Citizen talent: the key to accelerating your business and saving the planet
By editorial team. (Originally published in Spanish)
Throughout this year, citizens have shown that if we work together, success is greater. That citizen talent enriches systems, organisations and the planet. That there is a solvent, real and solid capability of citizens. These phrases may seem idealistic, but they are not. In this article, we explain three projects that have relied on a citizen's perspective to meet collective needs and value shared knowledge. Keep reading!
Imagine being able to contribute to air quality research by carrying a little tube that collects pollution around your neck. Sounds good, doesn’t it? The CitieS-Health project put citizens at the forefront of the study on how pollution affects our mental health through participatory kits and ideation workshops. More than 1000 Barcelona residents participated in the experiment and the conclusions were the following: concentration decreases during the most polluted days, stress is affected by pollution and green and blue spaces help protect our cognitive health.
On the other hand, a few months ago, WeCount, an initiative dedicated to the collection of traffic data on the roads of Madrid and Barcelona, came to an end. The objective was to empower citizens to promote public policies in urban design and mobility by distributing digital sensors that measured the number of cars, trucks, bicycles and pedestrians along with the speed. These sensors were installed in their windows to understand mobility on their streets. Here you can see the detailed results for both Madrid and Barcelona.
Thus, projects that encourage co-creation, talent and citizen ideas to build a better world. However, in order to do so, it is necessary to involve all the agents that take part in a system. Organisations must therefore support and promote this citizen perspective in their strategies. We tell you the roadmap to do so.
It’s called Plan C and it’s the solution we have designed together with Mind The Gap to accelerate business growth by incorporating citizen capabilities. How? By creating a symbiosis between communities and business models with the aim of contributing to the common good. Here are the steps to do it:
Draw the route. Find out how you relate to citizens, including the new generations, to drive your organisation of tomorrow and become a referent.
Build bridges. Expand your sales and innovate in your value chain. Explore the potential available around you and build a map of opportunities never seen before.
Generate value. Design the business model of the future with co-created, cutting-edge strategies that drive transformation in a new direction.
Focusing on what interests communities and the market is essential. As Javier Creus, founder of Ideas for Change, and Sergi Corbeto, CEO of Mind The Gap, point out in their latest article ¡Salir a ganar!, “betting on a new perspective brings promising and disruptive new opportunities to the surface”. And the fact is that taking advantage of the virtues and concerns of citizens is to contribute to a fairer and more inclusive future while humanising a company’s values and products.
In short: in this explosion of collective productivity, citizens not only consume, but also have many other capabilities or roles, such as contributing scientific data to research or forming part of a disruptive business strategy. So, don’t get left behind and change the rules of the game. Take advantage of shared knowledge and the potential of citizen capabilities.
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