Open Innovation to Make Europe’s Cities Smarter
Now what would be nirvana for a growing city? At the top of the list for most people would be the provision of a great quality of life while remaining competitive and achieving sustainable growth.
It’s a priority for many cities across the word, but rarely do they help each other by sharing bright ideas. Novel solutions tend to stay local.
In Europe, two new open innovation initiatives are hoping to change all that.
‘Open Cities’ and ‘Commons for Europe’ are on a mission to get Europe’s public authorities to embrace open innovation. The two projects are being coordinated by ESADE Business School and part-funded by the European Union (EU).
ESADE is going to work with local authorities to define the needs of citizens and public administrations and then encourage those authorities to work with software developers to devise the solutions. The results will then be shared with everyone, so other cities can benefit.
Open Cities – seven cities are involved in this project (including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bologna, Helsinki and Rome) to create open data applications and urban projects. One of its successful initiatives is the Open Data Portal in Germany, an online platform that provides free environmental, geographical and statistical data.
Commons for Europe – among its aims is to make apps that allow citizens to better connect with local authorities.
Jonathan Wareham, ESADE’s Vice-Dean for Research, is excited about the emphasis on open innovation: “A lot of EU projects generate a lot of paper and little else. This one is doing real work.”
You can read more on this story at Science|Business.
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