1. • Strong SME’s, hackers’, coders
• Business Accelerators
• Innovation Intermediaries
• EU Projects
• Open minded City Government
• Participatory citizens
• Grassroots organizations
Amsterdam
Rich Civic Innovation Ecosystem

2. Ecosystem Amsterdam I
Culture
Creative Industries driven, organic
small medieval city, collaborating is
easy.
Players are to-the-point, direct, mostly
non-political
Short lines between stakeholders
Policy
Feedback loops from civil society &
companies do exist.
Keen eye for bottom-up
development, and connecting to
bottom-up developers
• Policy mindset is favourable to
novelty and innovation.
International outlook: competing
all the time to be on lists…

3. Knowledge institutes
Developer hubs
Accelerators
Innovation labs

4. Ecosystem Amsterdam II
Support
Available:
Non-governmental institutions
Foundations
Funding agencies
Accelerators
Civil society groups
Over 60 innovation hubs
Informal culture, which makes
professionals easy to access
The internet, business & financial
support structures are well developed
Markets
Vibrant creative design hub
Lots of startups, large companies
(Bookking.com, Philips, Shell)
Lots of business clubs, networking
agencies
Openness to disruptive innovation
(Uber, AirBNB)
No Silicon Valley start-up culture

5. Enabler1-EU projects, network, real-time experiments, access to novel technologies, ENOLL living labs
Enabler2-Amsterdam Economic Board: PPP’s, business community, experiences from pilots

6. Ecosystem Amsterdam III
Human Capital
Huge pool of local talent, many
foreigners.
Short ties to educational & research
institutions. But formal institutions like
their bubbel.
Entrepreneurship skills & mindset
starting to become better. Not good
enough right now.
Finance
Government invests in accelerators
Crowd-funding available. Models are
still untested.
Funding for collaborations between
universities and companies
Tax reduction in innovation and for
start-ups
European funding for start-ups and
large integrated projects. Bu: red
tape is very complicated.

7. Learnings
It is not about hardware or software, it is about people. Identify
them and empower them.
Bind partners with projects and events.
Create simultaneous values for citizens, business, academia &
government (quadruple).
It takes time but there is allways a way…

8. VALUE

9. • Neutral, non-profit space to gather and
think outside of the box
• Human centered co-creation practice
• Communities of users and civil society
• Design Thinking & Design Doing
• Bringing art & culture into innovation
• Extensive network / ecosystem
• Hands-on technology knowledge
• International scouting of new ideas

10. Health Living Lab

11. What design can do?
• Retain a focus on the user / citizen
• Give a structure for being creative about
problem-solving
• Test iterations of possible solutions in
order to learn more about the problem
• Identify new, more relevant ideas and
services and steward them through delivery
• Engage users (citizens and employees) in
the design of change.
Design Council, UK: Restarting Britain