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?

Co-designing Solutions - Chapter 3

1. Unpack the Problem

For each of the projects in your work plan, you first need to clearly define the participating stakeholders and reinforce their commitment, so that each of you knows whom to count on to accompany you throughout the co-design process. That established, the next step is to explore the problem you are addressing, with particular attention to ways you can transform problems into opportunities. How can the big problems be broken down into manageable but real issues that can make a measurable step forwards? As you develop the dynamics surrounding the problem, the following questions arise: who is involved, what internal organizational issues are part of the problem, how much does it have to do with interfacing, sharing knowledge, or communicating with others? Look to see not only the main processes involved, but also the views of others who may be more indirectly affected by this problem. Then look to see how systemic benefits could occur by successfully addressing the problem: How might benefits to one actor lead to processes benefiting others? Who has to gain, what, and how much? As you develop this line of thinking, you may begin to see that addressing this problem could begin to spark off positive effects in other areas.

Next, work on identifying the resources – both material and immaterial – that can be brought to bear on the problem. In so doing, you will probably find that there are initiatives or programs or departments already set up or funded, framed in traditional ways of action, that could instead be steered in the direction of contributing to solve the problem in the framework of citizen-driven innovation. You may have a budget line assigned or even a contract awarded, with a clear indication of what to do but not how to do it. Check to see if these initiatives could be brought together and implemented in a co-creative framework. In the previous chapter, you will also have identified other actors potentially interested and with a potential benefit from addressing the problem: do they also have resources – employees, equipment, meeting rooms – that could be pooled together? This exercise has two important impacts: first, by looking at existing resources, programs, and departments with a new eye you will see that feasibility is within closer reach than you originally thought; second, by pooling resources among public and private actors for a shared purpose, you are contributing to re-building a civic culture of the common good.

Case Story

Focus on Lighting in Agueda

Description	Context	Challenges
The Lighting Living Lab (LLLf7 is located in Agueda, a rural city of 50,000 inhabitants where some 70% of the Portuguese lighting industry is based. In a tight collaboration with the city government, which also constitutes the main testing environment, it addresses Smart Lighting and Eco-friendly Lighting, including ICT based services for monitoring and control, and gives birth to new services, systems, products, and business opportunities.	The LLL originated in a city-driven initiative to network innovative companies in the region and improve their competitive potential. The project also identified regional problems and needs such as high energy consumption and costs, and the city decided to test the proposed state of the art lighting systems on one of its main streets. The benefits became immediately apparent, so the program was extended in a systematic manner to the whole city context, engaging citizens and the community together with the industrial association to explore the social and behavior implications of the new technologies and co-design new solutions. The LLL maintains the same formal structure of association as created in the original project.	The main challenge is to engage both the industry and the community in co-designing the paradigm shift from lighting seen as a mere utility (supporting human activity with sufficient illumination) to lighting seen as a public service, enhancing the sense of well-being in urban environments and contributing to define the appearance of buildings and spaces.

Actions

Results

Impacts

Scaling Up

Following the first installation, which primarily demonstrated the benefits of adopting LED technology in one of the earlier large-scale installations, other aspects of public lighting and energy have been addressed in an incremental fashion. This first step was to integrate remote monitoring and management, through a wireless network and software capable of sensing the status of individual lights and intervening according to specific criteria. This was followed by the installation of photovoltaic panels to produce the energy for the lighting but also for the City Hall, schools, and other public structures. Each of these steps has constituted the opportunity for innovation processes using the collaboration between the City administration, the industrial association, and local citizens and businesses to identify concrete needs and co-design new and effective solutions.

As an example, one of the many pilot projects carried out in LLL has led to an annual savings of over 7,000kW of energy, with a savings of 3,2 tons of C02 emissions. The results for the local industry are evident in a range of new products, services, and applications that have resulted from the collaboration.

The pilot projects in the City of Agueda lead to cost savings and reduced environmental impact as well as increased service quality to citizens. The visibility and results of the installations also have an important cultural impact on citizens in terms of environmental awareness. More broadly, this Living Lab builds on the specific industrial vocation of the territory and the engagement of its citizens to promote a broad yet focused concept of innovation, as an exemplary case of the paradigm shift required to meet the challenges of public services in general. In this way, a small rural city has rejuvenated its industrial potential and positioned itself at the forefront of territorial innovation.

The lessons learned from the Agueda experience are providing a valuable contribution to the design of Portuguese regional innovation strategies, as evidence of the benefits of the Living Lab approach based on specific local innovation potentials. Through the ENoLL network, similar initiatives for citizen engagement in urban illumination programs have also occurred, for instance in the Italian Trento Province for the town of Campodenno.48

Now that you have identified stakeholders to engage and resources that can be brought to bear, focus in again on the problem definition to see how you can bring technology into the picture in simple (or complex) ways, for instance by opening up relevant datasets, co-designing apps, engaging citizen groups using crowdsourcing tools, etc. to co-design some micro-scenarios for new services. For each of these, who needs to be doing what, and what innovative roles can be played by using the technologies at hand? Having defined these aspects, it is likely that you will together reach the definition of one or more co-design processes that can be initiated, knowing the who, the what, and the why.