Creating and Enabling Ecosystems for Open Innovation: Challenges and How to Cope with Them

Cities, like other ecosystems, are changing and evolving at a growing pace. Therefore, innovation has become a critical success factor in the creation of ‘smart cities’. A smart city is one that uses technology as a platform to serve its citizens’ needs and foster innovative processes that enhance their quality of life. In this chapter, the authors present two case studies of urban open innovation processes in, respectively, Haifa in Israel and Bremerhaven in Germany, which demonstrate the engagement of all stakeholders, motivated by passion, altruism and the desire to cooperate. The first case concerns open innovation with the young, and the second open innovation with the elderly. Both case studies demonstrate how passion led to altruism which encouraged citizens to volunteer to contribute and co-create a better future for all the city’s residents by enabling better communication among stakeholders in the context of a complex urban environment.