Favouring Open Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Urban Sustainability Transitions: The U-SOLVE Approach

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-469-3_27How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Urban; Open Social Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Sustainability; Co-Creation

Abstract

Innovation and entrepreneurship approaches, typically designed to serve economic development and corporate ambitions, can be adopted and repurposed for driving communities towards sustainable and inclusive growth. Recognising this as well as the pressing need for change and the obligation to solve a myriad of urban challenges, U-SOLVE (a project supported by the European Neighbourhood Initiative) seeks to stimulate cities and their stakeholders to co-create a future that is sustainable for people, the environment, and that is based on circularity and redistribution of resources. Open Social Innovation approaches, materialised through entrepreneurial activities and advocating for creative and cultural solutions, are chosen with the purpose to bring positive urban transformation and break through unfavourable locked-in sociotechnical systems. Measuring the impact of such an approach and simultaneously ensuring that it is pragmatic, flexible and scalable, this is achieved by utilising the Doughnut Economy – a transformative approach that promotes social development under the ceiling of planetary ecological limits. Recognising the multidimensionality of sustainability transitions, multi-actor co-creation processes are activated to boost the implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in urban contexts, seeking for the appropriate orientation of innovative technologies and business models proposed by start-ups and entrepreneurs from creative and cultural sectors, specifically addressing the priorities expressed by local actors. The developed approach aims to highlight human capital as the critical asset for thriving communities, as well as embed the creative economy into the development of business solutions that have the power to influence behaviours, meet social needs and encourage the success of urban sustainable interventions.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Fabio Maria Montagnino
AU  - Anixi Antonakoudi
AU  - Constantinos Kritiotis
AU  - Danae Pantelide
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/08/26
TI  - Favouring Open Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Urban Sustainability Transitions: The U-SOLVE Approach
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Nature for Innovative and Inclusive Urban Regeneration (NATiURB 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 345
EP  - 356
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-469-3_27
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-469-3_27
ID  - Montagnino2024
ER  -