Innovation session in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Bax & Company organised an open innovation event in the inspiring DataLab Amsterdam, dedicated at facilitating peer-learning among 9 large and mid-sized cities in Northern Europe on Smart City concepts (e.g. Smart Mobility, Smart Parking etc.) to improve cities’ public service delivery.

The cities had two constructive days to actively share ideas, learn from each other, and more importantly to pave the way for more future collaborations in Smart City development. Our approach was to start from common public service challenges (pollution, traffic, waste disposal) to define relevant business cases focussed on improving municipal services. Amsterdam Data Science and Open & Agile Smart Cities provided state of the art insights and valuable links to their networks.

Results of the session

We explored how cities and their stakeholders could together develop innovative open software solutions through agile continuous development processes: only 3 months from ideation to delivery. Important challenges in these processes were:

• Publishing, handling and (re-)using open data and unlocking its value.
• Effectively engaging the market (mainly SMEs) in an open source community.
• Building upon ‘legacy infrastructure’ whilst working towards a more collaborative open source model.
• Engaging citizens early in the design process, etc.

Bax & Company is experienced in organising peer-learning activities to stimulate innovation processes. We are further expanding our Smart City and data business with new concepts, innovation strategies and models for citizen & business engagement. If you are interested in hearing more about our work in these areas, please feel free to contact us.