Open Innovation 2.0 Yearbook 2013 - European Commission - Europa

participate, and a proof of this is the increasing
participation in the Lisbon Participatory Budgeting
initiative that started in 2008 with 1 000 citizens
and achieved more than 17 000 participations in
2011. Despite the positive feedbacks a strong effort
has to be put into the communication strategy, enabling
different actors to interact and represent their
role in the society. The Living Lab methodology is
already a tool, being mostly applied in energy efficiency
projects dealing with consumer behaviour,
with positive results and incentives to deploy new
projects and address new areas. Entrepreneurial
activities, taking advantage of the assets created,
are flourishing, especially within the creative industry
that already plays an important role in Lisbon’s
economy and can further be deployed in this sense.
The strategy of Manchester is to become a Digital
City Test Bed with an open innovation Living Lab for
creating Future Internet next-generation services
and applications for making available more efficient
public services, and to stimulate urban regeneration
and entrepreneurship. The availability of Next-
Generation Access (NGA) networks is key, enabling
city service providers to maximise the ability for
citizens to self-serve and to provide efficient access
to expensive specialist resources. An example of
such resources is to provide expert medical care
using innovative new services such as telemedicine
enabling the exchange of knowledge and expertise.
Manchester is an example of how cities are ideally
placed to mobilise and aggregate demand for NGA
services for the Future Internet ‘Smart City’ and to
provide the strong leadership required to make this
happen. The ‘Core Cities’ network is currently working
on an initiative to develop closer engagement
between city leaders, government, communications
service providers and the Internet industry as
a whole. The Manchester City Region NGA initiatives
are being developed in partnership by the Manchester
Digital Development Agency (MDDA), which is
part of Manchester City Council, and the Commission
for the New Economy, working on behalf of
the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities
(AGMA) in the context of the City Region Pilot and
the proposed ‘combined authority’. Currently, linked
initiatives are being developed: the Corridor ‘Living
Lab’ NGA pilot project, aiming to connect 500 businesses
and 1 000 residential users through an FTTP
network, and the Manchester City Region NGA initiative
(e.g. Metrolink and other transport corridors
together with public service network development).
The city of Thessaloniki illustrates an evolutionary
course from digital to intelligent and smart city.
The knowledge economy of Thessaloniki is developing
via two parallel processes: on the one hand,
through setting up innovation clusters and technology
districts, such as the Technology Park, the
Technopolis ICT business park, the Thermi and i4G
incubators, the Alexander Innovation Zone; and, on
the other hand, through the deployment of broadband
networks and Web-based services for business,
government, and citizens sustaining a new
economy relating to the ICT sector. A new planning
effort under the label ‘Intelligent Thessaloniki’ is
blending ICTs and innovation at the city district level
with specific objectives to: (i) create smart city districts
with strong local connectivity based on open
broadband networks, embedded sensors, smart
meters, RFID, QR codes, and actuators; (ii) develop
new applications and e-services adapted to each
city district that enhance its functioning, competitiveness
and environmental sustainability; (iii) sustain
the innovation capability of the city’s economic
activities through networks of collective intelligence
and crowdsourcing, technology learning, innovation,
digital marketing, and performance benchmarking.
‘Intelligent Thessaloniki’ is being implemented
in stages and on a per district basis through open
calls for drafting and implementing detailed plans
for the port area, the central business district, the
University campus, and other peri-urban technology
and commercial districts.
These smart city cases (see [7] for more details)
demonstrate, besides the similarities as regards
their future vision, also differences in the concept
of the ‘smart city’, the driving factors, strategies,
driving factors, and challenges ahead. There are
also similarities such as the formation of innovation
districts, neighbourhoods and clusters as fundamental
elements of the smart city strategy. This
also offers the opportunity for exchanging good
practices and solutions from one city to another.
Overall, it seems clear that the ‘smart city’ is more
a strategy than reality. Several cities investigated
are advanced in terms of technology infrastructure.
However, a smart city is more than technology and
infrastructure: it is also a universe of smart applications
and platforms which are empowering citizens
in innovative ventures. This is why many cities have
endorsed the concept of ‘Living Labs’, promoting
a more proactive and co-creative role of users in
emerging urban innovation ecosystems. Within the
territorial context of cities, rural areas and regions,
the main goal of Living Labs is to empower communities
of users at an early stage in the innovation
process. Interestingly, there is a trend towards integration
and shared use of Living Labs and experimental
test bed resources related to the Future
Internet, such as exemplified in smart city projects
such as SmartSantander, TEFIS and ELLIOT [17].
Such constellations of distributed resources may
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