25 years of ITEA

Increased importance of software

At this point, Luc joins the conversation and Zeynep asks him how he became involved in ITEA. “Well, the fact is that we were invited,” he explains. “ITEA was launched by a core group of large companies that saw the need to advance State-of-the-Art in software engineering in Europe. Barco was informed by Philips of the initiative to create a collaborative platform for software systems research. At that time software-intensive systems was a growing part of our total R&D effort but participation was only possible if there was financial support from the participating member states. At a meeting with the Flemish funding agency IWT (now VLAIO), responsible for innovation at that time, the interested parties were invited to discuss the proposal and IWT decided to support the programme, with Barco representing Belgium in the ITEA Cluster. It was a time when we were starting to grow, and software was becoming more and more important for us. Since my responsibility was to initiate new projects in ICT and software, I convinced my management to go for it. So, I joined these initial discussions and writing the ITEA Rainbow Book. We were backed up by the Flemish government, which, after all, and even today has been, let’s say, a very constant, active supporter of the system.”

Open innovation

Luc then touches on the potentially sticky issue that could have confronted the collaborative spirit in the early period: intellectual property. “People said to me, this will never happen because, you know, you cannot imagine that Bosch or Philips or whatever company is going to show you some strategic information. Remember, this was well before the concept of open innovation became commonplace many years later. Yet this group of people was working together to find ways to develop a sort of roadmap with a common mindset geared towards gathering ideas that were quite far from the immediate market requirements and hype.” Music to Zeynep’s ears: “We’re talking here about a concept that was being put into practice at a time when the term ‘open innovation’ had not been invented. People coming together, collaborating in an environment of trust.”

Karlheinz recalls that this sense of openness was prevalent, on the technical level. Politically, as one might expect, the differences were more in evidence. “Inside the ITEA Steering Group, I know there were more problems on the political level. But luckily, I was not directly involved. I had a colleague who was very adept at ‘playing the game’ and presenting the arguments for undertaking the necessary measures to help us, the technical people, to get our proposals up and running. But as I said, I was involved in the technical Steering Group and all these technical things were much easier."

Transparency and alignment

Luc’s experience was somewhat different because he was in a smaller company at that time. “Although I was technically engaged, I also did everything in the political sphere, so I became well informed about the discussions with the agencies and so on. Gaining insight into the requirements of the various countries afforded some transparency to the process and enabled alignment. I suppose you could call it the political equivalent of open innovation. Put the two together – politics and technology – with a common purpose and you have a recipe for success. Therefore, for me, from the beginning, I understood how essential the role of the ITEA Office was in the success of the whole thing as the facilitator to bring the people together, to coordinate the technologies and options for funding, to sort all of the projects and give direction to the roadmaps.”

Challenges and achievements

Turning to any specific challenges and achievements, Zeynep wonders whether there are any that stick in the mind. Karlheinz explains that, coming mostly from the automotive industry as he does, he remembers the EAST-EEA, a four-year project, which aimed to bring common expressions and wordings into software development for the automotive industry. Out of this emerged the AUTOSAR association which was founded at the end of this project. “So, by bringing a common understanding about software development to the automotive industry, the automotive players knew how to talk to each other, in software terms.”

Luc adds, “I think what you’re saying is quite fundamental. This understanding of the platform and software development. I remember there were some objections in the beginning but I worked to convince people of the need to use these platforms, new methodologies, along with the changes in software development methodologies, model-based development and simulation and so on. We had to show how fundamental this was for everyone to bring efficiency to development. I remember the start of the Digital Cinema project. At that time we were developing our business with partners in Germany, but this was not perceived by Germany as being strategic. Nonetheless, we attracted a German SME that saw the relevance and benefits to its software development. As such, this demonstrated the power of collaboration and possibilities of innovation as a fundamental principle.” Karlheinz recalls that story. “It was very hard to bring companies together and especially to get funding from the Public Authorities when a new domain entered the ITEA Community. It was one of the challenges we had to overcome. We needed to appreciate the whole picture.”