How do cities market themselves as business and innovation ecosystems?
Alongside Grenoble-Alpes Métropole, we organized an international meeting on marketing the city as business location. It was on 2018, with a central question to discuss about: How to take advantage of the smart specialization concept to enhance and give more direction when branding and communicating the city as business environment and innovation ecosystem? To feed the discussion, a number of inspiring case studies were gathered: Magnetic Bordeaux strategy, FrankfurtRheinMain GmbH inward investment agency, Porto Tech Hub, Greater Zurich Area AG, Be Basque Talent Network and Grenoble´s GIANT innovation campus. The Workshop was part of InFocus, an international action-research initiative on how the policy concept of smart specialization applies to cities. To that aim, we de-constructed the urban agenda on economic development in four main pillars: cluster development, entrepreneurship, space provision and attraction of investment and knowledge.
Thematic note: Branding and marketing the city as business ecosystem