Innovation and Creativity: Buenos Aires’s Collaborative Roundtables

Comments from the Technical Committee

Like many cities, Buenos Aires faced a wide range of bureaucratic barriers, including too many meetings of doubtful usefulness and confusing lines of initiative and accountability. So, the city decided to reform its governance system with a management initiative called “Collaborative Roundtables for Innovation and Creativity.” The central idea of these roundtables is to engage in frank dialogue between the municipality and its citizens and to stimulate imaginative and innovative actions by senior officials. The varied initiatives which emerged include “Schools of the Future” focused on robotics and 3D printers, an “Enterprise Academy” to deepen entrepreneurial potential, a “WiFi for Inclusion” initiative to close the technology gap for less affluent citizens, and a platform to unlock the potential of foreign market enterprises.

Background Information

Since the main challenge of the Roundtables is to use innovation to transform residents’ quality of life, the team set out five areas of intervention in a Roundtables Executive Summary , all part of the Government Plan for 2014:

•Educating for the 21st Century

•Entrepreneurs and Creative Ecosystems

•Innovating for Inclusion

•Intelligent Cities

•International Positioning

Goals of the Initiative

The Roundtables’ main goals are:

•To make innovation an economic engine

•To articulate advances in innovation that have social impact

•To ensure that innovation and creativity become a primary concern of the government for 2014

a)Keep becoming stronger in order to work more collaboratively and effectively

b)Establish a unique and reviewable plan of action

c)Increase participation by senior representatives

•To ensure that innovation and creativity become a priority in communications in 2014

•To position the City of Buenos Aires as a leader in innovation at a regional and global level.

Outcomes and Assessments

•Establish a cycle of meetings between the mayor, the chief of cabinet and senior officials of the government of Buenos Aires with referents and specialists in the field, and conduct visits to relevant places and institutions. The cycle should be successful as the meetings will provide many senior officials with innovative ideas, while the visits will inspire them by exposure to local innovations.

•Submit a newsletter to the mayor, the chief of cabinet and senior officials of the city government. The newsletter would be beneficial because it would nourish those officials with local and international news on innovation, affecting their views and words.

•Hold monthly meetings with the mayor, the chief of cabinet and senior officials of the city government. Results from these meetings will be very favorable because, considering that the Roundtables are not institutionalized, they supplement the meetings that the chief of cabinet holds monthly with each ministry.

•Maintain communication with the government team to turn innovation into one of the four pillars of government action.

Strengths of the Initiative and Innovation

Above all, the Roundtables were created because Buenos Aires is working towards becoming an innovative, entrepreneurial, creative, sustainable and inclusive city; and in this sense, it understands that there is no innovation without risk. However, in order to mitigate the risk, the Roundtables work on initiatives that strengthen collaboration and impact. The following list summarizes some of them:

•"Significant Learning": a program that leads to entrepreneurship learning, which means converting entrepreneurship into a mandatory subject to be taught in every public school in the city. The 2014 pilot test will feature 31 pioneering schools, the training of 800 teachers, 31 different school kits and a virtual classroom. By 2015, the initiative will be extended to all public schools in the city.

•"Program Your Future": This initiative seeks to create an ecosystem of developers through the "Code Academy" license, available to all students and with free access for all residents. Between February and December 2014, 200 informatics students will be trained, online courses will be offered to 4,000 students, classroom courses will be offered in 25 middle schools and the number of citizens enrolled in online courses will be around 5,000.

•"Accelerators and Seed Capital Fund Program": This program promotes the creation of organizations that provide funding, working spaces and mentoring to some selected enterprises in order to accelerate their growth. Between January and September 2014 it is expected to create five accelerators.

•"Creative Territory": In 2014 it aims to leverage the existence of 4,000 m² of physical space to promote collaborative work and provide the community with the necessary tools for the development of their professional projects, such as prototyping machines, office space and Internet. The granting of soft loans by City Bank, financing of the work or the operating costs and State concessions are some of the alternatives the Government is considering to encourage the creation of new spaces. More than 160 projects took place in 2013 in available space of 2,450 m² and created 501 jobs.

•"BA ID": It is a single digital identity for each resident in the city’s digital community. It aims to enroll one million users in twelve months.

•"City of Ideas": This is a tendering platform where any person can voluntarily post their ideas on how to solve different issues. The pilot test had the following results: over 5,000 taxi drivers were directly contacted, generating over 1,000 ideas (90 percent in hard copy and 10 percent via the web) in order to answer the question "How can we improve mobility in Buenos Aires?” Over 300 ideas came from college students who participated in workshops in their schools and thought about the question "What would you do in order to turn Buenos Aires in a more modern city?" Through an online eight-hour forum 500 registered users contributed ideas on how to increase urban sustainability. In addition, two events were held in the buffets of Communes 13 and 2, in which about 150 residents discussed how to improve communal living in the district. Finally, the general public was able to participate in the Night of Museums, when the Museum of Architecture offered a wall where citizens put more than 800 answers to the question "What would you do to turn Buenos Aires into a better place to live?”

•"En Todo Estás Vos Card": This is an integrative tool for new trade benefits, subsidies, access to cultural offerings and simplification of procedures. For 2014, 400,000 cards will be issued. It is expected to incorporate new benefits and to achieve total integration with the subway system.

•"Eco Bici": automatic withdrawal and return of bikes with 200 stations accessible through a mobile application and / or by using the "En Todo Estás Vos" card.