How Cordoba champions open innovation in Argentina

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Cordoba City, the capital of the province of the same name, is one of Argentina’s largest cities, with nearly 2 million people.

While Argentina is no stranger to digital innovation, a growing gap is emerging between the public and private sectors when it comes to adopting new technologies.

“How do we close this gap where the private sector has grown much faster in digital transformation than the public sector?” asks the Municipal’s Subsecretary of Knowledge Economy and GovTech Ecosystem, Luciano Crisafulli.

This question inspired the Municipality of Cordoba to adopt a comprehensive digital government strategy, tapping on an open innovation approach to break resistance to change within the public sector.

Their vision is to foster a collaborative GovTech ecosystem, where governments can embrace innovation and implement smarter solutions, working with local entrepreneurs to return value from the municipality to the citizens.

“The government can grow faster by leveraging resources and talent that are outside the public agency – which is why we talk about open innovation,” Crisafulli says.

He shares about his journey with GovInsider, managing the GovTech Innovation Lab (CorLab) and how Cordoba is leveraging local talent to build a smarter city.

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CorLab: the key to change

Argentina’s first GovTech innovation lab did not emerge overnight.

In 2020, the Subsecretary launched a public innovation laboratory that worked on design thinking to co-create solutions for public challenges.

Still, for six months, the team saw a lot of work and not enough impact. During this period, the lab only developed and implemented two projects in total.

Navigating the bureaucratic culture of public organisations to identify challenges took time and made it difficult to attract talent that could co-design innovative solutions, notes Crisafulli.

The strategy needed a change, and it came with the open innovation approach.

“How do we get innovations developed by the entrepreneurial ecosystem directly to the citizens to improve their quality of life? That was the change in strategy and the first steps of CorLab,” shares Crisafulli.

One of CorLab’s first initiatives was mapping the GovTech ecosystem, which meant identifying startups in Cordoba and the different solutions they offer.

This made processes more efficient, says Crisafulli. When a public agency faces a challenge, the GovTech radar maps all the startups to find one with a ready solution.

So far, CorLab has mapped out around 300 startups in Cordoba, of which 90 have solutions of public value for the government.

This strategy has accelerated innovation in Cordoba, as the municipality went from developing to fully implementing solutions in the public sector, adds Crisafulli.

Cordoba’s bet for public innovation

To make this collaborative GovTech ecosystem work, CorLab started the Smart City Fund – the first instance of a Latin American government investing in startups through a venture capital model.

The fund was developed in 2020 under the administration of the current Governor of the Province of Cordoba, Martin Llaryora, with the International Development Board (IDB) and the Development Bank for Latin America (CAF).

“What the fund does is invest in venture capital instruments for GovTech startups, and once we invest, the startups start working with the municipality in different areas,” Crisafulli explains.

Through this fund, invested startups contribute to transforming Cordoba into a smarter city with their solutions while boosting the city's innovation ecosystem. When the startups implement their solutions with the local government, their value increases, and so does the value of the fund.

In 2021, Cordoba’s legislative body established that the fund would be supported with one per cent of the city’s annual commercial and industrial taxes.

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Leveraging the local ecosystem

Alongside the fund, the municipality launched the Public Innovation Challenges initiative, which assesses and validates the prototypes that startups offer for government use.

This allows entrepreneurs to present projects that can help the municipality improve their services. The best projects, selected by public and private sector authorities, receive funding to implement their prototype in the city.

For instance, one of the projects developed with the Secretary of Environment sought to measure, reduce, and offset greenhouse gas emissions generated by organisations. Once implemented, the solution compensated for the carbon footprint of the Municipal Palace and other public buildings.

Since pivoting to an open innovation approach, CorLab has implemented 11 innovation challenges and 67 projects in the city with different areas of the municipality.

The road to success

CorLab’s success is largely due to strong political backing, says Crisafulli, highlighting the support of Cordoba’s Mayor, Daniel Passerini, and Smart City Secretary, Ignacio Gei.

“[They are] convinced of the importance of innovation and smart city development. This makes everything easier internally because priority is given to reports and data, and resources are made available.”

Additionally, support from multilateral organisations and consistent work are key, he says.

Many Latin American governments still face cultural resistance to innovation, which hinders public service improvements and lowers trust from the public, as Argentina’s Public Ministry’s 2050 Innovation Program Head previously shared with GovInsider.

Essential to rebuilding this trust is embracing change to improve services and developing initiatives that meet the needs of the citizens. For this reason, the political validation that multilateral organisations like the IDB provide is essential, says Crisafulli.

To date, CorLab has implemented six more projects to keep pace with the vision of transforming the quality of public services in Cordoba, and issued a new call for startups from Latin America to apply for the Fund is now open.