GIID analyzes how successful innovation districts are organized
How does Lund work with its innovation district? Lund University and Lund Municipality has commissioned Future by Lund and its partners to catalyze efforts to co-create Lund as an international innovation district. The work is done, among other things, to enable us in Lund to increase our capacity to solve complex and shared challenges. The work is based on a steering group consisting of Anders Almgren, Chairman of Lund Municipal Board, Pia Kinhult, ESS and Kristina Eneroth, Vice Rector at Lund University.
In an innovation district (ID), it is the sum of different activities and how they work together that matters. In Lund there are several science parks, such as Medicon Village, Ideon Science Park and Science Village, a highly ranked university, the major research facilities MAX IV and (soon) ACES, a municipality that works with climate neutrality and many both small and large companies. There is deep specialization and knowledge in the city. In order to further sharpen Lund's innovation district, it is necessary to find cross-connections between the different activities and to locate where there are gaps and how to fill them. In this work, the analysis and experience of GIID and its network of around forty cities around the world will be important.
In a new report, Julie Wagner points out, GIID, that there are three models for how innovation districts around the world organize their stakeholders in: the three are called Mission-driven formal entities, Formal alliances and Informal partnerships and 'organized teams'.
Peter Kisch is Head of Operations at Future by Lund, which catalyzes Lund's work with innovation districts. How is Lund Innovation District organized?
“I would say that at the moment we are an example of the third form, the informal partnership. We are a looser composite district that at the moment is building knowledge but in the long term I can see that our organization can become more formal. Many other IDs have started with an informal organization where you build up what you have. At Future by Lund, we have been working on a model for multistakeholder governance for many years, and we bring this experience to our work with innovation districts.
Katarina Scott is a project developer in Future by Lund and has been working with innovation districts since 2018.
- In Lund, it is not one operator that owns everything, but the innovation district consists of many actors with a shared ownership. Lund Municipality, Region Skåne and Lund University are major players but still cannot decide over private property owners and companies, and the same applies, of course, on the contrary. We need to find a model that allows us all to work together.
In her research report, Julie Wagner also points out how different strategies can strengthen the value proposition in an innovation district. This could include making strategic investments to strengthen research and development, designing support to help start-ups and scale-ups, and making plans for how to share expensive innovation infrastructure, but also how to attract, retain and develop talent and systematically strengthen gender equality and inclusion.
- Innovation districts are not a marketing activity but a way to create growth by systematically working together between innovation actors, says Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth, CEO of Future by Lund. The challenge is to optimise the interaction between hard factors (test beds, facilities and buildings) and soft factors (people, capital and ideas), also taking into account that we work to combine public and private activities. (public/private)