Innovation as a collective challenge
The project is currently in the strategic plan development phase.
From the outset of the strategy creation process, there was a consensus on the need for a strong collaborative methodology and its permanent monitoring by the eighteen AML municipalities so that, together, a robust collective challenge could be built, capable of creating a purpose for the region that would leverage new development dynamics.
In the methodological process, three dimensions of analysis stand out - municipalities, experts and relevant documentation at international, national and regional scales - and a set of information was produced as a result of four sessions of listening to experts from a diverse panel of around twenty specialists in the field of social, technological and cultural innovation, among others. Present were the co-founder of Experimenta Design, Guta Moura Guedes, the professor and researcher at the ICS and the Observatory of the Metropolis of Brazil, João Seixas, the professor at the University of Minho and specialist in the field of organizational innovation, Jorge Coelho, the "Business Angel", José Lopes Costa, the CEO of Startup Lisboa - Miguel Fontes, and various agencies, commissions and institutes, such as the CCDR_LVT, the National Innovation Agency or the Portugal Digital Mission Structure.
The central aim of these sessions was to think about and debate the Lisbon metropolitan area as a whole, discussing what is unique about the region and exploring possible and innovative intersections between the region's symbolic capital and science and technology-based knowledge, as well as understanding the role of the various agencies and associations and their articulation with public policies at various scales (European, national and regional).
There were also seven workshops to stimulate creativity and the generation of ideas, attended by around eighty employees from the eighteen municipalities, in various areas of innovation, with the aim of focusing on a disruptive methodology applied by NOVA/IMS to create a favorable context for creativity and the generation of ideas.
Today, in the form of a strategic plan, the information from this collaborative ecosystem involving a hundred players is being systematized, from which will emerge a set of proposals for exploring the concept of innovation as a tool for metropolitan competitive advantage, with a collectively built ambition, as well as a vision, respective strategic axes and recommendations.