Open innovation as a driver for international exchange

It was the start of a long-term partnership: At the digital conference "OIC B.IE x Tampere", representatives of the city of Bielefeld met for the first time with representatives of the Finnish city of Tampere to discuss concrete joint smart city projects. This exchange was initiated and planned by Open Innovation City.

All over the world, cities and communities are facing similar questions: How can they make the challenges of digitization, sustainability, mobility or networking livable? And how can they win the battle for talent and keep it in the region or attract it to the region? Answers to these questions are mostly sought on a small scale and in regional networks; outside expertise is rarely brought in. In addition, there is a lack of strategic cooperation for innovation collaboration between cities and regions.

One of the core objectives of the Open Innovation City project is to promote this exchange, develop instruments and support continuous cooperation with (inter)national cities and regions. As a result of the analysis phase at the start of the project, Tampere was identified as a best-practice innovation city for Bielefeld, since it has an ideal infrastructure and has been convincing in the implementation of digitization measures to date.

At the digital conference, it was now possible for the first time to filter out cooperation topics and launch joint projects that concretize an innovation partnership at city level. The focus was on the Internet of Things, Smart City, zero-emission mobility, and data strategy and sovereignty.

The first conference in this framework convinced those responsible and encouraged them to follow up with further meetings. Both cities can benefit from the respective expertise focal points in the smart city context. The establishment of joint City Labs (research rooms) is also the focus of the upcoming meetings, which are already planned for the summer. Then hopefully not digitally, but in presence in Bielefeld and Tampere.

Pit Clausen, Lord Mayor City of Bielefeld:

"Tampere has a wealth of experience on the use of digital technologies for a sustainable and intelligently connected city. Bielefeld is choosing a human-centered approach for its journey to becoming a smart city, which aims to find innovative solutions to societal challenges together with people from administration, science, business and civil society and to create added value for people and nature through digitalization. Bielefeld and Tampere can combine these different strengths into technology know-how and cultural change to learn from each other together in a smart city context, try out ideas and tap into the diverse opportunities of digital transformation."

Henning Duderstadt, Head of Innovation Office

"The digital conference between our innovation partner, the city of Tampere in Finland, and innovation drivers:inside from the city of Bielefeld is the result of the analysis and networking work of the past two project years. We are very pleased that we have been able to transport the principle of open innovation to the heart of urban society and, in concrete terms, to jointly drive Bielefeld's development into a Smart City with international networks and partnerships. The pilot model of the Open Innovation City is thus growing from Bielefeld into the world and shows that open innovation is the model of this time!"

Seppo Haataja, Director, Smart Tampere program

"It was very good and productive opening for, hopefully, a long and fruitful cooperation to jointly develop smart city activities and better service for our citizens. There are a lot of similarities but also complementary elements that are valuable for both cities and communities."

"It was a very good and productive start to what we hope will be a long and fruitful cooperation to jointly develop smart city activities and better service for our citizens. There are many commonalities, but also complementary elements that are valuable for both cities and communities."

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