SASCHA HASELMAYER AND CARINA LOPES CITYMART GERMANY, ASHOKA FELLOW 2011 http://www.citymart.com/ https://www.ashoka.org/fellow/sascha-haselmayer
PROBLEM Five percent of the world’s economy is tied up in procurements by local city governments. Most of the times, cities ask businesses and the citizen sector to transform and innovate, but do not include any changes within their governance and operations to improve transparency. The marketplace between innovations and the cities that need them is murky. There are few clear channels for learning about new innovations, or clear paths to procure and implement them, either because of lack of political will, or proven examples to encourage adoption. Meanwhile, cites are under financial pressure and need to source low-cost systems solutions regardless of where they come from.
IMPACT Through 99 Challenges published by cities through Citymart, they have discovered more than 10.000 new solutions, eliminated re-inventions and scaled proven urban and social innovations across cities around the world. Today, 7.5 Million citizens benefit from solutions delivered 3x faster through Citymart– with 33 Million benefiting indirectly.
SOLUTION Citymart offers a unique set of services to enable cities to identify, evaluate, and adopt game-changing solutions, which contribute to the creation of more sustainable, resilient, entrepreneurial and responsive communities. Citymart helps city governments to become more open, agile and empathic by opening their procurement processes to be impact focused and invest less public resources to greater societal effect. For example, through the “Procurement by challenge” methodology and the Procurement 2.0 Platform, Citymart provides complete market insight about available solutions, gives access to start-ups and small businesses to contracting opportunities, and avoids the re-invention of services at high cost in time and money by sourcing solutions available elsewhere. Citymart partners with the city to build internal evidence on the impact of the methodology in the city, and to inspire and support (through institutional capacity building) broader subsequent policy and organizational changes. The partnership involves sharing risk for larger impact and includes the implementation of a number of challenges to begin opening up procurement and introduce the methods of challenges to pilot or procure solutions for the community. A series of preparation activities are usually foreseen, such as roadshows and meetups with local start-ups, innovators and business to identify problems, needs and opportunities suitable for challenges.
Every dollar procured through Citymart on average is expected to deliver a ROI of 200% - in cost savings, transformative solutions, avoided re-inventions and local job creation / entrepreneurship.
VISION Sascha’s vision is to spread innovation into cities by strengthening their innovation capacity, improve governance by sharing methods and solutions to engage communities, and radically alter the way cities deliver much-needed services. In addition to the various services offered, Citymart leads #citiesshare alliance, a global movement promoting a more agile approach to problem-solving in cities and the sharing of solutions and methods among cities, including more than 82 cities and a growing number of supporting organizations and businesses such as the Knight Foundation, Bloomberg Philantropies, Nesta, the Future Cities Catapult, the 100 Resilient Cities Initiative etc.
ROADMAP SASCHA HASELMAYER
With the support of