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?

Building a Strategy - Chapter 2

2. Define a Vision

Once you've established the rules of the game, it's a good idea to work together to define a shared vision for your humanly smart city, a vision that is specifically adapted to your city's needs, resources, and aspirations as described at the outset of this guidebook. This will not be a permanent or rigid definition, but rather a work in progress that changes and grows throughout your innovation processes, reflecting at any given moment the main points of consensus on where you want to go in the long term. Normally, a vision is encapsulated in a written statement where every word counts; that can be a useful exercise especially for the outside world, but what is important is to base that vision on a deep analysis of your city's potential and your options for action.

Box 22

Vision-building in Lebanon

The World Bank ICT Group and the Government of Lebanon held a two-day workshop to define a vision for the country's mobile internet ecosystem. Representatives of the 'quadruple helix' (government, enterprises, academia, and civil society) came together to articulate a shared strategy, including the creation of a coordinator hub to feed on new linkages between stakeholders. The vision-building process was supported by international thought leaders sharing experiences in value creation for urban innovation ecosystems.

Box 23

Tracking Ideas

The Pisa Living Lab (Learning Lab) has developed a software platform that tracks the evolution of ideas during an on-line collaborative design process, allowing the identification of authorship in a fair manner. This in turn makes it possible to establish clear rules for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) within an open co-design partnership.

Box 24

Europe's 'iCapital' 2014

The City of Barcelona was awarded the European Capital of Innovation ("iCapital") prize for its vision of "Barcelona as a city of people". This policy, launched by the City Council in 2011, is based on "introducing the use of new technologies to foster economic growth and the welfare of its citizens". Barcelona Laboratori, the city's Living Lab, has helped to achieve this goal.

A well-known method of analysis is called the SWOT, which maps Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in a four-sector diagram. You or others will probably have already carried out a SWOT analysis for your territory, but this time it will be different, since you will be doing it as a collective, participatory exercise. In this context, you should be able to identify new Strengths, for instance in terms of your cultural heritage or the local potential for creativity. Weaknesses may include marginalization from flows of globalization, countered by the Opportunities of the internet and citizen empowerment. Finally, the Threats may be seen to come locally, i.e. with an exodus of your youngest and brightest, or externally, i.e. with the impacts of global financial crises.

This analysis should then be coupled with an exploration of the potential of citizen-driven innovation in relation to your city's prospects. The first participatory initiatives you have carried out will enrich your thinking with new tools, new stakeholders, and new approaches as your main Strengths. The Weaknesses could lie in the lack of a culture of cooperation or internal difficulties in the public administration. The Opportunities can mainly be found in the creative use of technologies, especially in the 'frugal' paradigm that allows for a more inclusive approach. Finally, the Threats may for instance lie in dynamics that can undermine the trust you have built up or external pressures to return to 'the old ways' of policy-making. These considerations will help you to balance the analysis of your city's context with the potential of citizen-driven innovation, in order to define a long-term vision that is both desirable and feasible.

Case Story
Improving Living Conditions in Vitoria

Description	Context	Challenges
The Habitat Living Lab42 is a social network ecosystem for Research b Development as well as Education. It has the purpose of developing and implementing environmentally friendly technologies in collaboration with low-income communities, so as to improve the conditions of urban and rural housing in the Brazilian State of Espírito Santo.	In Vitoria, a city with over 300.000 people, approximately 31 thousand live in a poor area named Territörio do Bern. It was in this context that the NGO Associaçao Ateliê de Idéias was created in 2003, to generate ideas to address the lack of supply of basic human needs of housing, clean water, treatment, and disposal of waste etc. The first initiative was to set up a community bank controlled by local residents, Banco Bern. This was followed by the constitution of the Forum Bern Maior, where community leaders meet to discuss and propose solutions to their problems and demands, giving shape to a strategic plan for specific projects. Initiatives in residential construction using clean technologies such as soil-cement bricks and low cost water heating solar panels led to an agreement between the NGO and the Laboratory of Construction Materials at the Federal University of Espirito Santo, the core of the Living Lab partnership. Today, the Living Lab is coordinated by the Federal University and its partnership includes universities and research centers, the Vitoria Municipality, several donor foundations, and the Portuguese energy institute.	The Habitat Living Lab addresses challenges typical of such a bottom-up community building approach. The endemic lack of focus and tendency to act individually is overcome through information sharing, joint decisions, and engagement in active participation and collaboration.

Actions

Results

Impacts

Scaling Up

The Habitat Living Lab is a web of actors linked by projects, divided into four types:
Development projects in the community territory (the Bank, residential construction program, etc.)
Co-design of ICT applications supporting the community initiatives
Research on construction materials and processes, renewable energy sources, solid waste disposal, and ICT tools for collaboration and communication.
Dissemination of activities and results.
These projects are all carried out in a tight cooperation between residents of the Bern area and post-graduate University students from different disciplines whose engagement in the Habitats Living Lab is a formal part of their curricular activities.

Since the beginning of this program more than 10,000 people in a situation of social and economic vulnerability have been helped and a total of 800 university credits awarded for work with businesses, products, and housing.
As an example of direct results, the community-led Banco Bern granted loans to 135 families over a five year period. At the broader level, the engagement of the local community in the user forums empowers citizens to define the actions to be taken in the neighborhood, with a direct impact on their prospects for the future.

Keeping the community at the center of technology development, achieved through a mixture of environmental education and community engagement, ensures that the co-designed solutions respect local culture, rely on low-cost technologies, and promote sustainable development. The benefits for the universities involved is to steer their research in a multi-disciplinary approach to the housing issue. The innovations in architectural design and environmentally friendly and low cost construction materials have a potential impact that goes far beyond the regional boundaries.

Although the Habitat Living Lab was initiated in the Bern district of Victoria, it has spread to address issues common to low-income communities in both urban and rural settings throughout the State of Espi'rito Santo. Through the international network of ENoLL, collaborations are also being explored for specific research in areas such as solar energy.