Innovation Community
Network activities and co-creation represent key elements within a district urban lab. On a local level this is all about creation of an innovation community. The key members in an innovation community on a district-level include different city departments, major developers in the district, and local companies, as well as academia and innovation sector partners – and of course the local residents. Network collaboration and creation of innovation ecosystems focusing on different topics are facilitated by recurring gatherings, inviting them to develop smart solutions, new partnerships, collaboration projects and experimentation.
The community-based activities in a district urban lab maintain an active network, create trust and reinforce relationships between the public and private sector, research and innovation partners as well as with the residents. Through networking and sharing, the goal is to speed up innovation by openly sharing knowledge on ongoing activities and by allowing the participants to find new initiatives and partnerships for collaboration and projects.
In the Smart Kalasatama district urban lab, the physical meetups have been organised recurrently at least four times a year. It helps the local actors to regularly share news and get information about upcoming activities and future projects. The regular events for the innovation community support networking and finding common interests among start-ups, SMEs, NGO’s, large companies, researchers, as well as city officials and resident innovators. In addition, more thematic and narrowly focused workshops, events and meet-ups support different living lab projects, and invite a more specific range of participants to work together between the networking events for a wider innovation community.
Smart Kalasatama Innovators’ Club
The Innovators’ Club introduced in the Smart Kalasatama project is an innovation community and collaboration network for the local actors involved and other partners such as smart city solution developers, academia and the innovation sector as well as the residents. The common vision of the Smart Kalasatama project “One more hour a day” was co-created early in the project and served as a shared aim for all the partners to be tailored to serve their own objectives.
Over the years, a large number of partners have participated in the development work, each bringing their expertise, contacts and resources. The key task of Smart Kalasatama lab has been to maintain these networks, carry out innovation processes, share results, and launch new ideas in the role of facilitator. In cooperation, the network has created potential futures that will become a reality over the years.
Typical programme within an Innovators’ Club event introduced ongoing smart city pilots and projects, new initiatives and experiences from agile pilots run in the district. The physical events provided face-to-face meetings and supported the generation of new partnerships and networks. In a district-based urban lab, the events often took place in newly opened buildings (e.g. school or health center), to allow their introduction to the wider network.
As the entire district forms a test environment for piloting new services, an active local innovation community also helped in introducing them in the area, by linking them to their own ongoing activities, identifying and engaging the right stakeholders and sharing the learnings and results.