City Case Description: Rotterdam Reimagining Deep Tech

How does “prototyping” work?

This City Case Description is the outcome of a policy prototyping exercise within a city ecosystem.
Once the ekip research team has explored a policy area and its connection to cultural and creative
industries (CCIs) and innovation, we ask: what would this mean in a local city context?

Together with local stakeholders, we test how a draft policy recommendation might stimulate innovation. Using Portfolio Sensemaking, stakeholders simulate an innovation portfolio, analyse the strengths and gaps of the local support system, and identify what resources are needed to realise the portfolio.

Rotterdam Context & Area of Focus

“In deep tech nothing is designed or developed for our use. But we – artists, designers and developers – are challenging and developing deep tech products and services for new use. And that’s fun, but also a huge value for innovation.”

Rotterdam is considered as a forward thinking city. It is a city known for its architecture, and also for experiments and innovation. During Upstream Festival was a workshop focusing on deep tech. Upstream is a community-driven festival where (pre)-seed startups find capital and opportunities. Together, we identified where the domain of deep tech and of cultural and creative industries intersect, what each can gain from the other, and how EU innovation policy can strengthen this relationship within open innovation ecosystems. During the workshop the public value and human perspective and values became more the central topic of this workshop.