Digitalisation and Future Challenges in Rural Areas: An Open Innovation based Research

In 2018, the revision of world urbanisation prospects report published by United Nations predicts the global scenario of growing megacities and the accompanying decline in rural populations. This development will profoundly change life especially in rural areas. As a result of research on the central experiences of the practice-oriented “Digital Black Forest” project, this publication addresses the future challenges in rural areas with a focus on local supply, health-related care and residential mobility. The project, promoted by the initiative “digitale Zukunftskommune@bw”, used an open innovation-based research to gather the views of around 500 rural residents in the German Northern Black Forest region. In this context, the project also examines potential approaches to the aforementioned challenges, which are based primarily on new technologies that have been established in the context of the ongoing digital transformation. This paper outlines the scientific exploitation of the results from the “Digital Black Forest” project, aiming to face future challenges in rural areas through approaches to digitalisation.