What do the world's most innovative cities -- from London, to Helsinki, and Seoul to Amsterdam -- have in common? Each has a uniquely local spirit, but has developed an entrepreneurial edge compared to global peers.
Is it the amount of money they invest in local startups, how they regulate new business models or how they use data to govern? New research published by innovation charity Nesta, Accenture and the Future Cities Catapult may have some answers. "We set out to measure the quality of the policy environment -- how well city governments are supporting the growth of a tech community," says John Gibson, study co-author and Director of Government Innovation at Nesta.
The research team evalsuated 40 city governments and crunched 1,400 data points. Their big goal: to help policymakers make entrepreneurs' lives easier. According to their report, the top performing cities are New York, London and Helsinki. "Helsinki came as a surprise," Gibson says. One of the most unique innovations the city has is an Uber-like mobility-on-demand strategy so wherever you are in the city centre, it delivers you the ideal route by converging all public and private transport options, and even deviating bus routes around you.
Amsterdam, which was fifth on the list, was another pleasant surprise, according to Gibson. "They have city-sponsored smart districts, co-working locationss and investment funds. The government just launched their Startup Amsterdam strategy to promote the community globally," he says.
Once the data was crunched, the report clustered the 40 cities into four tiers of performance, based on their shared characteristics and their overall profiles. In the bottom tier are the ‘Experimenters' -- cities like Jakarta, Istanbul and Nairobi which are still testing the waters with new e-government strategies, like Jakarta's mobiles reporting app for citizens' complaints. In the top tier, or Front Runners, London came in behind New York, because it hasn't integrated an entrepreneurial element into leadership yet -- "It doesn't have an innovation team in city hall or a Chief Technology Officer, like many North American cities," Gibson says. "Also, where London put in £1.5m into digital skills education, New York's mayor De Blasio committed $70m." London was however, the first to get its act together for open data, which led directly to the founding of startups like Citymapper, which adapted the data into a business model. "Citymapper built a product that allows you to navigate city transport, and is now in 20 different cities. There's a lovely cause and effect there," Gibson says. Neil Rimer, cofounder of investment firm Index Ventures, who wasn't involved in the research, thinks the report will have a practical impact.
They have also built an interactive ‘diagnostic tool' that city policymakers can use to play around with the data. Choose any city that you're interested in, and the tool builds up its profile, showing you its performance on a policy-by-policy basis. "So you can say show me how I compare to cities in my region, or those that have a similar budget or the same population as me," says Gibson. "Ultimately we want this to be genuinely useful for policymakers, and to bring to light the most innovative ideas from cities around the world."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
