Context - Breakout Group

This group defined context generally as a rich picture of users/a community. With a mix of industry and academic researchers, a distinction was made between academic research and R&D (development in this case related to industrial activity not local economic development).

Lone made a distinction between participatory methods and a sociocultural approach: the latter regards local participants as partners or developers, rather than end users. Related to this was giving 'unfinished' products or tools to local people, for them to create and develop things. Yahoo was mentioned as an example, along with NTT DoCoMo. As opposed to user-led innovation of this sort, an alternative approach mentioned by Elizabeth Churchill and practiced by Yahoo and others is outright acquisition of specialised developers. Intellectual property is a related issue, and she added that when partnering with academic researchers, Yahoo sometimes doesn't seek to develop products jointly.

The issue of localisation, or 'glocalisation' was discussed. Lone suggested that this should include training, with local universities being regarded as middlemen. She also added that entire countries could become innovators, based on their historical context; a focus on historical context characterises the Scandinavian sociocultural approach.