First CatLabs Innovation Camp

Digital technologies, such as Internet, have acted as pioneers in open innovation models, enabling the direct involvement of users and generating a cross-cutting impact on society as a whole.

RIS3 strategies are based on open innovation models in which, besides companies, research and innovation stakeholders and public administrations, ordinary citizens, as the main beneficiaries and users of innovations, should also be present. This is a particularly important point in a context in which new responses to the major economic, social and environmental challenges necessarily entail changes in behaviour patterns at both individual and societal scale. 

Accordingly, implementing RIS3 strategies requires a step up from a triple-helix model (based on interaction between research and innovation stakeholders, the public administrations and companies) to a quadruple-helix innovation model in which ICT is the basic enabling technology and which includes users of products and services, placing them at the centre of the innovation process. In the quadruple-helix innovation model promoted by RIS3 strategies, the public administration is called on to play an active, cooperative role in innovation processes.

The public administration should innovate in order to achieve the goals of:

• Reinventing public services in order to provide a better, more efficient and effective response to social needs and guarantee the sustainability of the welfare state.

• Developing new ways in which individuals and organisations can cooperate to co-create public policies and solutions that respond to the complex problems which face our society today.

Within this context, the project to promote innovation camps provides a response to the objective of increasing collaborative digital social innovation aimed at resolving societal challenges. Achieving this objective will entail:

• Increasing the involvement of universities, secondary schools, vocational training colleges, technology and research centres and innovation stakeholders in tackling challenges that face the territory and citizens, and

• Ensuring that this involvement translates into innovative actions that provide a response to the challenges faced by Catalan society.

The main actions in this project revolve around:

1. Designing, testing and systemising co-creation methodologies, in cooperation with the European Commission, in order to increase the participation of quadruple helix stakeholders in designing both public policies and collective actions aimed at responding to societal challenges.

2. Fostering training and promotion actions to ensure that these methodologies become a habitually-used tool in designing and implementing actions aimed at responding to societal challenges.

3. Promoting a digital portal to launch challenges, gather ideas and identify active stakeholders in territories in order to organise innovation camps.

It is within this framework that the first CatLabs innovation camp will be organised. This initiative is jointly promoted by the Government of Catalonia in cooperation with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.