Innovato-R - Transfer Story from Porto

Turin, the Project Lead Partner, was very successful towards their Vision of 10.000 Municipal Employees, 10.000 Potential Innovators, by implementing what ended up to reveal itself as the Good Practice to be transferred via the implementation of Innovato-R, together with six Partners.

Its materialization implied an online and anonymous contest targeted for Municipal Employees, regardless their functional profile.

Porto has been adapting this Good Practice shared by Turin taking into account our reality and, therefore, by adopting a face-to-face approach while bringing together Municipal Colleagues, regardless their department and their functional and hierarchical profiles. This face-to-face approach consisted in in-person Workshops, based on Co-creation processes and along which Design Thinking tools were applied.

Emerging from these Workshops, a 100% physical Pilot Solution got launched but, right after this momentum, the Pandemic Situation arose and we all had to make an interregnum so that we could rethink, readapt and redesign our path. So, we began a process of total virtualization of our Pilot Test, in terms of form of pursuing our goals, but not in terms of the essence we looked for.

In other words, we restarted the Pilot Testing journey on a 100% virtual setting, not only by keeping both the face-to-face approaches among Municipal Colleagues, but also by reformatting your Design Thinking tools towards a 100% virtual application.

Guided by the inspiration that Porto got, right from the start, from Turin’s experience and main highlights lying beneath the success of its Good Practice within Public Administration at Municipal level, Porto kept in mind some guidelines that both Cities share, as well as the other Partners.

This means that we aim to break barriers among formally vertical services, to provide feedback and to ask for it, as well as to involve everyone along the hierarchical chain, so that we can, together as one, reach an inclusive and transversal engagement of the Municipality as a whole.

This is because we value that Municipal Employees can consider themselves deeply valued, by playing a major role along co-creation processes of incremental innovation.

And all this together seems to be the perfect formula to keep the spirit of Innovato-R going and arising, even after the imminent formal end of the URBACT III framework.

The Municipality of Porto has gained so much, not only thanks to the transnational and national alliances established and nurtured together with our Partners and URBACT Experts, but also, with a great reflection of all this Learning Process inwards, by strengthening internal relations, as well as maximizing synergies and potentiating common goals.

This whole process has been confirming, this far, what we have always believed in: that incremental Innovation is a matter of People, of Trust, of Engagement, of Motivation and of Sense of Mission Accomplished.

We therefore foresee, in the coming future, the roll-out of such an enriching experience, by potentiating our initiatives in a broader scale, so that we can, gradually but sustainably, materialize our Vision: to build a culture for Continuous Improvement and Process Optimization within the Municipality, enhancing municipal employees’ engagement and motivation.

Post Scriptum: We also take great pleasure in inviting you all to embark on this magnificent Adventure called Innovato-R, seen through the eyes of our City, along which we start by wandering through each of the Transnational and National network milestones and, afterwards, get down to the endeavours held back in our City, hand in hand with the aforementioned broader dynamics.