Crowdsourcing as a tool to stimulate initiatives in Rotterdam

Crowdsourcing as a tool to stimulate initiatives in Rotterdam

Rachyd, A.

Abbing, E.R. (mentor)
Brezet, J.C. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Product Innovation Management

Master of Science Strategic Product Design

2014-07-03

Society is changing and the government/ municipality is forced into a new role. In Rotterdam, citizen participation has already been part of the financial plan since 2010. In 2010, 3 years before the King’s speech, the executive board of the city of Rotterdam agreed on a four year financial plan to stimulate citizen initiatives in the city of Rotterdam. The municipality of Rotterdam has currently several projects running to stimulate citizen initiatives to improve the social cohesion in Rotterdam. In the collaboration with organizations and citizens of Rotterdam on initiatives, the Stadsinitiatief is one of these projects in which the municipality gains experiences in this new role. The Stadsinitiatief is an idea competition in which participants can win money prize to realize their initiative. The Stadsinitiatief wants initiatives which the citizens of Rotterdam feel part of and be proud of. The initiatives are required to be of value for the city of Rotterdam and its people. Concerning the revenue of the initiative, there are no strict criteria. Both non-profit as for-profit are allowed to participate, but both have different financial criteria which they need adhere to. What is clear is that The Stadsinitiatief is not for business ideas that have no social relevancy. The goal of the Stadsinitiatief is to “use the creativity, organization ability and decisiveness of the citizens of Rotterdam for iconic, city wide initiatives.”. The Stadsinitiatief wants to utilize the ideas and talents of citizens in Rotterdam. So what makes the Stadsinitiatief different from other competitions? Everyone from Rotterdam is allowed to participate, but the commitments from the initiators and quality of the project plans are necessary qualifications for initiatives to be considered by the board. Ultimately the initiatives that fit the criteria the best will be selected. Ultimately the initiatives that are allowed to participate must have the following focus: • Initiatives need to have social value or impact. • Initiatives should be of benefit for Rotterdam and its citizens Initiatives focused on commercial activities and who only provide economic value instead of social value are not admitted to the competition. Economic value itself is not forbidden, as long as its provided next to social value. Furthermore, for-profit initiatives have different criteria then non-profit. Ultimately the Stadsinitiatief is about initiatives being launched for the good of Rotterdam and its citizens. However, the future of Stadsinitiatief is unsure. The municipality of Rotterdam is facing a few problems: 1. high investment costs for realization of initiatives. 2. Budget cuts by the Dutch government and more importantly 3. Public dissatisfaction for spending a considerable amount of money into a single project. The municipality does not want to forsake the social willingness, extensive knowledge and funding possibilities that are existing inside the city. The municipality of Rotterdam wants to continue enabling citizens and organizations, using the previously gained experience with the Stadsinitiatief, to improve the city and help them implement potential initiatives. The municipality of Rotterdam is looking at several opportunities to keep stimulating this collaboration between citizens and organizations in Rotterdam. Luckily, the internet made it easier and cheaper for people to work together through the use of technology. A prime example of online collaboration that has grown dramatically through the years is crowdsourcing. With crowdsourcing ambitious entrepreneurs and organizations source the crowd to find a solution for their problem. Crowdsourcing can be a powerful tool to improve and launch a product or service. This can already be witnessed on platforms like Kickstarter, where the crowds finances new innovative or creative products. Crowdsourcing offers an interesting mechanism that can be beneficial to the city of Rotterdam. So how can crowdfunding be used as a solution to stimulate citizen initiatives in Rotterdam by providing the same values as the Stadsinitiatief. The Stadsinitiatief is an interesting case which should be studied deeply to get good insights on the mechanics. Three research topics were analysed in an exploratory study: 1. the Stadsinitiatief 2. Initiators’ success factors and 3. crowdsourcing. What was gained from this exploratory study is the fact that launching initiatives relies on two main factors: the entrepreneurial traits of initiators and quality of a plan. When both were present the success of an initiative was guaranteed. But both of these factors relied on other key factors. The entrepreneurial traits of initiators allowed them to become more knowledgeable, connect with participants, be open to feedback and this eventually resulted in better entrepreneurs with better developed plans. What could be seen clearly was that all the factors were intertwined. A quality plan was not possible with feedback and a successful entrepreneur needed others to make the initiative a success. This graduation project shows clearly the importance of connecting with the right persons, improving plans based on external feedback and promoting initiatives to gain public support. Based on the insights gained from these research topics, a crowdsourcing app (CityConnect) was presented that uses these main insights as main features to help initiators successfully launch initiatives. CityConnect is an app that gives initiators tools to present, improve and launch initiatives. CityConnect is also an app that helps bring initiators together with other citizens and organizations within Rotterdam. The app provides solutions for challenging insights that were gained from the research. It also clearly showed that crowdsourcing combined with a mobile solution can be a powerful tool in stimulating citizen initiatives in Rotterdam.

crowdsourcing
initiatives
social
app
mobile
Rotterdam

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4c9210d8-ba1a-4c3d-a8b7-50f8fd8af97e

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2014 Rachyd, A.