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Welcome to our Annual Review of 2023. Our review is, like all of our work #RadicallyOpen. It is concise and published openly on the web available to all.
2024 is our tenth year of operation. We are so proud of our achievements, our team, our constant evolution, our ambition and our resolve. We have lots coming up in 2024 to share but first we will reflect on our delivery in 2023.
Our #RadicallyOpen approach means that when you work with us we all work:
Paul Connell & The Open Innovations team, January 2024.
Remember all of our work is on the web and easily found using your favourite search engine.
We are a not for profit independent small business operating from our workspace and conference venue in central Leeds. From March 2024, we will be ‘On Tour’ an exciting development which will see us work closely with our sponsors & partners. There's more about why we are closing our space and our first 10 years on our blog.
We innovate in the open with data, working with our sponsors, partners, companies, organisations, governments and individuals. We help others to access, use and share data – to use the web as it was intended – and create massive surpluses of shared value.
Our team is small but knowledgeable, experienced and talented, with a mix of backgrounds including data science, data analysis, innovation, economics, marketing & comms, IT, web development, project management and much much more.
Founder Open Innovations
Director
Head of Data Open Innovations
Associate Data Architect Open Innovations
Data, Research & Development Open Innovations
Data & Innovation Consultant Open Innovations
Economics Data Lead Open Innovations
Data Projects / imactivate projects
Data Scientist Open Innovations
Open Data Associate Open Innovations
Comms & Design Open Innovations
Health Data Lead
Transport Data Lead Open Innovations
Transport Data Lead
Economic Data Lead Open Innovations
We are doers not talkers; we innovate iteratively on the web by working at pace, being on the web, testing rapidly, building prototypes and creating real tools/ websites and data assets and infrastructure.
Our mission led approach means that we work on stuff that matters to us, our sponsors, partners and network and ultimately everyone else. Everything we do is on our website.
We focus on these key areas:
Anyone that has an interest in data, working with data, sharing data, innovating with data, analysing data, publishing data openly on the web. So far this has been local authorities, governments, cultural programmes, think tanks, public and private sector organisations from every sector. We work in two main ways either:
Open Innovations has existed since 2013 with the intention of being #RadicallyOpen making a difference in North England.
Our key USP is our website. We publish our work openly and quickly. You should be able to find what you need on our website with a simple google search e.g. HexMaps, CSV cleaner, data mapper, bins … We pride ourselves on making our website inclusive, accessible and low in bandwidth and carbon emissions.
For the past 8 years we focused on showing and demonstrating how being open, using open data, innovating and sharing openly can and does work, making a huge difference.
Over the last 2 years we have seen a step change from:
show me what we can do with data and the web, so I can try to sell it back to other people
to
our organisation knows it needs to do things differently with data but we are not sure how to do it, please can you help us
This move from showing to doing to knowing that they need to move quicker and make progress is a confirmation that our approach is needed, as is our ever growing client list.
It also represents a response to the pandemic - people and organisations saw that whatever context (health, transport, property, HR, & many others) needed credible data at pace (real time if possible) to make informed decisions so that they could plan and update their operations in response and this data needed to be presented on the web.
This has meant that in addition to our work with our Sponsors we have grown our delivery capacity (Who we are) and developed long term delivery partnerships with organisations that need support to innovate with data to support their work e.g.
Our work is dominated by the public and regulated sectors or delivering publicly funded programmes. Much of the failure of delivery in excellent data projects or programmes that we experience emanates from the UKs centralised institutions that in our opinion have made limited progress or actually “Done Anything”- our approach provides organisations alternative credible approaches that focus on outputs and progress that suit their budgets, ambitions and imperatives.
Our most important success is that Open Innovations is still here after 10 years, still relevant, still ambitious and still aiming to be a new type of organisation in North England.
As a self-funded, independent, not-for-profit organisation we need to be aware of our commercial situation to stay in business.
Our revenue streams are made up of workspace hire, sponsor support and our data partnerships and projects.
It is not that difficult to put a value on our work as we measure it openly for anyone to see via our dashboard - but here is a list of our impact & value:
At Open Innovations, we measure our work openly. Our dashboard is used to measure our progress and success. It is updated automatically, regularly and is open to all. We report on our sponsors, projects, revenue, events and social media. At a glance you can immediately see the value we deliver.
Innovation is what Open Innovations is all about. We have spent a lot of time on research and development to create our own methods and tools to do open innovation with a purpose.
The #RadicallyOpen approach means that all the assets, conversation, and development is done in the open - we start small, have clear problems to fix, and engage as many and as diverse types of people and organisations as possible. You can access and use all of our tools and assets for free at any time.
This is at the heart of what we do best. Our team of data scientists, analysts, and developers work on your behalf to design, deliver & maintain some pioneering projects which impact us all. During 2023 we worked on new projects:
Open Innovations is #RadicallyOpen. We work in the open. All our work is published on our website almost instantaneously. This agile, fast paced, approach is possible because of our specialist team and the support of our sponsors and clients who are happy for us to work like this to make a difference quickly. It is an innovative approach which sets us apart.
We publish many articles and blogs, these are available on our website and are often reshared and published by others.
We have a very active and engaged social media profile covering Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. It enables us to engage with an audience that covers the whole of the UK and beyond, sharing our news, project outcomes, innovation work, and more. Please do follow us and join in with our open conversations, and share your stories and priorities with us so we can share them. This social media presence is important in raising awareness, sharing info, and also has a monetary value relative to our sponsors, partners and clients.
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| Tweets: | ? |
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| Youtube viewing time (across all videos): | ? minutes |
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| Total online engagement: (measured in number of times a tweet, post, link, page, etc, has been seen) | ? |
Across our main website as well as microsites for particular projects.
After 10 busy years at Munro House, we enter a new, exciting phase for 2024. After February, Open Innovations will be ‘On Tour’. We wrote about why we are closing our space and our first 10 years in this blog. In 2024 we will be operating from a mix of venues:
We will continue to host events virtually and in person. Our first ‘Tour’ date of 2024 is 20 March, How Can The North Win? Which will be hosted at Arup’s new Leeds offices on Wellington Place.
Thank you to everyone who has hosted or attended a meeting, conference or hack at Munro House over the last 10 years, we have loved it. As you know we have lots of kit and furniture in the space - we will be selling, repurposing, recycling and donating it all. If you would like to make use of any kit, or know of any worthy causes please get in touch as soon as possible.
Our work, our impact, our knowledge and our workspace are great so it’s no surprise that we get asked a lot by a wide variety of organisations to use our space, resources, and services for free. As a not for profit, non funded organisation we simply cannot operate on this basis. However, we do choose a couple of relevant projects each year to support with some of the funds raised by sponsorship and events.
Open Innovations will be making a cash donation this year to Zarach.org - helping ensure children don't go without a bed to sleep in.
We operate a commercial non-profit model - which means that we use profits to work on our mission led projects. In simple terms this means that sponsorship and other revenues can support work and projects that make a difference.
The fact that we have established Open Innovations as a business with stable revenues means that your sponsorship can be directed towards these mission led projects and we can provide technical support, space for meetings and collective pooling of resources to make the most of all of our investments.
All of our current work has started with us completing self funded activity (Meetings, Conversations, Events, Web Communications) and doing innovation (Data Projects/Visualisations/Tools).
In 2023 this has meant that our collective investment has allowed projects including #OpenDataSavesLives #PlanetData #NED #PoweredUp, Population around a Point, Parkulator, Constituencies HexMaps and the WarmSpaces Finder tool to make a difference for everyone.
As part of our sustainable ethos, we try our best to be as green as we can - recycling, reusing, using local suppliers and products, cycling, walking and using public transport for getting to work and meetings, promoting sustainable projects, running events like Planet Data, and introducing vegetarian and vegan only catering. We hope you will support us in this campaign.
Lots more, we have an ambitious programme already for 2023 with innovation events including, Net Zero Hack, How Can the North Win? Northernlands5, OpenDataSavesLives as a start. We are continuing our work with Youth Futures Partnership, legacy work with Leeds 2023, DFES updates for National Grid and Northern Powergrid plus many new projects in the pipeline on the economy, education and inclusivity.
So please join in, share, get involved and get in touch. Working together is more impactful and more fun.
Simple, use our website, share our work, ask us for help, come to our events and if you would like to host us as part of our ‘On Tour’ year then please get in touch.
Paul and the Open Innovations team