshops supported by the Scene2Model platform.
+Pillar II - Design Smart Models: it focuses on modelling conceptual representations of ecosystems for a specific purpose while enhancing the basic function of models from diagrammatic communication support to interaction and control of smart devices. The Bee-Up tool facilitates this.
+Pillar III - Engineer Digital Twins: it focuses on the setup of the physical environment to evaluate the feasibility of the scenario defined in Pillar I and its model execution from Pillar II. Cyber-physical systems are employed.
Extensions to the assets of each pillar to match individual needs are done by the nodes and the community. The resources developed by the community using the OMiLAB Digital Innovation Environment are collected and distributed on the OMiLAB platform, which acts as a knowledge hub for the community of practice. Hence, the portfolio of resources, materials, and learning outputs available is broad and serves various practitioners, who have a common interest in creating and using model-based open artifacts for digital innovation. OMiLAB challenges digital innovation and enables an environment where novel ideas can be tested and evaluated by the community and all those willing to put their know-how and expertise into practice.
The laboratories in the OMiLAB Network of Nodes are self-governed and each has a different focus, such as Digital Business Processes, 5.0 Organizational Development and Innovation Management, Model-Driven Engineering Approaches for Technology-enhanced Learning, Development of novel decision-making tools for use in the Edge-to Cloud continuum, Design of Digital Products and Services, etc. Each node has established its local and national community, by taking part in projects and initiatives, as well as being active at international level in cooperation with other nodes from the network and the broader OMiLAB community of practice (https://www.omilab.org/community/).
The value-added of sharing the pillars of the same OMiLAB Digital Innovation Environment through the network enables the co-creation and knowledge valorization at a larger scale through the open aspect of its infrastructure and services. The collective intelligence of a multi-disciplinary community is activated and leverages diverse ideas across sectors, thus combining know-how and expertise to form new knowledge.
The Scene2Model platform is one of the core elements of the environment, as it facilitates common language and understanding among different stakeholders. Innovative business models are designed and created using storyboarding with haptic figures from SAP Scenes© in a physical collaborative environment. The Scene2Model platform adds new layers to the results of the workshop, by transforming them into digital models. It enhances the creative process with AI techniques and supports cross-sectoral knowledge sharing. The outcome of each workshop is tailored by the co-creation process of the participating stakeholders.
Achievements & learning
The advancements in technology and the digital transformation trends are revealing changes in the skill profiles required in the future. Renowned professors from the OMiLAB Community of Practice have defined new layers to the skill profile of the “Digital Engineer” that has been identified as essential for working in a digital innovation environment, along with the “Digital Innovator”. The OMiLAB framework and infrastructure facilitate the integration and execution of digital design and engineering activities, enabling the semantic alignment of multiple layers of abstraction and specificity. Through the use of conceptual modeling methods, semantically rich diagrammatic models can be designed, which are both comprehensible to humans and processable by machines. These models support analysis and interaction within open digital environments. Furthermore, conceptual models can be collaboratively developed by digital engineers and other stakeholders, serving as a knowledge repository for the organization and enhancing the long-term utility of the models. This approach eliminates traditional barriers to becoming a digital innovator or engineer, empowering individuals who grasp the drivers and trajectory of digital transformation to effectively lead and manage digital innovation initiatives.
Full paper accessible at: Karagiannis D. et al. (2020) OMiLAB: A Smart Innovation Environment for Digital Engineers. In: Camarinha-Matos L.M., Afsarmanesh H., Ortiz A. (eds) Boosting Collaborative Networks 4.0. PRO-VE 2020. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 598. Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62412-5_23
The OMiLAB Community of Practice is engaged in joint activities and research streams, with more than 800 participants globally. One initiative derived from the research mentioned above is the NEMO Innovation Camp Series (https://nemo.omilab.org), which builds on the concept of the NEMO Summer School, namely, to support the young generation of researchers, practitioners, and students to “Become Digital Leaders!”. An intensive one-week programme dedicated to Digital Innovation, combining expert-led lectures on digital transformation with hands-on skill-building by tackling real-world industry-led digitalization challenges. There are already over 500 NEMO Alumni, building a strong network of international peers. The OMiLAB Digital Innovation Environment encourages the community to stay active in research and development and build together digital innovation artifacts.
Publications from the community relevant to the OMiLAB Digital Innovation Environment:
- OMILAB Team. (2020). A Digital Innovation Environment powered by Open Models Laboratory (Version 1.0). Zenodo.http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3899990
- Völz, Alexander; Muck, Christian; and Utz, Wilfrid, Digital Twins for Haptic Design Thinking: An Innovative Prototype (2024). Wirtschaftsinformatik 2024 Proceedings.110 DOI: https://aisel.aisnet.org/wi2024/110
- Karagiannis, D., Buchmann, R. A., Utz, W. (2022).The OMiLAB Digital Innovation Environment: Agile conceptual models to bridge business value with Digital and Physical Twins for Product-Service Systems development. Computers in Industry, 138.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2022.103631
- Karagiannis, D. (2024). How Digital Twins for Design Thinking Support Innovative Business Models, The Kyoto Economic Review, 2024, Volume 198, Issue S, Pages S123-S146, Released on J-STAGE March 15, 2024.https://doi.org/10.57475/keizaironso.198.S9
- Vaidian, I., Jurczuk, A., Misiak, Z., Neidow, M., Petry, M., Nemetz, M. (2022). Challenging Digital Innovation Through the OMiLAB Community of Practice. In: Karagiannis, D., Lee, M., Hinkelmann, K., Utz, W. (eds) Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling. Springer, Cham.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93547-4_3
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