The role of public open innovation intermediaries in local government and the public sector

From Organizations to Organizational Fields: The Evolution of Civic Innovation Ecosystems

“…The first is aggregating the necessary tools and resources, including funding, hardware prototyping facilities, collaborators, data for benchmarking, or regulatory approval to deploy prototypes (Leminen et al, 2012;Schaffers & Turkama, 2012). The second, closely related, challenge is effective collaboration across stakeholder groups, each with distinct "languages" (Bakici et al, 2013;Wareham & Almirall, 2011). For example, a policy maker and a data scientist may not share a mental model for traffic systems, despite both working on autonomous cars.…”

“…These intermediaries perform aggregation and mediation functions: they consolidate resources (financial, technological, and talent), and translate between knowledge bases (through convening, consultancy, and best practice). Specific to urban technology, two general models have emerged to fill the hub role: living labs and innovation integrators (Bakici et al, 2013;Foster & Iaione, 2016). Municipal policy makers seeking to create an urban innovation ecosystem launch such an organization (Gascó, 2016;Juujarvi & Lund, 2016).…”

“…Bakici and colleagues (2013) describe them as autonomous "public innovation intermediaries" that work in close partnership with businesses, academia, government, and citizens. " [The] role of public innovation intermediaries is to build networks of organizations and then be the first to attract all the project ideas from these networks… In general, city halls provide financing and incentives for projects and/or legislative support, such as offering opportunities for experimentation" (Bakici et al, 2013). A number of case studies have documented the practices of these intermediaries, for example, how Boston Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics pioneered the integration of digital systems into government (Crawford & Walters, 2013) and how Forum Virium in Helsinki sparked ideation for civic problems through open data, hackathons, crowdsourcing, and public innovation contests (Almirall et al, 2014).…”

Researching the Emergence of 3D Printing, Makerspaces, Hackerspaces and FabLabs in the Global South: A Scoping Review and Research Agenda on Digital Innovation and Fabrication Networks

“…Focus on what spaces can offer in relation to: (Bakici et al, 2013;Capdevila, 2014;Eskelinen et al, 2015;Kim & Shin, 2016) …”

“…Offline, they work together in local, regional and global physical workspaces called makerspaces, hackerspaces and FabLabs. These workspaces are increasingly seen as integral to innovation ecosystems for the 21 st century, and set to reinvigorate local manufacturing industry and entrepreneurship (Bakici et al, 2013;Clark, 2014;Fox, 2014;Morel et al, 2015). International development agencies are thus investigating the potential drive of these workspaces in fostering economic growth, new livelihoods, and locally-appropriate innovation in developing countries (USAID, 2014;World Bank, 2016).…”