In this webinar, Utrecht University presents recipes to generate smart city business model ideas. Also, a blueprint for a Business Incubation Program will be showcased by incubator UtrechtInc, to guide teams behind the respective ideas to revenue and scale.

1. 1
This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 774199
Creating Smart City Business Models
through Ideation Tools and Business
Incubation

2. 2 This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 774199
AGENDA
CREATING SMART CITY BUSINESS MODELS THROUGH IDEATION TOOLS AND BUSINESS
INCUBATION
13:00 Introduction – Jonas Norrman, Change management expert, IMCG International,
13:10 Business Development in Smart Cities – Mark Sanders, professor of International
Economics at Maastricht University / Utrecht University
13:30 Business Incubation – Stefan Braam, startup incubation Lead at UtrechtInc
13:50 Ideation Tools – Mark Sanders & Loek Zanders, project manager Utrecht University
14:10 Panel Discussion and Q&A
Please, write your questions in the chat or raise your hand digitally. I will moderate your questions
at the end of each session.
Utrecht
Gothenburg

3. 3 This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 774199
IRIS LIGHTHOUSE CITIES AND THEIR CITY
DISTRICT AMBITIONS
France, Nice – Eco Valley
Business area and tourism industry
Netherlands, Utrecht - Kanalenland
Residential area and commercial industry
Sweden, Gothenburg - Johanneberg
Campus area and knowledge industry
 Fossil free energy in buildings
 Fossil free mobility solutions
Example of city district targets:
• Renewable and energy positive district
• Flexible energy management and storage
• Intelligent mobility solutions
• Digital transformation and services
Nice
Utrecht
Gothenburg

4. 4
Business model adaptation for each different IRIS
solution

6. 6
A new perspective
The Cities objectives is to steer markets towards climate
neutrality and reduced use of resources.
The cities need to understand how to formulate policies, regulation
and other support, to develop market conditions. This to support
the market actors value chains and individual business models,
making climate-neutral offerings competitive to traditional
service offerings.
IRIS Smart City
Project
The expected impacts of IRIS are an open
innovation ecosystem motivating citizens to act as
prosumers.
Innovative business models based on multi-
stakeholder collaboration for secure and affordable
energy and mobility services for citizens.

7. 7
From Smart Cities and Communities to
100 Climate Neutral Cities
To make European cities the
most livable places in the world.
To start transforming European cities to climate neutral before 2050.

8. 8
Panel discussion
• How can cities use ideation tools and business incubation to
support business development in smart cities and achieve
climate neutrality before 2030?
• How could these tools and methodologies support the
decarbonizing industries within cities?
• What could be the role of ideation, incubation and business
development in EU Horizon Europe Mission of 100 climate-
neutral and Smart Cities before 2030?

9. 9 This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 774199
AGENDA
13:10 Business Development in Smart Cities – Mark Sanders, professor of
International Economics at Maastricht University / Utrecht University
13:30 Business Incubation – Stefan Braam, startup incubation Lead at
UtrechtInc
13:50 Ideation Tools – Mark Sanders & Loek Zanders, project manager Utrecht
University
14:10 Panel Discussion
Please, write your questions in the chat or raise your hand digitally. I will
moderate your questions at the end of each session.
Utrecht
Gothenburg

10. 10
Business Development in Smart Cities
Mark Sanders

11. 11
11
Nov-Dec 2017 Jan-Mar 2018 Apr-Sep 2018 Oct-Dec 2018
Prep. + data collection Data collection Evaluation
Start-up
challenges
Acquisition
Selection and
matching
Incubation
100
ideas
25 ideas 5-10 ideas
Start-up
SCUIBI 1.0A cunning plan?

12. 12
Lessons from Incubation in UtrechtInc. (and
ClimateKic)
“We test our hypotheses on a novel sample of
269 start-ups that applied to two incubators of
which 158 were selected to the programme.
Accounting for the selection effect by
controlling for pre-incubation quality, we find
that while incubation positively affects all
measures of performance, the originality and
diversity of the start-up do not moderate this
effect. We explain this by arguing that
incubators adjust their influence on the needs
of the start-up which absorbs the effects from
the knowledge base.”

13. 13
Lessons from Incubation in PACA-EST.
“we found that start-ups that are committed to
sustainability and smart-city related
entrepreneurial projects develop themselves
more than others in terms of employment.
Such findings give evidence IRIS that the
smart-city ecosystem is rather favorable to
start-ups. They indeed tend to hire more which
makes them profitable ventures to invest in for
policymakers that want to stimulate innovation
and employment”
MASTERTHESIS
INCUBATION PERFORMANCESAND
IMPACTOFSTART-UP’SRESOURCES
STUDY-CASEOFA RESEARCH-BASEDINCUBATORIN NICE.
HUMAN GE
OGR
APHY MASTE
RPR
OGR
AMME2018/ 2019
E
conomic Geography – R
egional Development and Policy
Romain MORIN - 6406564
Supervised by Dr Andrea Morrison – Supported by Mark Sandersfor IR
ISSmart-Cities

14. 14
Incubation of User Innovations
“Our findings show that start-ups’ performance
is increased by the participation in incubation
programs. We found this effect to be similar
(insignificantly different) for user innovations.
(…) Finding only a small number of user
innovations that have applied to the incubation
programs as well as only a small number of
the identified user innovations that have
experienced incubation further suggests a
double bias: A negative self-selection bias of
user innovations and a selection bias of
incubators against user innovations.”

15. 15
Lessons from Incubation in Utrecht, Goteborg and
Nice.
“The samples show that smart city
innovation is not uncommon in our datasets.
Over all incubators, the percentage of start-
ups that could be classified as “smart city” is
11.8%, ranging between some 9% in
Gothenburg and 27% in Climate KIC, an
incubator dedicated to sustainable
innovation. It should also be noted that the
most restrictive necessary condition is “city”,
not “technology”, as the latter scores 1 for
over 90% in all samples. Of the “intensity”
factors, the scores on “citizen” are clearly
lowest at on average 5%. Whereas the use
of ICT technology is common to some 50%
of the sample. All this makes sense
intuitively and corresponds with what we
would expect given the profiles and nature
of the incubators.”

16. 16
Spinoffs and User
Innovations
User and spinoff innovations in the right stage for incubation are hard (impossible) to find.
We cannot find the needles in the haystack…
but you can try to can draw them out.

17. 17
Life Cycle Stages
Smart city start-ups benefit from generic incubation as much as non-smart city start-
ups. There is therefore no need to restrict inflow to smart city ventures. But…
Ideas are found in various stages of development…
…from a variety of sources…
…with correspondingly different needs and possibilities.
Smart city business incubation should cater to this diversity, rather than try to
exclusively aim for ideas in the right stage on smart city topics.

18. 18
SCUIBI 2.0
Smart city user innovation business incubation (SCUIBI) is (therefore) best served by:
• Reforming business incubation programs to accommodate (better) innovations (of any
type) in more stages and from a broader group of potential innovators.
• Business incubation can be directed towards smart city development by focusing
ideation activities on this topic.
UtrechtInc implemented a substantial program reform
IRIS Utrecht organised a host of ideation events.
Our D3.4 reports on these activities in detail and contains ”recipes” for Smart City Ideation
Activities to be replicated.

19. 19
Q U E S T I O N S ?

20. 20
Business Incubation
Stefan Braam

21. 21
Ideation Tools
Mark Sanders & Loek Zanders

22. 22
Ideation as Citizen Engagement Tool
More Social benefits
+
-
More
implementation
feasibility
-
Civic hackathons
Crowdsourcing
Civic crowdfunding
+
Community building
Citizen oriented
decision making
Ongoing process
Image
improvement
Early stage Prototype Ready to
implement

23. 23
Recipes for Smart City Ideation
Documenting actual challenges to develop a ”how to”
cookbook for smart city business incubation.
The ingredient list:
• Budget
• Organizing costs
• Award structure
• Time
• Preparation
• Actual event
• Resources
• Stakeholder organizations
• Roles
• Location(s)
• Challenge
• Participants

24. 24
Recipes for Smart City Ideation
Documenting actual challenges to develop a ”how to”
cookbook for smart city business incubation.
1. Startup in Residence | Utrecht 2017
2. Smart Lighting Challenge | Utrecht 2019
3. FIWARE Hackathon | Europe 2019
4. Energy Poverty Challenge | Utrecht 2019
5. Citizen Innovation Challenge | Utrecht 2019
6. Utrecht Mobility Challenge | Utrecht 2019
7. Chalmers Live Challenge | Gothenburg 2020
8. ChangeU Students Challenge | Utrecht 2021

25. 25
Startup in Residence
Dish: challenge | 0.4 FTE | 3M preparation + 3M execution + 3M incubation |
€300.000
Recipe for: 76 ideas | 6 startups
• Challenge on 9 societal topics (and 1 wildcard) hosted by the Municipality of
Utrecht
• Startup in Residence Utrecht received a total of 76 entries. 32 entries were
selected for a live pitch. 7 startups were selected to join the incubation program,
led by Graduate Space.
• A key success factor is the reaching out to thousands of potential applicants. The
difficulty of getting access to a network that is relevant cannot be underestimated.
It is also a very costly ingredient;
• The seven developed products or services were positively received by the
municipality of Utrecht, leading to six ‘launching customer’ contracts (€20-40K).
• While the wildcard is positively received by entrepreneurs, the entries mainly

26. 26
ChangeU
Dish: hackathon | 0.5 FTE | 4M preparation + 2.5W execution + 10W incubation | €3.000
Recipe for: 13 ideas | 1 startups
• Student-run online event during which teams of students developed smart city business models for
5 different challenges
• 13 teams, consisting of in total 55 students, submitted an idea that was assessed. The one-pagers
and video pitches were judged by 6 entrepreneurship/innovation/data experts and 5 Kanaleneiland
residents.
• The 16-day program possibly was too short to get students to deliver a detailed plan on the
business idea.
• Due to Covid-19, the event had to be organized virtually. This might have had an impact on
teamwork and team dynamics, especially if a team consisted of individuals who did not know each
other until right before the event.
• Both in terms of chance of the team making an entry (100% versus 66%), as well as quality of the
entry (6.19 versus 5.49 on a 10-point scale), teams consisting of individual sign-ups performed
better compared to teams who signed up as a group.

27. 27
Lessons learned on recipes for Smart City Ideation
1. Team diversity (cultural, gender, education) can
have a positive effect on idea quality. Consider
individual sign-ups.
2. To attract desired ideas, an open challenge and very
clear prerequisites are crucial.
3. Involved participants needs to have some sort of
basic entrepreneurial skills (ideation, collaboration,
creativity). Advanced skills (business development,
scale-mindset) often lacking.
4. Manage (your own) expectations. Event organizers
need to take note of the "activity funnel" to reduce
drop-outs during the event.
5. The incentive of the event needs to be proportionate
to the expected effort (1-2K for an idea; 10-20K do
develop a validated business model)

28. 28
Panel discussion
• How can cities use ideation tools and business incubation to
support business development in smart cities and achieve
climate neutrality before 2030?
• How could these tools and methodologies support the
decarbonizing industries within cities?
• What could be the role of ideation, incubation and business
development in EU Horizon Europe Mission of 100 climate-
neutral and Smart Cities before 2030?