The City of Heidelberg promotes itself as a ‘digital city’

The Customer

An outstanding knowledge-based location with unusual capabilities. For centuries, world-changing ideas have been born and put into practice in Heidelberg. Here knowledge, economy and citizenship are tightly woven together. Heidelberg is a ‘pearl of knowledge’: a place involved in all areas of knowledge that benefits from this exceptional knowledge base. This urban international community, where a third of its residents come from a total of over 160 countries, is made up of 40,000 students (including 20% international students) and over 5000 researchers and their families. This wealth of creative brain power creates a highly adaptive environment for new Smart City solutions.

The Project

The digital association Bitkom created the ‘Digital City’ competition in cooperation with the German Association of Towns and Municipalities (DStGB). In the winning city, important facilities providing infrastructure in the areas of mobility, energy, health and education will be equipped with the latest digital technologies. The goal is to develop a model city with an international profile. Support for the City of Heidelberg’s entry in Bitkom’s ‘Digital City’ competition occurred in three phases:

  1. initial analysis of the situation;
  2. development of the ten building blocks of the Smart City; and
  3. backing during the competition’s elimination rounds, including iterative workshop rounds with decision makers and experts; a citizen’s forum with Pepper the humanoid robot; and an executive strategy-development retreat focused on digital administration and agile methods (among them, design thinking and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY ®).

Kienbaum responded very flexibly to our requests. This led to the complete success of both contributions (competition and executive retreat). We are pleased to recommend Kienbaum to others.
Roland Haag
Director, HR and Organizing Office

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