MANUSQUARE value proposition and benefits for the group

The MANUSQUARE ecosystem will enable these target users to find potential users for their unused capacity. Customers they will find through the platform are both other traditional manufacturers, seeking for production capacities to quickly ramp up production during peak production periods, and innovative start-ups and business lines (see the second user group described in the spread sheet below) aimed at finding manufacturing capacity supplied as a service (thus abating the start-up costs for a new venture).

The value proposition carried by the platform contemplates:

• • 1. Quick matching of the most suitable production requests. Being based on a common and shared ontology, both offer and demand for production capacities are described in a comparable way, this enabling easy (also semantic-powered) combinations abating the initial searching costs;
    2. Access to a list of potential suppliers and their available capacity, each qualified with a reputation profile;
    3. Decision support tools enabling sustainability-aware choices of transactions (this abating the transaction costs); (iv) transaction security assurance thanks to the blockchain-enabled tracing of information exchanges among transactors.

MANUSQUARE value proposition and benefits for the group

Te MANUSQUARE ecosystem will be a cloud-based service platform that brokers the services between members of the ecosystem. Value proposed:

• • • Identification of the best supporting innovation manager. Especially SMEs need external support from a broker or innovation managing entity that guides them during the project and drives their choices, starting from the product conceptualization up to suppliers identification and selection;
    • support in value-chain design, with proper algorithms enabling the identification of the more sustainable actors to be involved;
    • support in best suppliers identification, based on the reputation mechanism;
    • (external) contact with potential financers: the platform will be linked with external crowdsourcing platforms and venture capitalists aimed at providing valuable contacts with potential financial partners to interested start-ups;
    • end-users involvement in product-service early assessment, supporting early choices on products shapes and functionalities;
    • transaction security assurance, increasing the trust in open-innovation initiatives.

Envisaged impacts:

• • • +10% new product-service concepts brought to the market
    • –30% time-to-market for new product-services
    • +15% start-ups surviving the first three years of life
    • –20% investment costs for start-ups or new product lines thanks to the platform-enabled MaaS provision

MANUSQUARE value proposition and benefits for the group

Innovation consultants are expected to be keen in joining the MANU-SQUARE ecosystem for the following main reasons:

• • • identification of innovation projects requiring support
    • support in value-chain design
    • support in best suppliers identification for creating a sustainable value network
    • exploiting end-users opinions for product-service early assessment