This post is written by Evisson Fernandes de Lucena, Open Innovation Manager, Prefeitura do Recife, and Breno Alencar Gonçalves, Governance e Open Innovation Director, EMPREL – winners of Apolitical’s Global Public Service Team of the Year 2022 award in the 'Digital Innovators' category.

  • The problem: Recife needed public policies to become an open innovation city.
  • Why it matters: It is important to implement policies to make innovation open for the citizens and to solve public challenges.
  • The solution: The E.I.T.A! Recife movement was created, a deep process of cultural transformation in the municipality to change the paradigm of how to make open innovation in the public service.

The E.I.T.A! Recife programme, short for ‘Esquadrão de Inovação e Transformação Aberta’ or ‘Open Innovation and Transformation Squad’, is a movement created by the city's government to drive a cultural change in public service and support the implementation of open innovation policies.

Recife, the capital city of Pernambuco, is known for its thriving technology industry, driven by the success of the Porto Digital technology hub. However, the city's government recognised the need for more efficient and effective policies to foster open innovation, in order to truly transform Recife into a city open to innovation. This is where the E.I.T.A! Recife programme comes in, with the goal of addressing public challenges through open innovation and citizen engagement.

Making real change happen

The E.I.T.A! Recife movement has been working on implementing a macro process that starts with identifying challenges, capturing resources, launching innovation cycles and managing the innovation process. This is done through four tracks: Innovation Cycles (using the legal framework of startups, LC 182), Academic Partnerships, Hackathons and Living Labs.

The programme encompasses all employees of the direct and indirect Administration of Recife City Hall, in addition to the entire national innovation ecosystem. In this sense, we can highlight technology parks, startups, public and private companies, other public bodies, universities, colleges, students and entrepreneurs.

It is clear that investing in open innovation can bring about significant economic and social benefits for the city and its citizens.

The E.I.T.A! Recife is consolidating itself as an important public innovation hub in the country. For example, Recife was the first city in the country to sign at once, arising from an innovation cycle, using the new Legal framework of Startups, six public innovation contracts, with an estimated investment in the first year of R$5.4 million.

Showing results

In less than a year, the movement has already achieved remarkable results such as: six CPSI's (Innovation Public Contracts) signed involving startups, four accelerated solutions, 10 solutions approved for experimentation at Living Labs Recife, Regulatory Sandbox, Living Labs Recife (E.I.T.A Labs), an Open Innovation Policy with OKR (Objectives and Key Results), Project Management of Innovation, Design Thinking for identifying problems, six innovation solutions delivered to the city, a 70% reduction in the time to identify challenges and run innovation cycles, and an 83% reduction in the cost of an MVP compared to other projects of EMPREL (Municipal Company of Recife).

We can highlight as major innovations of E.I.T.A Recife:

  • Use agile techniques to implement an open innovation public policy. For this, we use John Kotter's eight steps for managing change and culture.
  • We use the CANVA of exponential organisations to clearly convey the vision of change.
  • Another key idea was the instanced Design Thinking method to identify public challenges, including the unprecedented CANVA creation of the public challenge.
  • The way to contract innovative solutions, carrying out a different, disruptive and unprecedented tender in the country (being the first city in Brazil to sign six innovation contracts at once) using the legal framework of startups.
  • The creation of a Living Labs, our E.I.T.A Labs, as a space for urban experimentation (regulatory sandbox).
  • First Living Labs hub in the country together with Foz do Iguaçu.
  • And finally, EMPREL's model of strategic partnerships with the products generated, generating and fostering new business.

We can highlight the partners of the first cycle of innovation: Porto Digital, PTI, ENAP, Ikone, CAF and Impact Hub Brasília. Ikone helped us with the challenge platform and others to connect other innovation environments for challenge registration. In addition to these partners, we can highlight Foz do Iguaçu and the PTI, where we signed a technical cooperation term and thus the first hub of Living Labs in Brazil was born, E.I.T.A Labs and Vila A Inteligente.

How to make a difference

The problem of limited open innovation policies in Recife has been addressed through the implementation of E.I.T.A! Recife. This programme has achieved significant results in a short amount of time, such as signing six CPSIs, reducing the time and cost for innovation processes, and creating a culture of open innovation within the city government. It is clear that investing in open innovation can bring about significant economic and social benefits for the city and its citizens. It is important for other cities and governments to take note of the success of programmes like E.I.T.A! Recife and consider implementing similar initiatives in their own communities.

Some examples of lessons learned:

  1. Adhesion of employees: we follow a theory of change management, John Kotter's eight steps.
  2. Legal instruments: to overcome this barrier, we started with the creation of the Digital Transformation Strategy Decree. We also published an open innovation policy and the Recife Legal Framework for Science, Technology and Innovation.
  3. Fundraising: through the management of changes already mentioned above, we managed to sponsor the top management and a budget highlight of around R$5 million to run the first cycle.
  4. Mobilisation of the ecosystem: we were able to set up a network of partners that was essential to overcome this barrier.
  5. Security: We use the Open Data Portal to make our assets available to companies and startups that participate in any E.I.T.A innovation trail.
  6. Confidentiality guarantee: we develop a confidentiality term that is signed between the parties.
  7. Intellectual Property: We have developed an intellectual co-ownership agreement.

See more from E.I.T.A! Recife here.

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(Image Credit: Unsplash)