In addition to a physical location, Bielefeld currently lacks a digital platform for the open and joint shaping of challenges and opportunities for the city or individual areas of urban society. However, the establishment of an easily accessible platform is particularly relevant for open exchange, the inclusion of as many citizens and organizations as possible, and the generation of good ideas for the further development of the city.
The digital Open Innovation City Community was therefore conceived and implemented as an essential component of the Open Innovation City concept, and thus for the participation of the urban society in central, future-oriented issues and to enable new innovation projects. The goal is an open innovation platform that provides various forms and formats of information exchange and also allows the structured matching of problems with the solution approaches generated in a crowd. For this purpose, digital tools are needed that enable the use of swarm intelligence as a collaborative advantage and connect the innovator ecosystem by means of transparency, networking and structure. An important element of the innovation platform in the future will be the innovation database; it will enable structured and topic-driven networking of social actors (e.g., medium-sized companies and startups) in the city of Bielefeld and beyond in a national and international context.
The Open Innovationy City Community represents an important core function for the process of Open Innovation: The joint work on future-oriented problems and solutions. The core interaction thus includes the publication of problems (whether by the administration, companies, startups, private individuals, etc.) and the provision of creative approaches to solutions by the users on the platform. In addition to a broad-based, openly accessible general crowdsourcing function for the involvement of the entire urban society, opportunities will also be created for setting up target group- or topic-specific co-creation; an example here could be a specific problem in the context of "Industry 4.0 in mechanical and plant engineering". For both functions - broad involvement of the urban society and focused forums - the placement of open questions/challenges, so-called open calls, will be digitally enabled.
On July 6, 2021, the Open Innovation City Community was officially opened by NRW Economics Minister Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart. Since then, it has been available to all Bielefelds free of charge.
The innovation platform was developed in collaboration with the software manufacturer HDNET.
Registration is free and quick. A user account can be created by registering at https://community.openinnovationcity.de and providing contact details. After submitting the form, we will send a registration notification to the e-mail address provided. By clicking on the confirmation link, the registration is completed.
When visiting the innovation platform for the first time, there is a comprehensive tutorial on the start page. It explains in four simple steps how users can navigate the Open Innovation City community. We show a further explanation in our tutorial on YouTube.
No matter whether mature or spontaneous - deposit your own idea in the community and explain in a few steps what will change for the better in the city, what thoughts you have already thought about it and how you can support it in the further process. Find fellow campaigners for your idea and work together to implement it!
Are you looking for a way to improve or simplify something? But you don't know exactly how you can contribute to the solution? Then set the community a challenge. Maybe there are enough like-minded people who want to work on a solution!