Our smart and sustainable community programmes are long-term research and development partnerships between BJØRK Innovation and municipalities.
Over a three-year period, we work together to build knowledge, strengthen innovation capacity and establish a portfolio of research and innovation projects addressing locally identified societal challenges.
The programmes bring together municipal organisations, academia, businesses and citizens. External research and innovation funding is used to expand the collaboration and turn promising initiatives into larger R&D projects.
Our approach to innovation and collaboration is completely aligned with the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities.
The program includes our proven and systematic methodology to bring concrete solutions to local challenges.
The EU Missions focus on impact by putting research and innovation into a new role, combined with new forms of governance and collaboration, as well as by engaging citizens.
We are also implementing Twin Transition in practice – using digitalization to accelerate local green transition.
Our systematic innovation model consists of the following tools and enablers:
Our role in the program is to be the neutral program manager who orchestrates the community stakeholders and drives the innovation process towards concrete results. This is always carried out in close collaboration with municipality leaders.
Innovation management involves the process of managing an organization’s innovation procedure, from idea to reality, from projects to long term implementations and from pilots to full scale products and services.
Collaboration across sectors is key and we know that every community has its own ways, cultures and methods to collaborate between stakeholders.
Our role here is to help increase cross-sector collaboration, both between internal departments and with external organisations.
The goal is to establish new ways of working togehter and new arenas, digital and physical, where we allow co-creation and innovation to grow.
We have long experience from both Norwegian and Swedish funding mechanisms as well as Nordic and EU funding programs.
In earlier positions, we have participated in and initiated more than 175 innovation and research projects in quadruple helix collaboration together with municipalities, ports and energy companies.
The programs themselves are also under constant development in collaboration with each new municipality. In this way we are constantly developing our methodology and process.
The local project portfolio is developed through a co-creation process including all the program stakeholders.
The projects are prioritized by how well they fulfil the program objectives: create better services for inhabitants, create new local jobs, cut costs for the municipality.
The projects are managed by partners in the program, or external project managers, and shall deliver operative, hands-on results like products and services for the inhabitants.
The projects should align with municipal plans and strategies, or activities initiated by the local businesses, and always provide value for the community.
We participate in national and international research & innovation projects.
We are developing a concept for smart water products and services for inhabitants.
Study visits for municipality leaders to exciting smart city destinations in the Nordics.
We’re developing new models and infrastructure for reusable and interoperable public digital services across Europe.
We collaborate with municipalities, public organisations, research environments and businesses in Sweden, Norway and across Europe.