Preliminary, it is necessary to understand the meaning of innovation that it is intended to promote within the Alliance.
“Inno-preneurship” is the new concept forged and promoted by ENGAGE.EU, “based on previous notions of entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and innovation” (The ENGAGE.EU inno-preneurial mindset, p. 4.).
A slightly broader concept of innovation emerges.
This broader concept requires to adopt a holistic definition which includes economic impacts as well as technological, institutional, cultural, ecological, and social impacts. Hence, the platform wants to promote a more complex, multi-faceted view of innovation which focuses on solving concrete daunting societal problems.
This definition and approach is also grounded in the more recent European policy framework and in particular in three main policy initiatives:
- the European Green Deal (2019);
- the “New industrial Strategy for Europe” (2020; 2021);
- the Horizon Europe funding program (2021).
The core of these crucial European policy framework is the promotion of a mission-oriented innovation process (a “good” innovation), and the acknowledgement of the role of a plurality of stakeholders (such as academia, public bodies, local communities) as policy drivers in this process.
The boundaries between research and innovation are decreasing. Moreover, the literature (as an example, Von Schomberg 2011) has pointed out that new processes are needed to embed scientific and technological advances in our society. The creation of linkage between societal actors and innovators is necessary to set a transparent environment in which players become mutually responsive to each other. Hence, stakeholders need to work collaboratively to the acceptability, sustainability, and societal desirability of the innovation process.
Therefore, the innovation shall not only concern the content but also the processes.
Thus, innovation is not anymore in the only hands of researcher and technicians. The society as whole needs to have a role in the process. Therefore, it is necessary to promote a notion of “open and collaborative innovation”. The open and collaborative innovation foresees the participation also of citizens in the creation and application of science and innovation, along the spirit of the “citizen science model”. Hence, the citizens science policy framework defines it as “voluntary participation of non-professional scientists in research and innovation at different stages of the process and at different levels of engagement, from shaping research agendas and policies, to gathering, processing and analyzing data, and assessing the outcomes of research” (European Commission, 2020). The “citizen science” is part of the open science approach promoted by the European Commission, and one of the pillars of the RRI approach. The Inno-preneurship spaces aim to create the conditions in which citizen groups, also informal ones, are enabled to represent their innovative ideas inside a collaborative space involving academia, industry, public authorities and communities.
The idea that scientific knowledge might be increased by the crucial contribution of lay people, also inside a traditional ‘epistemic’ institution such as academia, has been pivotal in the Science and Technological Studies for the last decades (Jasanoff, 2012). In this broad understanding, innovation, the “Inno-preneurial spaces” will endorse the role of all the involved stakeholders and the ecosystems in the innovation process, also according to the Quintuple Helix Model (Carayannis, 2012). A particular version of the Quintuple Helix Model aims to overcome the public-private-science tripartite partnership approach for innovation and – following the seminal works by Ostrom – it stresses the role of end-users or local communities as not only beneficiaries but partners sharing the value produced by innovation without denying the proactive role of knowledge institutions — universities, cultural organization, foundations, schools — as the pivotal agent of theses governance systems. Elinor Ostrom and Charlotte Hess (2007) advanced the idea that knowledge is a commons, emphasizing the role of digital interoperability, open science, and scholarly networks, voluntary associations, and collective action in knowledge production also through the creation of the so-called “collaboratories” experimented in several US schools. This alternative quintuple helix approach would bring universities and knowledge institutions, local businesses and enterprises that implement corporate social responsibility to work side by side and share the value produced with single end-users, as well as informal groups and hyper-local communities (Foster & Iaione, 2016).
The pivotal role played by local communities in the innovation policies has been recently reinforced by Ross Brown, who pointed out that effective innovation policies need to be deeply rooted in a close understanding of the specific localized context in which they are introduced (Ross Brown, 2021). This novel approach builds on the mission-oriented approach (Nelson, 1977 and 2011; Mazzucato, 2018), where innovation policy is associated with major societal challenges which need a major technological, knowledge and scientific boost to be solved. The elective tool of this mission-oriented model are the new technology-based start-ups (Cooke 2016), following the ‘patenting-seed/angel/venture fund-incubator’ model of business growth. An alternative approach to innovation, as recently stated by Brown and Mason, is a “diffusion” oriented model. Under this model, there is a more experimental, interactive, and relational approach towards innovation (Brown and Mason 2014): “sources of knowledge arise from doing, using and interacting (DUI) processes which typically arises from inter-firm collaboration” (Brown, 2020). This would entail enhancing productivity within existing organizations (i.e. economic gardening) and fostering interactive learning in networks of SMEs. The diffused model also highlights the necessity of promoting local experimentations that support SMEs, and the other innovators, to test the validity of the solution experimenting them in real conditions (Iaione, 2016). Within ENGAGE.EU, a more practical and diffused innovation process might help enhancing the fourth mission (Geiger, 2006; Kretz & Sá, 2013; Iaione & Cannavò, 2015), destined to universities and all knowledge institutions, to take on roles as members of the community and public-private community/commons partnerships (Carayannis, 2012).
To further support this approach, another crucial policy document for the ENGAGE.EU alliance is the “Pact of Amsterdam: an urban agenda for the European Union” signed on May 31st 2016, which clearly states that: ‘In order to address the increasingly complex challenges in Urban Areas, it is important that Urban Authorities cooperate with local communities, civil society, businesses and knowledge institutions. Together they are the main drivers in shaping sustainable development with the aim of enhancing the environmental, economic, social and cultural progress of Urban Areas. EU, national, regional and local policies should set the necessary framework in which citizens, NGOs, businesses and Urban Authorities, with the contribution of knowledge institutions, can tackle their most pressing challenges’. The agenda points out the territorial implication of innovation and collaboration, and the importance that urban areas have in both the diffusion of problems and the possibility to find innovative solutions. Hence, the platform will need to take in consideration the complex set of relations that the players involved within the process and their influence of the urban context.
Common Goods
Common goods governance strategies developed by Nobel laureate in economics Elinor Ostrom have been adapted by Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione to urban commons for a new governance, based on public-private-community partnerships in order to realize the city as a collaborative and urban innovation space in which to experiment and implement innovative projects with social, environmental and sustainable impact. Urban commons refers to the goods, services and infrastructures, both tangible and intangible, that the city and territorial communities recognize as functional for the well-being of the community and in which public, private and collective interests merge and converge.
Climate and Technological Justice
Open Urbania follows the principle of climate justice, aims at creating collaboration and sharing in pursuit of environmental benefits geared toward sustainability and fighting climate change in line with the latest European and national policies.
Open Urbania epitomizes the principle of technological justices: the platform is directed at ensuring equal access to its technology, relying on the concepts of open access and open innovation to be an enabling tool for the exchange of knowledge and best practices, implementation and funding of new urban projects, and creating connections and sharing among its users.
Heritage and Entrepreneurial Communities
Open Urbania is inspired by the principles of the Faro Convention for the promotion and preservation of cultural heritage. The platform aims to create a space for discussion, sharing of values, implementation of initiatives to protect cultural heritage, cultural identity, cultural heritage, and more generally natural landscapes and biological ecosystems. The objective is to strengthen the sense of belonging to a cultural identity, promoting the development of heritage communities inspired by a shared sense of responsibility towards the common environment in which they live, to contribute to local development through mutual cooperation in compliance with the principles of sustainability, efficiency and social cohesion.
Solidarity, Collaboration and Civic Innovation
Open Urbania is inspired by the principle of civic collaboration.
Civic collaboration inspires a new social, economic and organizational model in which urban actors (the individual citizen; groups of citizens and associations; volunteering and third sector organizations; philanthropists; entrepreneurs linked to their territory; responsible, sustainable and innovative companies; universities, schools and other cognitive institutions) decide to exercise together the duty of solidarity and the responsibility, the power of autonomy and civic initiative recognized by the Constitution in the care of the city and its common goods.
Individuals identify themselves in social formations and thus in communities where they realize their need for solidarity and at the same time develop their personalities through forms of participatory, deliberative and collaborative democracy.
Open Urbania moves, in essence, from the assumption that civic solidarity and collaboration represents the main ingredient to enable innovation processes to be sustainable, just and democratic.
Circular and Energetic Neighbourhoods and Communities
Open Urbania is designed to make communities and neighbourhoods circular and self-sustainable from an ecological, energetical and technological point of view. The projects promoted and financed by Open Urbania reflect the dimensions of a smart city: smart mobility, smart environment, smart economy, smart living, smart governance and smart people. Through this approach Open Urbania aims to develop the right forms of technological, social environmental, cultural and governance innovation in full compliance with the respect of Sustainable Development Goal No. 11 established by the UN in the in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At the European level, this is done in compliance with one of the 5 missions of Horizon Europe, namely of the 100 climate-neutral and climate neutral and smart cities and the 5 public policy objectives of cohesion policies 2021-2027 (innovation, sustainability, connectivity/sustainable mobility, inclusion, local and integrated urban development).