The data-driven project Net-Sights used big data to find invisible and sometimes unlikely opportunities for collaboration that can create growth in the Danish cleantech industry.
Net-Sights is an open data-driven platform that creates an overview of the networks and players in the field of sustainable production in Denmark. The platform, which was developed as a web app by a group of students from DTU Management Engineering (internt link http:) under project manager Professor Anja Maier, is available to enterprises, trade associations, syndicates, and researchers. The web app enables the cleantech industry to identify invisible and sometimes unlikely opportunities for collaboration that can boost growth.
The Net-Sights’ driving force is the mapping of all available data from initially Danish cleantech businesses. The platform not only maps what the companies produce, but also how they produce, already existing business partners, and the areas of expertise and technologies the operations require. On this basis, the Net-Sights platform ‘learns’ how various industries currently collaborate and what their needs are in order to subsequently analyse and identify collaborative relations with growth potential.
“The platform collects the huge volumes of available data generated by modern business operations and searches against such parameters as competences and technologies in order to use data to identify potential partners, new markets, and development opportunities—matching organizations across areas of professional expertise and size,” explains postdoc and project co- ordinator Pedro Parraguez Ruiz, DTU Management Engineering.
Relations—the key to growth
Precisely the possibility of entering into the right relations may be decisive for future competitiveness:
“Actually, a shared trait of many of the world’s major companies is that their growth is attributable, in part, to strategically important relations that can often be ascribed to fortunate circumstances,” says Pedro Parraguez Ruiz.
For example, according to Pedro Parraguez Ruiz, Novo Nordisk’s success can, among other things, be traced back to the two things which have always been in abundance in Denmark: breweries and pig farms. The breweries have contributed technical knowledge about fermentation for use in the manufacture of artificial insulin, while access to an ample supply of pig pancreata has made Denmark the ideal place to study insulin. These seemingly unlikely relations have been key to growth and development at Novo Nordisk.
“In the case of Novo Nordisk, you could say that the company was fortunate to be located in Denmark. By anticipating the need for collaborative relations, we want to give Danish cleantech companies and projects the opportunity of planning their good fortune, so to speak. Net-Sights identifies cooperation partners and network relations with growth potential, providing cleantech businesses with an opportunity to develop their business accordingly,” says professor and project manager, Anja Maier.
Well received
Because the project is business-oriented and immediately commercially viable—the tool can, for example, be used as a web app—it has also attracted a great deal of interest from the industry from the outset:
“The idea behind the project and its wide application in the form of an open platform has been very well received and the platform is already being used by several businesses in the cleantech industry. We are therefore planning to further develop the platform and extend application fields to include, for example, other industries, and to work on project and product level,” says Anja Maier.