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Digitizing artisans / small enterprises

  • Andrea JESTER profile
    Andrea JESTER
    28 March 2018
  • 2 comments
    Total votes: 2

I have been recently involved in identiying and conncting initiatives aimed at supporting / guiding small enterprising (and, idealy, artisans regardless their sector) in introducing digital technologies in their daily business (we are considering the entire value chain, from administration to design up to production and customer relationship management).

I am looking for examples (projects, running DIHs, etc.) focused on the topic (and would be happy to visit and arrange exchanges).

I would also like to share one small project which is currently beeing implemented by ECIPA within the Italy Austria cross border programme (you  can take a look at these links):

1) http://www.labs4smes.eu/

2) https://www.exploreinnospaces.eu/ 

It is about connecting FabLabs and activating small pilots wth small enterprises.

 

Here my contact details:

Andrea Jester

Nerosubianco Srl

Mob. 0039 3429963215

E.mail: a.jester@nsbproject.com

Tags: 
Digital artisansfablabsDigital Innovation Hibs

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Henrik BIERING's picture
Henrik BIERING,
28/03/2018 15:15

Dear Andrea,
 one of the basic problems for new artisan businesses (and other small SME's) is to make themselves visible to customers. In an increasingly data-driven society they will furthermore lack the data necessary to refine and target their product portfolio, in particular when it comes to AI.

This situation will not change as long as we resort to using intermediaries whose business model is relying on intransparent markets (i.e. connecting parties only on the basis of maximizing their own share). And currently it means that artisans, taxi drivers, and others have to subscribe to several services in parallel to reach a reasonable fraction of their potential clients.

I have described the benefits of shifting to a transparent 4-party market communication model, as we know it from banks and telcos:
https://www.bedreid.dk/distributed_business_service_discovery

In 3 of the Nordic countries such a decentralized model can be based directly on rich open data including company URL's from the national business registries. We have initiated a very simple Proof of Concept:
https://www.opendiscovery.biz/

But in countries with less developed business registries, banks could serve as proxies for pointing to the service endpoints of their business customers. I am currently looking into how such efforts could be integrated as a relative simple extension of the banks PSD2 endeavors.

Total votes: 2
Andrea JESTER's picture
Andrea JESTER,
28/03/2018 15:56

DEar Henrik, thank you for your contribution. I will absolutely read your paper and give you my feedback. According to me (or at least this is my personal experience with artisans and small enterprises in northern italy and central european countries) there is also an additional step that should be taken into consideration. Artisans have been bombed with information and promises about the fact that "digital-something" will help them to improve their business - production - customer relationships success rates.....but what is stil not enough (or at least not clear enough) is how much this is already happening. There is a popular saying in Italy which shounds like "as ong as I can't see it, I won't believe it" and I am convinced that a strong "show-case" transfer activity should be done to increase not only a general low awareness level but also to stimulate emulation and artisans competitive ego (if they see that someone is doing it, they will for sure try to do it better). This is also why I hope that DIHs may become big, connected show-case hubs because if they will continue a sort of class-room based training approach they will miss to reach their goal.

Have a nice evening

 

Andrea

Total votes: 0