Interview with Edgaras Leichteris – CASI Country Correspondent for Lithuania
The final version of CASI-F (Popper et al., 2017) presents the common framework for the assessment and management of sustainable innovation as a 5-step approach consisting of:
- Step 1: sustainability relevance and scanning (i.e. case nomination)
- Step 2: multi-criteria analysis and assessment (i.e. case mapping)
- Step 3: critical issue analysis and assessment (i.e. assessing critical issues)
- Step 4: multi-level advice management (i.e. developing multi-level actions)
- Step 5: action roadmaps management (i.e.developing multi-dimensional responses)
Q: In your opinion, can this qualitative 5-step approach improve the assessment and management of sustainable innovations by complementing existing quantitative tools and methods (e.g. Life Cycle Assessment and derived sub-sets, etc.)? If so, how?
A: “Definitely! To me it is a good example of practical implementation of multi-level governance approach, very well structured and implemented in a clear and consistent manner, giving much broader perspective than Life Cycle Assessment and similar, and helps to better involve stakeholders”.
Q: In your opinion, how did the CASI online mapping environment (CASIPEDIA) facilitate the assessment of the selected SI initiatives? Were the mapping forms useful in structuring, obtaining and bringing together different pieces of an SI 'jigsaw', its complexity and ambiguity, influenced by multiple criteria and the interaction of multiple stakeholders.
A: “CASIPEDIA is a very important tool, which needs to be constantly updated in the future, not to loose the good momentum. Identified cases become obsolete with time, so this system needs to be a “living system” constantly fed with new cases. Mapping forms shall be simplified a little bit – they really have all good angles to put different pieces of an SI ‘jigsaw’ together, but the complexity is high. It can be difficult to sustain the quality of CASIPEDIA over time without investments and efforts. Such investment would be necessary from time to time to improve quality, but at the same time important to ensure continuous flow of new information into database”.
Q: Do you think the online mapping environment with interconnected modules i.e. information mapped in CASIPEDIA being automatically extracted to feed the 'Ideas Bank' and the 'Actions and Roadmaps Bank' with critical issues, actions and sub-actions to improve the management of SI, is a useful tool to support R&I projects and activities?
A: “Although I haven’t explored these additional features of CASI-F much, I think it is a good idea to have such interconnected modules, but to me CASIPEDIA and availability of “raw” information about SI cases is a much more important tool”.
Q: In your opinion, does the mapping environment effectively support mutual learning and the co-creation and co-exploitation of knowledge (e.g. through bottom-up and crowdsourced mapping of SI)?
A: “Definitely! I am constantly sharing the methodological framework created under CASI project with our international partners. Most recently (February 2017), I presented CASI-F to the methodological leaders of HoCare project http://www.interregeurope.eu/hocare/ who can think about some potential cooperation and transferring the methodology to healthcare innovation sector. Then in March, it was presented at Interregional meeting of SUPER project http://www.interregeurope.eu/super/ which deals with “eco-innovations”. Participants were very interested in the CASI Framework and the database of cases. Those two examples show that mutual learning has already started”.
On behalf of the CASI project we would like to thank Edgaras for the continuous commitment as well as wider promotion of the CASI Framework.
