Boosting Entrepreneurism as a Product of Urban Creativity and Governance

Abstract

This chapter aims to describe and reflect on the experience developed in a metropolitan territory that ambitiously wanted to articulate entrepreneurship, creativity and urban governance. In spaces marked by economic and social crisis the requirement to mobilize synergies between local actors is even more pressing. From the municipality's leadership, Almada Idea Laboratory Project sought to involve university professors and students to generate creative ideas as well as business hosting centre for the installation of projects with greater viability and the community in general that had the opportunity to assess and discuss the product of this effort. The council offered its urban space as a living laboratory. Ideas, business opportunities and, above all, the possibility of creating and strengthening links between actors, often distant, proved a very successful experience both in objective results as in the formation of useful social capital to develop new projects.