Consortium – UCITYLAB

The UCITYLAB Consortium

The project partnership consists of 5 organisations from 5 countries, each with a direct interest in using the project’s output to further their engagement with the cities they are located. Made up of prominent public higher education institutions in the cities of Porto, Ljubljana, Barcelona, and Paris, and supported with the leading Europe-wide network organisation University Industry Innovation Network (UIIN), the consortium brings valuable knowledge and network links that will contribute significantly to the project aims.

The partner HEIs are selected among the cities that already have an integrated urban renewal strategy, and who work towards addressing various environmental, economic, and social challenges. All the partners involved in the project strategically position their responsibilities towards sustainable urban development and promotion of social entrepreneurship in the city and region in their mission/vision and respective activities.

Roles and Responsibilities

Porto Business School (PBS)

The Porto Business School is the coordinating institution of the UniverCity Action Lab project, for its expertise in entrepreneurship, and design and delivery of innovative educational curriculums. The school is set up as an association of 36 large business organizations and the University of Porto with the mission to improve the quality of management through advanced education at postgraduate level, custom programs for organizations, start-up acceleration projects, corporate partnerships, applied research and consultancy. In addition to their Project Management responsibilities, PBS takes part in the development and pilot implementation of the outputs, as well as overseeing activities pertaining to Quality and Evaluation, Dissemination, and Sustainability of the project.

The institution strongly believes in order to truly co-create new solutions for the cities, technology centres and incubators should be included in the conversations with urban stakeholders, to support startups and spin-off creation or to organise new open innovation challenges.

IRI - UL

Innovation Development Institute of the University of Ljubljana (IRI UL) takes the lead in the preparation of the intellectual output (IO) UCITYLAB Challenge Teaching Toolkit. The institute is a joint venture between the University of Ljubljana (UL) and ten major Slovenian companies as a non-profit research and development institute with a mission to initiate the creation/attainment, transfer, distribution and application of knowledge, to promote the integration of the innovation triangle (research – education – innovation) by transferring research results into practice and commercial exploitation.

The tasks of the institute comprise conceptualisation of the UCITYLAB Challenge course programme model, preparation of the draft programme and materials, collection of stakeholder feedback, and finalisation of the Toolkit. The IRI – UL team has extensive experience in the development of educational programmes and curricula that are relevant and meet the needs of individuals and society, and in equipping graduates with the right skills and mind-sets for the labour market.

Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)

Autonomous University of Barcelona leads the development of the Intellectual Output (IO) UCITYLAB Network, during which 4 network communities are launched by the partner HEIs in their cities (Porto, Ljubljana, Barcelona, Paris) with the involvement of representatives including, but not limited to public authorities, NGOs, HEIs, smart and sustainable city initiatives, urban development units.

The UAB is participating in the European Network of Living Labs (ENOLL) since 2014 with the Smart Campus Living Lab UAB and since 2015 with the Library Living Lab. Its participation in ENOLL has served as a driving force to transfer living lab methodologies in the university and integrate it in the core of its Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) policies. UAB have been involved in the concept of City Labs that have enacted a series of such labs with adjacent municipalities and institutions, which is a result of their vested interest in exchanging experiences, learning and standardising the knowledge produced in methodological and tangible outputs.

Institut Mines-Télécom Business School

Institut Mines-Télécom Business School (IMTBS) leads the development of the Intellectual Output (IO) UCITYLAB Status-Quo Report & Collection of Good Practices. As part of the IO, IMTBS team will design the research methodology and prepare the final status-quo and good practices report in collaboration with all partners.

In acknowledgement of its multi-disciplinary research capabilities in the area of the digital economy and the information society, TEM has received in excess of €1 million from the French public investment programme, Investissement d’Avenir (Investments in the Future), for the period 2013-16. TEM is the lead institution for two interdisciplinary projects – on Big Data and Cloud Computing – that also include a number of French engineering schools and a range of industry partners of different sizes. Since 2011, the school has also managed a two research chair entirely funded by business in the areas of Social Networks and the Internet of Things.

UIIN

UIIN will be responsible for the launch and operation of the UCITYLAB Online Portal (IO5), and dissemination and exploitation of the project results. With access to key contacts in academia and industry, and with various distribution channels reaching a large variety of European stakeholders, UIIN will ensure that the value created will also be exploited. Key activities of UIIN include planning (e.g. dissemination, exploitation, and sustainability plan), preparation (e.g. corporate design, promotional material and further extension of existing contact databases) and implementation activities (e.g. communication, events agreements). UIIN will bring their unique experience and broad networks to support the launch of UCITYLAB Networks in partner HEI regions.

Given their proven expertise in the development and dissemination of case study reports for European Commission funded Projects, UIIN will collaborate with Porto Business School with the results of the Teaching Toolkit Implementation, to design 5 good practice case studies, both in the written and in video format, to be published in the online media platforms.