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

3. RESEARCH

As you develop your citizen-driven innovation strategy (even as you read this guidebook), you will realize that an integral part of the method is to reflect on the process in order to understand and improve it, in parallel with its experimentation in concrete practice. All Living Labs have to some degree a research component that examines their processes and methods to continuously improve results. Research is by tradition an international and collaborative process, meaning that just as you are focusing on using innovation processes to solve city problems, other Living Labs – especially those with a strong University guide – may be focusing on research related to some of your unanswered questions.

Research on citizen-driven innovation can thus be a strong driver for your possible participation in international networks. You can link up your local universities and encourage them to address issues on citizen-driven innovation in collaboration with ENoLL Universities, or alternatively you can collaborate as a pilot setting for research carried out elsewhere that is exploring the issues and methods you are using. Either way, framing your innovation strategy in a research perspective can only be beneficial to your ability to improve your processes.

Box 33

Learning by Doing

Laurea Living Lab is hosted by an R&D oriented University of Applied Sciences in the Helsinki metropolitan area and focuses on service innovation. Through its several locations and its innovation process based on Learning by Developing, it acts both as a host organization and as an innovation service provider focusing on welfare, knowledge intensive business services, and social responsibility. This mixture makes Laurea a leading University for research on Living Lab methodologies; evidence of this is the recent special issue of the Interdisciplinary Studies Journal on Smart Cities.

Case Story
A City-University Partnership in Coventry

Description	Context	Challenges
City Lab Coventry aims to build strong communities by mobilizing the collaborations, assets, and expertise of the University and the city to help revitalize urban neighborhoods and research issues that support city planning and development as well as the work of the third sector. City Lab Coventry includes: access to citizens, vehicles, buildings, roads, and IT infrastructure within the city; a serious games studio/app lab, from prototypes through commercialization; business support, working with SMEs, start-up businesses, and corporate organizations; and Living Lab trials in priority thematic areas: low carbon vehicles, low impact buildings, digital media and assisted living.	Urban Universities are a huge asset for their home cities, as catalysts for social mobility, investors in infrastructure, and providers of extensive employment opportunities. Historically Coventry University has had a strong relation with the City of Coventry, though over recent years the campus became disconnected from the wider city. City Lab Coventry allows to re-establish that link, by sharing and opening up research with citizens, thus leveraging the huge capability and resources of the community. City Lab Coventry is a joint venture between Coventry City Council and Coventry University. The two organizations own 90% of the land in the City Center and use this space as a City test bed and Living Lab.	The ultimate aim of City Lab Coventry is to address the challenges facing Coventry through the lens of its people and communities, who have low recorded levels of pride in their city, aspiration, chronic skills shortages, and stagnant social mobility. The complex, entrenched, and interconnected opportunities and challenges in Coventry are too often addressed in a short-term or fragmented way. City Lab Coventry was set up to address this by delivering a series of comprehensive and interconnected interventions.

Actions	Results	Impacts	Scaling Up
Working upon that platform, the City Lab Coventry activities are characterized by different roles between the City, citizens, and the University: Opening up University research: for instance by using wireless sensor monitoring in researchers homes to help a social housing company understand how to Implement the passive house concept. Citizens engaged in University research: for instance by advertising for people to sign up and trial low carbon vehicles. Citizens driving University research: for example the AroundMe™ informal care platform that helps people live independently, or the engagement of citizens to enrich and develop content for tourist information, apps, and services. Letting citizens lead: forex- ample supporting a campaign against church closures by co-designing virtual tours and encouraging people to visit them.	All of the initiatives of the Citv Lab Coventry are able to engage the city's population in research and service co-design. As an example, the recent social relations initiative has calculated that through a range of programs (e.g. 40 over 40, "get creative") up to 20% of the Coventry population or 60,000 people will be engaged over a three-year period.	Each project in some way redefines the relationship between the City and the University, highlighting needs and ambitions for both and encouraging both to take responsibility for mobilizing assets. The scale and size of impact varies between projects, but it is important to establish the evidence and highlight individual success stories.	Different innovation programs have been extended across the UK and the apps developed are widely used. International scaling up mainly occurs through partnerships developed starting from membership in ENoLL.