Open Innovation
Open Innovation
The existence of a highly diversified entrepreneurial eco-system in the city (incubators, startups, accelerators, companies, fablabs and creative hubs) has strongly contributed to an atmosphere of constant innovation.
The Municipality of Lisbon has been playing a key role in promoting various projects, not only as a promoter of innovation but also as a mediator between all the city's players - universities, companies, the state and citizens - in collaborative innovation projects - Open Innovation.
The municipal initiatives SMART OPEN LISBOA and LISBOA ROBOTICS are excellent examples of a strategy aimed at turning Lisbon into an open innovation laboratory.
Smart Open Lisboa (SOL) is a program promoted by the Lisbon City Council, and is the main open innovation program for the city. It is a program that focuses on innovation and partnerships.
The aim is to find startups with solutions to the challenges identified by the program's partners and, in co-collaboration, pilot these solutions in the city. The city is made available as an open innovation laboratory, with equipment and public spaces.
Startups thus have the unique opportunity to access and have the support of large companies in validating their solutions, using real data in a real environment.
The latest edition of this programme, which began in 2018, organizes and structures it in a vertical format with specific themes aimed at responding to key challenges in the city. The first vertical worked on was mobility - Sol Mobility - followed by SOL Housing, in which projects around real estate will be developed and tested, from construction to management, including design and promotion.
The Lisbon Robotics Cluster, Lisboa Robotics, launched on February 24, 2017, is a project led by a group of entities, including the Lisbon City Council, the Institute of Systems and Robotics of the Instituto Superior Técnico and the Portuguese Robotics Society, with the aim of federating the players in this ecosystem and contributing to and also monitoring the development and promotion of robotics in the city of Lisbon. This project already has more than 30 partners.
The strategic program of Lisboa Robotics includes the development, in stages, of the following axes:
- setting up a network of Hotspots, spaces for testing and experimentation in a controlled environment in the city
- the activation of a Think Tank, a group for reflection on the main issues arising from the development of Robotics, namely ethical, legal and societal issues
- the creation of Living Labs, areas/spaces in the city where it will be possible to live with and interact with robots
- the creation of an incubator for Robotics, to act as a support structure and boost the sector
With the Lisboa Robotics project, the city wants to accompany and be prepared for the inevitable development of the robotics sector and the changes it will entail in the near future.