Abstract:

The use of digital platforms to support and foster territory-based innovation has been subject for research but usually the focus of such research has been on supporting, on a passive basis, sharing of information and communication among innovation agents.
The authors are currently engaged in an interdisciplinary research project –the CeNTER-Community-led Networks for Territorial Innovation project (http://center.web.ua.pt)– which team includes experts on social and territorial innovation, tourism, and digital technologies, aiming at the conceptual design and validation of a digital platform to support mediation of actors active in territory-based innovation. The platform provides functionalities for user’s data registration and sharing and for communication among users, but its main distinguished features relate to mediation aspects. This mediation aspects include using artificial intelligence mechanisms aiming at actively promoting mutual awareness among registered users about their profile, interests and activities in the specific context of territory-based innovation processes.
The research methodology adopted included secondary and primary data collection sources. As far as the secondary sources is concerned, a systematic literature review was developed, using the SCOPUS database, resulting in a set of papers whose analysis showed that the approach to existing digital platforms for territory-based innovation is limited to a passive role. Primary data collection was held through a set of semi-structured interviews and focus group with the participation of innovation agents, from social, cultural and economic sectors, active in the Centro region of Portugal. The analysis of this primary data showed that innovation agents aspire for an independent active mediation role that should – autonomously – generate opportunities (recommendations) for cooperation aiming at increasing the competitiveness of the different business and social clusters, and territories.
One interesting aspect that was unveiled through the data analysis process, is the opportunity to generate learning/training recommendations to territorial agents/platform users. These learning/training opportunities can be generated from indicators related to the usage profile of the platform’s users, and can be valuable in many different scenarios such as: improvement of the level of proficiency of the use of the different functionalities of the platform usage by comparison with the usage profile by other similar users; the search criteria patterns may indicate focus on specific topics (i.e. a specific technology or a touristic destination) suggesting that specific learning/training on that topic may be welcome; recurrent typing errors when using the platform that may indicate the need for language training.
In this paper we focus in the exploration of the learning and training dimension that the platform may also support in addition to basic mediation among actors, including a discussion of scenarios and services the platform may offer/recommend to its users according to their profile, interests and activity record. The paper provides a brief overview of the research project, the concept of the platform and a discussion of learning and training functionalities based on a set of use cases aiming at demonstrating how learning and training opportunities may be identified and suggested/offered to the platform’s users.

Keywords:

Learning and training, territory-based innovation, digital platform.