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Barcelona City Council and Citymart have announced an international call for businesses and entrepreneurs to propose their innovative solutions to six different challenges to transform public space and services in the city.
Within the framework of the economic development initiative Barcelona Growth, BCN|Open Challenge is a new programme opening up the city administration to SMEs from around the world to transform public services. By seeking solutions to the city’ s challenges with a more inclusive process, Barcelona will accelerate innovation and leverage public spending more effectively to deliver better public services. For the first time, public procurement directly focuses on innovation providers, leading to faster, stronger local economic growth and tangible improvements in citizens’ lives.
Barcelona is looking for high-impact solutions to the following six urban and social challenges to transform the city’ s public services.
- Reducing bicycle thefts in the city
- Empowering support systems to reduce social isolation
- Monitoring pedestrian flows in the city
- Tools for digitisation of museum and archive collections
- Automatic detection and alerts of damaged road surfaces
- Empowering local retail through technology
At the heart of the BCN|Open Challenge is a commitment from Barcelona City Council to:
- Procure and implement the 6 selected winning solutions. This promise is backed up by a dedicated innovation fund of 1 million euro.
- Support winning companies with a business package for growth including free space for landing or growing in Barcelona, support with financial and human capital development or coordination with relevant local partners.
- Validate project references for the winners to strengthen their credentials when accessing other new markets.