Opportunity to Foster Urban Innovation Through Universities: The Case of Madrid

How can universities be more effective in addressing complex real-world problems? How can they promote sustainable transformations in cities? Literature shows that not only disciplinary expertise is needed, but also the ability to deal with systemic problems involving a diversity of stakeholders, with varying levels of power to design and implement solutions. It is imperative for the higher education institutions to interact with a range of actors, inside and outside the academic community, and to take into account diverse mental frameworks, languages, cultures, and interests. The Innovation and Technology for Development Centre at the Technical University of Madrid (itdUPM) has successfully managed to create a multidisciplinary collaborative network of internal and external professionals to promote action research and education for sustainable development. One of the ongoing interdisciplinary projects is a living lab (PlatformA) designed in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI) and MIT Climate CoLab to foster sustainable innovation in the city of Madrid. Through the fostering and sharing of processes between public and private stakeholders, PlatformA takes an innovative approach with the ultimate hope that it will boost a novel multi-actor partnership towards sustainable transformations and the Global 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and its accompanying 17 sustainable development goals.