This document introduces CITIE, a framework for assessing how well cities support innovation and entrepreneurship. It does this through three dimensions: openness, infrastructure, and leadership. Cities are benchmarked against nine policy roles and grouped into four tiers based on their performance: experimenters, builders, challengers, and front runners. The document provides examples of best practices from cities around the world and poses discussion questions about procurement, data use, and keeping open data portals active.
2. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Innovation and entrepreneurship are playing an increasingly vital role in the economic
fortunes of cities
Growth is unevenly distributed
towards young, high-growth
companies, and vibrant tech
sectors are often the epicentre of
this new growth
Innovative high-growth companies
are creating the skills and ideas
that cities will need to compete in
an increasingly digital global
economy
A new breed of companies are
reshaping the way people interact
with the city around them. A healthy
start-up ecosystem is important for a
city government’s ability to solve
local problems
HIGH-GROWTH
COMPANIES
JOBS OF
TOMORROW
SOLVING COMPLEX
URBAN PROBLEMS
3. CITIE FRAMEWORK
A city’s influence on innovation and entrepreneurship is characterised by three dimensions
OPENNESS INFRASTRUCTURE LEADERSHIP
How open is the city to new ideas and
businesses?
How does the city optimise the city’s
infrastructure for high growth SMEs?
How does the city build innovation
into its own activities?
5. FRAMING THE THREE DIMENSIONS
Three dimensions characterise a city’s ability to influence innovation and entrepreneurship
6. ANCHORING THE POLICY ROLES
Nine policy roles anchor the framework and analysis on a city’s influencing power
7. ASSESSING THE POLICY LEVERS
A series of policy levers are used to assess the performance of a city against each policy role
8. CITY AS CUSTOMER
Is procurement accessible to new businesses, and does it actively seek out innovation?
OPEN AND ACCESSIBLE PROCUREMENT
PROCUREMENT AS A LEVER
FOR INNOVATION
1
Ensure the visibility of
procurement
opportunities through a
single portal
2
Ensure that pre-
qualifying requirements
are achievable by new
businesses
3
Define targets for
spends on new
businesses
4
Use problem-based
procurement methods
5
Use open innovation
methods to engage the
ecosystem
11. CITY BENCHMARKING ANALYSIS
City’s performances against the CITIE framework tends to cluster into four stages
EXPERIMENTERS BUILDERS
CHALLENGERS FRONT RUNNERS
12. Builder cities have begun to
actively incorporate
innovation and
entrepreneurship into their
policy development.
These cities are in a stage of
rapid transition, actively
investigating policies to
enhance their budding
ecosystems.
CITY PEER GROUPS
Experimenters Builders Challengers Front Runners
Experimenter cities have yet to
take decisive action to
prioritise innovation and
entrepreneurship, evident
across City as Advocate, City
as Investor and City as
Strategist policy roles.
Siloed instances of good
practice signal an emergent
desire to test new approaches.
Challengers are ambitious
and dynamic cities riding a
wave of technology-enabled
growth.
They are usually following a
published growth strategy
that embeds innovation and
entrepreneurship across a
range of policy roles.
We have clustered our 40 cities into four different groups based on their overall scores. These peer groups
articulate a journey through performance and cluster together cities at a similar stage of maturity.
Front Runners tend to be
global cities building on the
foundations of well-
established innovation
practices and mature
entrepreneurial ecosystems.
These cities show maturity
across all policy levers and
are redesigning even the
most complex of systems
22. • How can cities ensure the visibility of
procurement opportunities?
• What concrete initiatives can cities create
to ensure tenders are achievable to small,
new businesses?
• What could “problem-based procurement
methods” look like? Give some concrete
examples
• What types of data do you think would
benefit the city and its citizens?
• Who is responsible for using data
to improve city services? Citizens, city
governments, start-ups, big corporations
etc.?
• How can city governments ensure that open
data portals do not end up as ‘data
graveyards’?
BREAKOUT SESSION AND FEEDBACK
15 MINUTES
CITY AS CUSTOMER CITY AS DATAVORE