Managing Open Innovation in Urban Labs

Urban labs are open innovation ecosystems, i.e. places, either promoted by companies or local institutions or spontaneously established by active citizens, wherein the current problems and challenges associated with a city are discussed and possibly innovative solutions are designed and implemented. Urban labs usually face complexity in managing the contributions of several heterogeneous actors. The paper presents the Urban Lab Methodology (ULM), which supports the management of urban labs by integrating Soft System Methodology with an open innovation framework previously developed by the authors. The former is a methodology to facilitate the structuration and solution of complex problems involving different stakeholders, whereas the latter aims at suggesting an association between the innovation context and the open innovation practices to be adopted. ULM is used to analyze the case study of Manifesto della Citta Vecchia e del Mare (“The Old Town and Sea Manifesto”), a urban lab created in Taranto (Italy) in 2014. The analysis shows that theoretical prescriptions are to a great extent coherent with the real course of action and ULM is relatively easy to be adopted.