Citizen-Driven Innovation

Read this guidebook, which explores smart cities through a lens that promotes citizens as the driving force of urban innovation. It presents different models of smart cities that show how citizen-centric methods can mobilize resources to respond innovatively to challenges in governance. The living lab approach encourages agile development and the rapid prototyping of ideas in a decentralized and user-centric manner. How can mayors and public administrators create partnerships that drive value in their communities through citizen-driven innovation? How can sustainability be integrated into municipal strategies and solutions? How can city leaders join forces to learn and network globally?

Getting Started - Chapter 1

3. Test Collaboration

After opening up to build trust, the only way to really test it is to work together to address a concrete problem, and for this it's important to define the issue to work on. Forget for a moment the problems you think should be addressed and try to get your stakeholders to identify something that will have meaning for them. Focus on something that is concretely possible to achieve with existing resources, in the short term. What kinds of problems can be identified that are best tackled through new forms of collaboration, especially by making use of simple technologies that are already in place?

For your first initiatives the purpose is not so much to actually solve the problem, as it is to see how the problem can be explored in new ways, with new ideas generated by processes that give value to the contributions of each and every participant. As you identify problems and possible projects together, make sure you also identify the conflicts and barriers that you yourself can do something about, namely those raised by the nature and operational structure of your public administration.

The best way to build trust is in fact to show that you are ready to act, opening up the city government and making even uncomfortable procedural changes where necessary to facilitate a solution. Indeed, the main goal of these first co-design experiments is to demonstrate reciprocally that a new way of collaborating is possible, that this can be done without big investments, and that concrete benefits can be demonstrated in the short term. Once you have carried out a micro-project full cycle, everyone will be sure that all parties can be trusted to do their part.


Case Story
Citizen Innovation in Cornella

Description

Context

Challenges

Citilab167 is a center for social and digital innovation in Cornellá de Llobregat, Barcelona. It is a mix between a training and research center and an incubator for business and social initiatives. It sees itself as a center for civic innovation, using the Internet as a way of innovating in a more collaborative manner, integrating citizens in the core process.

The Citilab vision starts with the community networks of the 1990s, including Cornellanet and BCNet in Barcelona as well as similar efforts in Cleveland, Ottawa, and Amsterdam. Citilab takes the next step of shifting the emphasis from universal access to innovation, considering Citilab as a center for community and individual innovation literacy.

The governance model is based on a non-profit foundation: the first time in Spain for an innovation foundation set up by a municipality. The President is the Mayor of Cornellá, while Board Members include representatives from local companies as well as multinationals, the Catalunya Region, the University, and local civic leaders.

The main challenge of Citilab has been to introduce an innovation culture in the normal life of citizens, not an easy task. The basic approach of Citilab is learning to innovate: "What do you want to do?" is the question Citilab asks every newcomer. Their experience then takes shape through a personal and team-driven project, as a dynamic work-in-progress learning path. In this model, a key role is played by the "local innovation agent". This actor brings together academic contributions, knowledge of new technologies, and a special insight to help extract innovation requirements from citizens. Public authorities and companies provide resources but also ask questions: they are equally invited to participate in discovering their own needs and setting up their own projects in their own organizations.


Actions

Results

Impacts

Scaling Up

The first step for creating Citilab was to find a place, which the City identified in a restored textile factory. This was ideal for its symbolic value: if in the '90s the factory was the center of civic life, now it is the laboratory: in fact, people identify Citilab with the building.
With the physical and digital infrastructures in place, the organization of activities started in November 2007, launching projects with two social groups: SeniorLab (helping the elderly to develop their own innovations using IT) and Edutec (helping kids open up to computational thinking: Scratch, Arduino, etc.). Over time, the model has been extended to other social groups, such as the Social Media Lab: Musiclab with local musicians, Sportic, with young football teams and GameAcademy with dropouts ("turning your hobby into your profession") or the LaborLab, a laboratory for inventing new forms of work using ICT: "Don't look for a job, invent your own project".

Step by step Citilab is introducing innovation to City Hall and also to local companies. Citilab currently has 7,000 registered users (they are issued a card like public libraries), which is over 6% of the population of Cornelia. The Citilab foundation works with an annual budget of 1.2 Million Euros (50% local government and 50% projects and services) and employs 25 professionals.

The first and most significant impact derives from the concept that any citizen can develop their own innovation project; it doesn't matter who you are, you have a place and you can learn to innovate. A broader impact of Citilab has been the application of this methodology for citizen engagement. The Citilab experience has been instrumental for introducing the citizen-driven innovation methodology in the City of Barcelona, that in 2012 launched the Barcelona Labo-ratori project, exploring how an entire city can become a city lab.

Over the years, Citilab has strengthened and extended its laboratory model, cited as best practice in the EU's Guide to Social Innovation. SeniorLab is now collaborating with other cities through EU Grundvig funding, while the Edutec is extending its scope to mobile applications, working with primary and secondary schools. The Spanish government is extending the Citilab concept in a program with Medialab Prado of Laboratorios Ciudadanos, with a stronger element of social innovation. Finally, Citilab participates in international exchange not only through ENoLL but also coordinating the CYTED research project, with a network of citizen laboratories in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America.




The Bird Living Lab turns areas in the Basque Country into a major center for international research and capacity to generate new business opportunities.