Opening Up Innovation in European Cities

The idea of a broad or open innovation ecosystem, made up of a constellation of actors with different roles, capacities and interest, creates new challenging opportunities and role for cities. It offers opportunities for cities to become ‘engines of Innovation’ and to create bridges between the objectives of competitiveness, jobs creation and the care for social needs.

What Can Cities Do to Support Open Innovation?

Among URBACT’s completed projects, four of them dealt with innovation: RUnUp, Creative Clusters, UNIC, REDIS.
They have worked together to know how cities could contribute to a more open concept of innovation.  They concluded that cities can open up innovation in three ways:

• By creating spaces and buildings which stimulate innovation
• By improving linkages and creating platforms between knowledge producers and local firms
• By promoting innovation within their own services

In each of these fields, URBACT cities have drawn interesting lessons.
Here we will have a look at the Danish city of Aarhus, one of REDIS partner cities. We’ll also introduce the practice of the “living lab” in Tampere (Finland) that RUnUp partner cities visited. Both are good examples of open innovation and multidisciplinary projects.


Connecting with IT Firms to Create a Knowledge Hotspot: the IT city of Katrinebjerg in Aarhus, Denmark

The Download REDIS Aarhus IT city of Katrinebjerg Case Study (374.61 KB) is not isolated campus-style Science Park. It is a rundown neighbourhood, which is being turned into a « world class environment » for IT firms.
How? The Alexandra Institute, organisation dedicated to bridge the gap between private firms and public research, developed there a successful « open » matchmaking methodology, in which innovation is created during a process involving users, firms and researchers. The co-operation between private firms and local research expertise to new IT products or services is organised and proposed by the Institute after involvement and careful analysis of the needs of clients and future users: a new way of creating collaboration!

Implementing an Open Innovation Platform: the Demola Living Lab in Tampere, Finland

Demola is a multidisciplinary open innovation environment where researchers and students can co-create and develop new digital products and services with global market potential. Companies provide project ideas and concepts for student teams, who then develop these ideas further, by building demonstrations and creating business models.
Student teams are working with unproven concepts that need novel solutions. Companies implement the most suitable projects. Other projects generate new start-up businesses. This reinforces the importance of a shared space since it enables teams to tap into the Demola community for problem-solving and the creation of new ideas.
As a result, the project is supporting in excess of 400 students per year and 80 projects.


New URBACT Projects to Keep on Empowering Cities on Open Innovation

Five of the 19 new URBACT projects are dealing with innovation: 4DCities explores innovation in the field of health, Creative Spin focusses on cultural and creative industries, and SMART CITIES on public services.
Finally, EUnivercities is exploring the potential of building a strategic alliance between cities and universities and INNOVA concentrates on the creation of poles of innovative enterprises and socially responsible models. Have a look to their brand new mini-sites on URBACT website!

For more information:

• Full version of «Opening up innovation in European cities», by Paul Soto in  Download URBACT Project Results First Edition (18.49 MB)– PDF
• REDIS project’s final results – URBACT website
• RUnUp project’s final results – URBACT website