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

4. Re-think Technology

As you get involved in co-design methods, you will probably discover a few things about technology that are useful to reflect upon for a moment. We are all used to thinking of ICT as tools that exist because they are useful, in that they make processes more efficient and reliable. It used to be that in order to design an ICT application, a specific functional purpose was defined (e.g. accounting, transport networks, etc). and the solution was developed and delivered. More recently, however, technologies have evolved to do a lot of things that are not directly 'useful': play games, chat with friends, and organize events. These new technologies mix and blend with the 'useful' ones – you can simulate city planning, chat about government policy or organize a business meeting – so it becomes impossible to identify where efficiency ends and enjoyment begins; this ultimately leads to an inseparable integration between the technology systems and human social interaction.

Box 20

Apps4Dummies

The Apps4Dummies interactive workshop format is designed around the EU Citadel… on the Move project platform, which allows non-expert users to convert and publish Open Data. City officials who bring an Excel file filled according to a standard template are paired with local software developers to explore the platform together and generate an app that visualizes the converted dataset. This allows civil servants from different offices to build alliances with the local development community and actively participate in the Open Data process.

There are some important consequences of these new developments. First, as technology systems interconnect and gain complexity, there can no longer be experts with a total control of any given system. Some may have an expert's grasp of network protocols, while some may have a better understanding of how to get retweeted, but the integrated world of ICT has become too complex and too pervasive for a total comprehension of all its aspects. The corollary of this is that, from the very moment someone knows how to make a phone call or send an SMS, they can be considered as an expert of ICT from at least one perspective. This means that the only way to really influence technology processes is to get all these types of expertise together, ranging from the specialists to common people.

Box 21

Service Feedback via SMS

Citizens receiving health care in the Nasarawa province of Nigeria can provide feedback on services received using SMS. The MyVoice system in fact sends interview questions by voice and allows for simple Yes or No answers via keypad or more complex answers via SMS. The anonymized results are then collated and reports made available to supervisors and funders through an online dashboard.

Case Story

Territorial Specialization in the Basque Country

Description	Context	Challenges
The Urdaiba Bird Center complex (UBC) is a technical and research hub located in the heart of the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, a particularly important point along major bird migratory paths. The Center takes advantage of this unique setting for the collaborative design and testing of ICT solutions related to bird ringing and tracking, as well as hybridization projects that apply the results to other fields. The 'cluster+' collaborative model for this leading edge multidisciplinary research was formally launched as Bird Living Lab in spring 2011.	Due to its special environmental features, the Biosphere Reserve is an area with significant limits on the options for defining a development strategy. The Bird Living Lab turns these constraints into strengths, by making the area a major center for international research as well as the capacity to generate new business opportunities. This has been made possible by the collaboration of key stakeholders in a process of 'entrepreneurial discovery'. The public administration (Biscay Provincial Council and the Basque Government) providing institutional and financial support. The business fabric (through the GAIA Cluster+ model) guaranteeing positive externalities for companies with technology transfer and business development. The innovation system (Aranzadi) guiding research in biological and environmental sciences and managing the Center. The communities of users (mainly of a scientific and technological nature), linking the Center to European and international thematic networks.	In the ever more globalized context, regions and territories need to identify their specific contribution to global innovation systems in order to maintain a path of sustainable development. The Bird Living Lab is on the one hand nearly impossible to replicate, yet on the other constitutes a model for discovering a territory's specific potential for creating wealth and employment based on the positive interaction of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions.

Actions	Results	Impacts	Scaling Up
Ali aspects of the Bird Living Lab model link the focused specialization of its core research with broader global systems: In economic terms, the technical and research solutions applied to monitoring Urdaibai's unique biodiversity, create externalities in fields such as logistics, security, aerospace, etc. In social terms, the Center not only attracts international talent, but also generates new activities based on tourism, education, and environmental education and training. In environmental terms, the Center is contributing to ensure the maintenance of the natural character, landscape, ecology, and biodiversity of the Urdaibai Reserve.	Results include devices for bird ringing and tracking that combine technological and ICT solutions in the field of biology, also applicable to other activities where traceability and monitoring are key, such as security, defense, logistics, and transport aerospace, tourism, and health. Furthermore, given that bird migration patterns are indicators of climate change, they also support the analysis of environmental risk.	The Center, with its multiple possible uses, also carries out related activities that maintain a strong connection between the technological R&D and both the surrounding territory and global networks. This has led to linking its frontline research in the fields of ecology, climate change, and biodiversity to training and education, the development of hybrid technologies and innovation initiatives, and scientific tourism.	The UBC and the Basque Country in turn form part of a global value chain regarding the possible applications of ICTs for monitoring birds which involve Innovation Centers of Excellence giving rise to technological hybridization projects with a strong commercialization potential.

Second, despite appearances, it is no longer possible to 'buy' an isolated ICT system; in truth, we at best add more or less powerful new sub-systems to the complex mesh of technology already out there. The value of what is added is in part proportional to the scope and sophistication of the new sub-system, but there is a new element that increasingly contributes to defining its value, which is the impact of its inter-connection with the pre-existing systems. In this logic, it is possible to obtain an ICT system by not paying a penny for a new technology but rather re-designing the way people and organizations interact using existing technologies (like putting a message in a bottle). If we take this anthropological definition of technology fully on board, then it becomes impossible not only to conceive of ICT without people but equally to imagine any new city initiative without an ICT component. Finally, as ICT gains value as a function of its openness and interconnectedness with systems of human organization, it assumes an increasingly political dimension. Associated with these new trends are new norms of how knowledge and information are shared, how value is created, and how power is defined and used, as discussed in the introductory section of this guidebook. The new values of openness and collaboration that can enable citizen-driven innovation to happen in your city in fact mirror the open and interconnected nature of the new technological systems.

The more you build new partnerships to generate ideas and address problems, the more you will realize that these features of the new technologies – their inclusiveness, their interconnectedness, and their political impact – become part of the shared understanding among your stakeholders, as a common ethos emerges. ICTs play a central role in citizen-driven innovation, not so much for the power of what they do (which is sometimes astonishing) but mainly for the way they enable people to creatively work together according to open principles. If you are able to capture this new political dimension and use it to the benefit of your city and citizens, then you can reasonably consider yourself to have become an expert in ICT.