From responding to climate change and providing affordable housing, to developing new technologies, European cities face a future that demands bold and continuous innovation. But how well-equipped are city governments to meet these challenges?
A new report written by LSE Cities, in partnership with Eurocities and Bloomberg Philanthropies, sheds light on this critical question, offering fresh insights into how cities can build and sustain their capacity for public innovation.
The report – Public Innovation: Building Capacity in Europe’s City governments – was recently launched at a high-profile meeting of MEPs, city leaders and innovation experts at the European Parliament in Brussels.
Based on a Eurocities Pulse Survey of 65 chief innovation officers in cities and seven in-depth city case studies, the report highlights a growing recognition among city governments of the importance of innovation capacity. This is the set of skills, structures and systems that enable cities to develop and implement new ideas.
To explore the report’s findings, we spoke with one of its main authors, Ben Rogers, Bloomberg Distinguished Fellow in Government Innovation, at LSE Cities. Ben shared his reflections on what it takes to build innovation capacity in city governments, where progress is being made, and how cities are rethinking the way they innovate.
Could you tell us what government innovation capacity is and why it is important to promote this in city governments?
So, we all know that European cities are going to need to innovate to meet the big challenges ahead, whether it’s climate change or disruptive technology, or creating more affordable housing, or tackling congestion and air pollution. And innovation capacity is the set of capabilities that a city hall needs if it’s going to be able to innovate.
You need leaders both elected and appointed who are champions of innovation
It is this stuff, in the workshop, which actually builds up their muscles and means that they can turn their capabilities to addressing innovation challenges as they appear.
And we identified four key capabilities that you need. You need leaders both elected and appointed who are champions of innovation. You need partnership capabilities, abilities to work with other partners outside of city hall.
You need analytic capabilities, data research, evaluation, and you need a set of core organisational capabilities. So you need sustained funding. You need expertise in city hall, and you need structures in city hall, which can promote and facilitate innovation.
Could you share some of the report’s findings and takeaways?
I think the headline is European cities increasingly understand the value of building up their innovation capacity, and they’re investing in it. They’re doing well in relation to leadership.
European mayors get the value of it. They’re doing well in terms of their partnership capabilities, that they find it easy to partner with citizens, with business groups, with civic groups. And they’re strong on analytic capabilities and especially data.
Where they really do struggle more is those core organisational capabilities. So, we heard from innovation officers that we surveyed say that they don’t have sustained long-term funding for their work. They often find it hard to recruit people with the right innovation skills. They haven’t yet created a sort of innovation culture in their organisations where the default is to welcome new ideas rather than to reject them.
So, I think that’s where they’ve got to do most work.
This report builds on the Eurocities Pulse Mayors Survey 2024. Can you tell us the most striking differences in government innovation in different parts of the EU?
City Innovation officers say that they don't have sustained long-term funding for their work
Across the board, we got a good response rate from every region in Europe. And I would say the similarities are more striking than the differences.
But one difference is when we ask people what’s holding back their organisational capabilities. In Northern and Western Europe, they identified the fact there wasn’t always strong support from the top of their organisation.
In Eastern Europe, they talk about lack of funding. In Southern Europe, they talked about rigid rules which hamper recruitment and retention of innovation expertise. That’s the one broad pattern.
In terms of the case studies featured in the report, we were struck by the way in which some cities, Bologna is an example, are setting up independent innovation agencies.
Bologna has a set of civic innovation agencies. And that’s a way of getting around the strict recruitment and retention regulations. It’s a way of making partnership easier with universities, with civic groups, with business groups and with citizens.
And it’s not just Bologna, but other cities across Europe are now beginning to set up these independent agencies. And I think that’s a really interesting way forward.
The cooperation between Eurocities and LSE cities on this report is an example of what can be achieved through strong partnerships and links between city networks and universities. How do you think such co-operations can be nurtured?
I think this is a really exciting and active agenda. In the UK, the government and academic funding bodies are beginning to invest funding to support more partnership working between universities and regional, city and local governments.
I actually run an initiative – The London Research and Policy Partnership – which works to develop more strategic and structured collaboration between London’s Higher Education sector and London government. And at a European level, I know that Eurocities is supporting the City Science Initiative.
The challenge is that cities and universities have quite different cultures, and incentives, which can make working together hard. Academics can spend years on a project, while mayors expect results in months, if not weeks! And academics are rewarded for intellectual breakthroughs, while mayors want practical impact.
But there are various structures and processes than can help knit them together. In the UK, cities are experimenting with publishing ‘Areas of Research Interest’ which set out questions to which they want researchers to answer. We are seeing greater use of secondments between the two sectors, with academic researchers, for instance, joining city governments as ‘Policy Fellows’.
Ultimately, I would like to see cities given more influence over research funding, which would help ensure that this was directed to meeting urban priorities.
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Read the report ‘Public Innovation: Building Capacity in Europe’s City governments,’ written by LSE Cities, in partnership with Eurocities and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
