City Labs: Supporting eco-innovation and entrepreneurship through best practice exchange and cooperation

This paper explores how a series of City Labs, run under the auspices of the Know-Eco project, a District + sub-project, aimed to support entrepreneurship and good practice transfer in eco-innovation in the construction and mobility sectors. The Know-Eco project was led by Coventry University Enterprises Limited and funded partly by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), in the framework of INTERREG IVC. The City Labs drew on a range of best practices demonstrated by partners across four regions: West Midlands (UK); Lower Silesia (Poland); Saxony-Anhalt (Germany), and Tuscany (Italy). The Know-Eco City Labs, as a form of Living Lab, brought together entrepreneurs and the innovators of products, services, technologies and approaches in mobility and construction with policymakers and those developing regional strategy. The aim of the Labs was not just to highlight examples of good practice and innovation, but to improve the effectiveness of regional strategy development and implementation. The City Labs enabled each partner to demonstrate their regional strengths and to discuss their strategy for smart specialisation. Over the series of City Labs it was possible to identify synergies and differences in regional approaches to common problems. This paper will describe the overall City Lab approach and rationale; it will highlight the benefits and limitations of the approach and provide a specific example of a City Lab by focusing on Coventry in the West Midlands of England as a case in point.