When conversations turn to innovation, the vocabulary is remarkably predictable. Artificial intelligence, startups, venture capital, smart cities and emerging technologies dominate the discussion, while urban innovation is often reduced to sensors, digital platforms and new infrastructure.

Yet some of the most meaningful innovations emerge without inventing anything at all.

Sometimes they begin by looking differently at what already exists.

The first edition of Night of the Churches, held in Cluj-Napoca this summer, offers a compelling example. More than 20,000 people visited eighteen places of worship belonging to six different religious denominations during a single evening.

Churches that many residents pass every day became spaces for guided tours, concerts, conversations, architectural discovery and community gatherings.

The event was widely covered as a cultural success. What received far less attention, however, was the innovation model behind it.

In a conversation following the event, Andi Daiszler, president of the Daisler Association and one of the project’s initiators, repeatedly returned to a simple idea: innovation is not necessarily about creating something new, but about recombining what already exists.

“We just took what we had here in Cluj, put it together, gave it another perspective and presented it differently.”

That sentence may be the most interesting takeaway from the entire project.

Rediscovering the invisible city

Cities accumulate assets over centuries. Historic buildings, public squares, industrial sites, inner courtyards and religious landmarks form layers of infrastructure that often become almost invisible to those who live alongside them. Familiarity breeds indifference.

Night of the Churches challenged that perception by treating religious heritage not merely as a collection of sacred buildings, but as part of the city’s cultural infrastructure.

The churches themselves were never the innovation.

The innovation was changing the relationship between citizens and places they thought they already knew.

This distinction matters because it shifts the conversation away from investment towards imagination. Rather than asking what a city should build next, the project asks a more provocative question: what existing assets are we failing to see?

Daiszler believes the same approach could extend far beyond churches.

A “Night of the Courtyards.” A “Night of the Factories.” Other overlooked places that already exist, waiting to be experienced differently.

“The potential is there,” he told me. “What is needed are the people willing to make it happen.”

Trust as civic infrastructure

If the physical infrastructure already existed, another form of infrastructure had to be built from scratch: trust.

Bringing together six religious denominations in a common initiative had never been attempted in Romania. Rather than approaching each community individually, the organisers first sought institutional legitimacy by asking the Prefect of Cluj to invite every recognised religious denomination to participate.

It was a strategic decision.

An invitation coming from a public institution carried a different weight than one coming from an NGO. The organisers recognised that credibility, in this context, was as important as creativity.

Only after that initial layer of trust was established could the real collaboration begin.

This may be one of the strongest lessons for founders, civic entrepreneurs and city makers alike. We often think of infrastructure as roads, buildings or digital networks. Yet projects involving multiple organisations frequently succeed or fail because of a less visible form of infrastructure: the ability to build confidence between partners who have never worked together before.

Innovation, in other words, is often social before it is technological.

Seeing beyond a building’s primary function

One idea from the interview stayed with me long after we finished talking.

“We look at a church only as a place for Sunday mass,” Daiszler said. “Just as we look at a car only as something that gets us from A to B.”

It is a simple observation, but it reveals a broader pattern in the way we think about cities.

Buildings become defined by a single purpose. Schools educate. Libraries lend books. Churches host religious services. Factories produce goods.

Urban innovation begins when those assumptions are challenged.

A church can also become a place for architecture, music, dialogue, exhibitions or simply curiosity. None of these new uses diminish its original purpose. Instead, they expand the ways in which citizens relate to it.

Perhaps the greatest untapped resource in many cities is not land or funding, but imagination.

Innovation without technological spectacle

One answer surprised me.

When I asked about the role of technology, Daiszler was unconvinced that the project needed more of it.

Night of the Churches, he argued, was never intended to be a showcase for digital experiences. Its value came precisely from face-to-face encounters, conversations and shared experiences inside physical spaces.

He was equally dismissive of another common assumption—that more resources automatically produce better innovation.

With unlimited funding, he suggested, the project might actually lose some of the creativity born from constraints.

It’s an uncomfortable idea in an era that often equates scale with success.

Yet many breakthrough civic initiatives begin with modest budgets and strong ideas rather than the other way around.

Communication that invited curiosity

Another understated strength of the project was the way it was communicated.

There were no grand promises or exaggerated claims. The organisers did not try to convince people to become more religious, nor did they present the event as an extraordinary spectacle.

Instead, they offered a simple invitation: come and rediscover your city.

That message attracted audiences well beyond traditional churchgoers. Curiosity—not ideology—became the common denominator.

It is a reminder that communication can shape participation as much as the programme itself does.

A broader lesson for cities

With a second edition already planned, Night of the Churches has the opportunity to evolve from a successful cultural event into a replicable model of civic innovation.

Its greatest achievement may not be the number of visitors it attracted, but the perspective it introduced: that cities do not always need new landmarks to become more vibrant. Sometimes they simply need new ways of experiencing the ones they already have.

If that idea encourages other communities to rethink their own overlooked assets—whether churches, inner courtyards, former industrial sites or public buildings—then the project’s most lasting legacy may not be the event itself, but the mindset it inspires.

The post What If Urban Innovation Isn’t About Building Something New? appeared first on Startups&TheCity.

Cluj-Napoca, Romania, is the first East European city to make it into the final stage of the contest for the European Capital of Innovation award, within the 2020 edition, along with eleven other cities from across the rest of Europe. The European Commission will announce the winner and the runners-up of the European Capital of Innovation 2020 contest at the European Research and Innovation Days taking place on 22-24 September 2020.

Cluj-Napoca (often referred to simply as Cluj) is the unofficial capital of Transylvania, Romania, and one of the most vibrant and cosmopolitan cities in Eastern Europe, a cultural center, an academic hub, and of one the most important innovation hubs of the country. Based on the software industry, Cluj-Napoca has developed tremendously in the last 15 years and nowadays is very active in terms of its startup ecosystem.

“The European Commission announcement reconfirms Cluj-Napoca as a city of innovation, focused on Research & Development, IT and on the use of smart city technology to increase the quality of life of all its citizens. You are not innovative, if you are not inclusive.”, said mayor of Cluj-Napoca, Emil Boc, upon the announcement.

Earlier this year, Cluj-Napoca decided to be one of the first cities to apply for the European Capital of Innovation award, as Mariya Gabriel, EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, launched the 2020 edition of the contest during the StartupCity conference held in Cluj-Napoca on the 5th of March. Shortly after the contest launch, the mayor of Cluj-Napoca, Emil Boc, announced that the city will apply for the title.

“The strengths of Cluj are those we have been talking about for a long time: the ecosystem and the partners who work together in this city. The IT companies played an extremely important role in the development of the city and continue to do so, but it’s the vision and leadership of the local public administration, and the team work of the universities and the research institutes that really makes the difference now. More than 4-5 years ago we have started to develop projects designed to bring innovation in all existing areas. Our plans for the next years, 2021-2027, refer to the development of the Transilvania Digital Innovation Hub, where the member clusters in the Cluster Consortium of Northern Transylvania and the universities of Cluj will be an active part. In a cross-sectoral approach, technology is also an enabler, the element that supports innovation in all the other areas of activity in our city and region”, said Bianca Muntean, Cluster Manager at Transilvania IT Cluster, one of the key players of Cluj-Napoca’s innovation ecosystem.

The finalists of this year’s edition of the European Capital of Innovation award are: Cluj-Napoca (Romania), Espoo (Finland), Ghent (Belgium), Groningen (The Netherlands), Helsingborg (Sweden), Leeuwarden (The Netherlands), Leuven (Belgium), Linz (Austria), Milano (Italy), Reykjavik (Iceland), Valencia (Spain) and Vienna (Austria).

A high-level jury of independent experts selected the 12 finalists by analyzing how cities use innovative solutions to respond to societal challenges, how they use such practices in the urban development process and how they engage broad local communities in decision-making.

“Innovation is key for cities to ensure a sustainable recovery after challenging times. When cities nurture innovation ecosystems so that innovation actors and citizens meet and collaborate, they boost their development and resilience. The sixth edition of the European Capital of Innovation Award is set to be another strong contest and will showcase the best innovative practices that drive European cities forward.”, said Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth.

Also known as iCapital, this annual prize is funded by Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation programme. It recognizes European cities that develop vibrant innovation ecosystems in order to address current public challenges and improve the lives of their citizens.

The prize awards six European cities in total. The first prize winner will join the community of previous European Capitals of Innovation – Barcelona, Amsterdam, Paris, Athens and Nantes. The winner city will receive the title of European Capital of Innovation 2020 as well as €1,000,000 to support its innovation activities and to enhance its capacity to connect individuals, public sector, academia, and businesses to deliver societal benefits for its communities. Five runners-up will get €100,000 each.

The post Cluj-Napoca, the first East European city to be shortlisted for European Capital of Innovation title, within the 2020 edition appeared first on Startups&TheCity.

In Amsterdam, it’s not just the City government, big companies and universities that are responsible for innovation, but also the smaller institutions and businesses, the social entrepreneurs, the neighborhood communities, and the bottom up movements of citizens who drive change. People in the city, collectively make the city in the most literal sense of the words. This creates a unique ecosystem of social and technological innovation characterized by inclusiveness and creativity.

Amsterdam’s Pakhuis de Zwijger was one of the partners who wrote the bid which won Amsterdam the Innovation Capital title. This unique cultural organization opened its doors in 2006 and has grown to be an independent platform for urban innovation, for and by the city of Amsterdam and its inhabitants. Pakhuis is a combination between a theater, creative industry and a place to ignite civic dialogue about important issues that should  be discussed in society.

For the last two years, Pakhuis de Zwijger organized the WeMakeThe.City festival, inviting people to Amsterdam to hear and live the story of the Amsterdam Approach. WeMakeThe.City is considered to be the largest city festival in Europe that celebrates urban life and working on important urban questions like: “How do we make better cities?”.

With the occasion of the second edition of WeMakeThe.City Festival, which took place between 17th – 23rd of June 2019, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Egbert Fransen, founder and director of Pakhuis de Zwijger.

Egbert, can you tell me a bit about you, your story, and why you founded Pakhuis de Zwijger?

Well, I did a lot of different things. I studied communications, and I worked for some years at KPMG, a consultancy firm. And after that, I started my own company, it was the combination of things in the domain of arts and culture on one side, and on the other side, it was about changes in big companies.

While having my company, I was also director of a big theater festival, in the North of Amsterdam. After doing more commercial, big projects for different companies, and at the same time arts and culture projects, I decided I wanted my own space in the city.

At that time, there was nothing here at Pakhuis, really nothing, it was only sand. And there was almost nothing between here and Central Station. It was really one flat place, a part of the old harbor, and some of the old warehouses were still there. The city was looking for somebody who had some ideas for transforming this place into a cultural space. So I said, “Okay, I will do this.” It took me quite a lot of years to transform it. But, I did. In 2006, we opened this building, with a new interior, with a new vibe,  with new ideas. 

We have now been here for 13 years, and built a platform in the city to address its urban challenges. I think we are the only one in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and actually I’ve never seen a place like this in the world. Yes, there are places that are centered around design, or architecture, or other  issues, but not the way we are doing it. Because we are really working with the issues, the challenges of the city, the people in the city, their needs, their daily life in cities, and we are working to develop solutions and ideas.

We’re focusing on the urban daily life of people working, living and entertaining in the city. And, we’re making a lot of programs, about 600 a year, within a broad palette of issues. It’s about mobility, it’s about smart digital, it’s about circularity, it’s about education in the city, and what kind of work are we doing in the future in cities. But it’s also about loneliness, debts of the people who cannot afford to pay for their house anymore, it’s about area development, it’s about almost everything. 

What we strive to do is to look from the perspective of the people who are living in this city. In the institutional world, in a municipality, things are usually looked at in silos, but we, as people living in cities, are not operating from silos. It’s our life. We are doing everything at the same time and meeting all of these issues together. We bring in a lot of people discuss, present, share, and co-create, etc., around all these issues. 

In addition, we are not only staying here, but we’re also going out into the City as well, and doing all kinds of things. We now have two other small places in the city, in completely different neighborhoods, because the people who are living there were not coming to the center. So we’ve decided we will go to them. Here in the central building, we’re looking at the whole city, we’re looking at the region, we’re looking at what’s going on in our country. But going into those two neighborhoods we are really connected to what’s going on there, with the children, with the elderly, with the disabled people, and with the local economy. 

We are looking at neighborhood economies as well as what is happening with the harbour.  The biggest concern is fossil fuel energy, and the goal is to turn it into a circular harbor.  Together with the city, we are bringing people in from other cities to discuss the idea of the circular harbour.

How come the city administration doesn’t do that for themselves?

Well, sometimes they do, but they are not so good in it, especially in relation to really doing things together, because they are top down orientated. The thing is, after working as Pakhuis for so many years, we know almost everybody in the city, and we know a lot of people at the municipality. But, we also know a lot of designers, we know a lot of people, researchers and scientists, we know a lot of artists, etc. We’re quite specialized in organizing the dialogue, and bringing people together and exchanging experiences, etc.

What is the link between Pakhuis and the WeMakeThe.City festival?

The link between Pakhuis and the festival is that in 2016 we applied for a challenge in Brussels and the city of Amsterdam won the iCapital award (innovation capital of Europe). We were one of the partners to write that bid, and we won that award because we described the innovation ecosystem in our city. We described what we were doing every day, and that’s the story of what we called the “Amsterdam Approach”.

The Board of the city has members in the municipality, the big organizations, the big corporates, and the knowledge institutions. Those three big institutional parties are called the “triple helix” and they really believe that with those three stakeholder groups, they are running the city, and are responsible for innovation. We don’t believe those three parties are only responsible for innovation. Not on their own. So, we decided to bring in other parties: the smaller businesses, the startups, the social entrepreneurs, the NGO’s, the healthcare, the schools and the bottom up movement of citizens, with neighborhood communities, etc. We brought in another triple helix  and said, “This is the way we are going to innovate in the city.”

By bringing all the related stakeholders, six stakeholder groups, you will find sustainable solutions. The municipality and the Board of the city are really slow, but it’s changing, and they are now connected to this double triple helix and the Amsterdam Approach. 

So, we had a good story in Brussels. We won the award. And of course, after you win an award, you are asked to talk about it in all kinds of conferences throughout Europe. We were asked to tell the story about the Amsterdam Approach and so we did. But after one and a half years, we said, “Okay, it’s nice to go out but, maybe we should invite people to Amsterdam.” And that’s why we started the festival in 2018: to tell the story of how you work together, how you relate to each other, how you come to solutions in another way rather than only top down. How do you really connect to the people who are living in the cities, who are entrepreneurs in the city and who are living a more sustainable connection and ownership.

Scientists have their research. Business are always money driven, and the politicians are concerned about the way politics will move the next four years. But the people who are living in neighborhoods, will be there for five or 10 or 15 or even 30 years. So you really need to bring all those stakeholders together. And that’s that’s the story which we tried to tell for the second year at the festival.

Where do you see the impact of your work? Can you measure it? 

Yes, we can see differences. For instance, we’re now having a new coalition of politics in the city, so there’s a new Board of the of the city. They wrote their ambitions down and had a manifesto to start a new four year period. And a lot of things, really a lot of things in there are things that we discussed. I won’t say it’s our paper, no, that would be too arrogant, but we are quite good in agenda setting and putting things on in the minds of people and trying to rethink and redo things it another way.

So there is impact and the impact is coming out of bringing so many people together and organizing our events in a way that you have to meet the other people. We organize the exchange of experiences and knowledge, we bring in the research institutes, we bring in the people out of the of the city hall. That’s where the impact is coming from, because otherwise they would not have met. The impact is that we make things visible, we connect people, we share, we inspire and inform them and make all kinds of cross links. 

And what about the impact you have beyond the city, in other countries especially? 

A lot of people like us, really like what we do. It’s interesting to see that in the Netherlands there are some little copies of what we are doing, but also in Vienna for instance. So it’s related to what we are doing and they were inspired. There was a big delegation from Helsinki also, they really want to have a Pakhuis in Helsinki, and they decided that there will be, for the first time, a small WeMakeThe.City in Helsinki in November this year.

A lot of people recognize that they don’t have a place like ours in their city. There are not so many places in other cities which have constant programmes as we do, not once a week, or once every two weeks, but every day, to constantly update and address the things that are really happening today. At Pakhuis, the program is every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and every night there are three events in the building that are all related to the city. Sometimes interesting and relevant foreign professors come to Amsterdam and they are then invited to have a public podium.

And which is the Pakhuis’s business model?

We are mostly independent, a big part of the money is earned by ourselves by running a restaurant for instance, but also renting the rooms in the building. Our own programming is at evening time, not during daytime, everything we do as an organization is at evening time. The rooms we offer for commercial prices during daytime, to organize all kinds of events, conferences, congress presentations, book launches, etc. So people pay to use it, and sometimes pay us to organize it. 

We also have assignments, so the municipality is not subsidizing us, but is giving projects. If they need a program about, for example, loneliness in the city, they give us an assignment for one or two years to build a program.

We also have other partnerships. There are about 20 corporate organizations, and the Port of Amsterdam, the railway, and the waste company, who are bringing some money to address some of the issues. By doing so they become stakeholders. They are not telling us what to do but, they really like to have a program line about waste in the city, or a program line about the transformation of the harbour, or a program line about house building in the city. 

Our business case is around making events, organizing, communicating, and what we do is build communities.

How do you involve startups in what you do, how do you impact the startup ecosystem?

Of course, startups are coming in, fashion startups, technology startups, for instance, with the issue of loneliness, because there are a lot of technology and digital tools to relate to loneliness, healthcare related technology, etc. So the startups are coming in related to the issues, related to the needs of people, related to economics, but we don’t have really have focused startup programs. We’re not another startup hub, or a startup accelerator. But, we bring them in depending on the various issues.. So if it’s about mobility, about electric mobility, about mobility as service, of course, there are a lot of startups around that topic.

Finally, please tell me what are your future projects and plans

One of the plans is to go more into the neighborhoods, that’s really what we’re going to do in the coming years.

Our other focus is on education. We’re really working on a program for youngsters for children between 8 -12 and 12-14. I really like to work with youngsters, because I think they need to know how a city is working. There are almost no children who know how cities work. Where’s the food coming from? Where’s the electricity coming from? Where is the water coming from? How does it work in a city when new buildings are built? Who is building the buildings? Who owns the buildings? What about data in the city, they don’t know anything about it. And now we’re developing programs around this.

And then, we want to continue with the festival, doing better things here, but also going outside, in other cities.

The post The “Amsterdam Approach” and the city platform connected to its urban challenges: Pakhuis de Zwijger appeared first on Startups&TheCity.

Cluj-Napoca, Romania, decided to be one of the first cities to apply for the European Capital of Innovation award, as Mariya Gabriel, EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, launched the 2020 edition of the contest during the StartupCity conference held in Cluj-Napoca on the 5th of March. Shortly after the contest launch, the mayor of Cluj-Napoca, Emil Boc, announced that the city will apply for the title.

“I would like to inform you that after the announcement of the commissioner concerning the European Capital of Innovation, we took the decision to apply this year for the title. We have transformed our city from an industrial city to a city based on knowledge economy, a city having a lot of innovative policies in the field of public transport, of green policies, and also in public governance, like public participation and participatory budgeting process. I think we have some good practices to show that we can move the map, in terms of the European Capital of Innovation, from Western Europe to the Eastern Europe.”, said mayor of Cluj-Napoca, Emil Boc during the press conference following the StartupCity event in Cluj.

Also known as iCapital, this annual prize is funded by Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation programme. It recognizes European cities that develop vibrant innovation ecosystems in order to address current public challenges and improve the lives of their citizens.

“Cluj is an inspiration for us, an example. My presence here is a support for more innovation ecosystems at local level, a support to show that cities are key players in this knowledge economy. Europe and all European cities are facing the same challenges. We have to tackle climate change, we have now to give answers to the digitalization, we have to give answers to our demographic challenges, and that’s why when we have for a first time this knowledge triangle – Education, Research and Innovation united, when we have good examples like this one in Cluj, we are encouraged.”, said commissioner Mariya Gabriel.

The prize awards six European cities in total. The first prize winner will join the community of previous European Capitals of Innovation – Barcelona, Amsterdam, Paris, Athens and Nantes. It will receive €1 million to ensure that its best innovative practices are shared and multiplied. To scale up innovation ecosystems across Europe, the contest will also reward the first five runners-up with €100,000 each to support their innovation activities and to enhance their capacity to connect citizens, public sector, academia, and businesses in order to deliver societal benefits for their communities.

The competition is open to cities with a minimum of 100,000 inhabitants from EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon 2020. A high-level jury of independent experts will evaluate how the applicant cities are pushing the boundaries of innovation by looking at the following criteria:

• Experimenting by testing and promoting innovative solutions to their societal challenges;
• Engaging citizens to participate to innovation, including designing policy and participate to its day-to-day implementation and use;
• Expanding its innovation capacity by becoming a desired destination for prospective entrepreneurs and a role model for other cities;
• Empowering citizens with tangible and measurable results of innovation.

The contest is open for applications until 23 June 2020 (17:00 CET). The first winner and the five runners-up will be announced during the European Research and Innovation Days on 22-24 September 2020 in Brussels.

The post Cluj-Napoca, Romania, to apply for the European Capital of Innovation 2020 award appeared first on Startups&TheCity.