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?
Joining Forces - Chapter 5
1. Define Your Role
It is therefore important to reflect early on about your city's own value proposition to itself and to others: what particular forms of innovation are you drawing on and working with?
The same special mix of creative capital that you have used all along to drive your own path towards innovation is key to what you have to offer to network partners. Try to re-read the SWOT analysis you carried out while defining your vision in the light of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of other cities; this way you can easily see what you have in common and what distinguishes your strategy as unique.
Case Story
Learning to Connect in Poznan
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Description |
Context |
Challenges |
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The Poznan Living Lab focuses on three strategic areas: Smart City, healthcare, and education. It is run by the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center and its broad partnership includes the member companies of the Wielkopolska ICT cluster, research institutes, NGOs, and the Poznan City Hall. Sixteen user communities come together in relation to different ICT technologies and/or different fields of application, with operations earned out entirely with own resources, namely without EU or public funding. |
The Poznan Living Lab grew to its current configuration and approach following a path of discovery of the effectiveness of user engagement. The original cluster was set up in 2008 with the goal of launching knowledge driven projects, but was unable to reconcile the visions and expectations of the different stakeholders. In 2010, the association opened up to non-ICT partners closer to the innovation demand: schools for educational projects, hospitals and care organizations for medical projects, and Poznan City Hall for citizen related projects. Operational and regulatory obstacles continued however to hinder progress. The next step was to launch the ZOO coworking space, which began to work when the focus shifted from technologies to application areas such as finance, healthcare, public spaces, and open data. |
The main challenges faced have not been in the technical nor financial domains but in the legal and operational details for collaboration. Institutional innovation is thus a key element for fully implementing the user-driven approach. The limitations to property rights is another barrier for engaging SMEs, although a clear Open Source policy at the outset can clarify possible misunderstandings. |
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Actions |
Results |
Impacts |
Scaling Up |
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The main actions undertaken today by the Poznan Living Lab include: |
The NGOs who have participated have gained professional support from programs as well as access to city officials and potential sponsors. Conversely, the companies of the Wielkopolska ICT Cluster gained real challenges to work on. |
The gradual shift of orientation towards an end user driven definition of technology processes has had a strong effect on the technology partners, used to thinking in technology-driven terms. Citizens: awareness of the transformational power of user-driven research has increased participation and engagement, while the business and research communities have increased their commitment to multi-disciplinary research and gained a greater connection to the city in actively addressing its problems. |
The Poznan Living Lab is playing a leading role in promoting Living Labs throughout Poland and in other formerly Eastern European nations, using ENoLL as a platform for international networking. |
Box 31
Trans-regional Services
The Taiwan Living Lab designs service blueprints and executes various field experiments with end users to evaluate market acceptance of innovative technology services. This service model has proven effective at the trans-regional level, and offices have been opened up in Taichung, Taiwan, and Nanjing, China.
Some cities may have different priorities as concerns food security, climate change, income equality, or other issues, while others may share your own priorities and actually be engaging in similar innovation approaches and initiatives. Compare the resources you and others are drawing on to feed innovation, together with the different levels of ambition for addressing different problems. You should be able to identify one or two cities with whom to begin exploring knowledge exchange processes. You might have also signed up to one or more open innovation, smart city, or similar networks or associations, but we suggest that even then you pinpoint one or two partners to team up with as an entry point for broader engagement.
To start off collaboration, you need others to know who you are, which means you need to present your city and its citizen-driven innovation strategy and initiatives effectively. Look at others' presentations, their structure, and the media they use: brochures, websites, social media, and video in different mixes. It is important that you learn to see your city and projects through the eyes of others, telling your story in a way that captures their imagination and highlights the key points of possible collaboration. From there you can make your first contacts and perhaps organize site visits for the members of your innovation partnership.