Value proposition canvas and business model canvas
Creating a uniform identity about Athens
Previously on Athens Co Creation City Branding Project
Athens Co-Creation City Branding Project is a project that tries to create a uniform identity and narration about Greece’s capital taking into consideration global indexes and trends about global cities. For this purposes it uses co-creation practices and design thinking methodology. For this reason, even before we focused on Athens, we thought it was important to study global indexes and more specifically Global City Power Index 2017, as base to our work (City Indexes: An accurate guide for cities’ evaluation). After that we moved to Athens, trying to find the pros and cons of living or visiting Greece’s capital, based mostly in our experience as Athens’ residents (Athens: The goods, the bads and…the ugly truth about Greece’s capital) and we also studied the cases of two important stakeholders in the field of culture and innovation, Impact Hub and EATA-Serafeio, to see how they work(Impact Hub: Creating a positive impact on Kypseli’s community — Serafeio: Sports,Culture and Innovation in the center of Athens). As a last step before canvas we interviewed more cultural stakeholders to have a more spherical observation of the situation in Athens.
On today’s article…
Based on previous findings, we came to the conclusion that Athens needs a clear and specific strategic that will lead to a uniform and clear narration about the city’s branding and the city in general. In that way, everything will be included under this umbrella so that the identity of Greece’s capital will be distinct and everyone will say “This is so Athens!”. We thought that it is necessary to find two basic pylons in order to build this strategy. These pylons are culture and innovation. They will be present in each aspect of the city and will solve every existing problem. Culture will solve problems that have to do with people’s mindset and innovation will solve the ones concerning technological and technical issues. In that way, Athens will be multi-cultural and fully-cultural (πόλη πολύ-πολιτισμική και πολυ-πολιτισμική). We use value proposition canvas and business model canvas as our main tools, as they are the most used “vehicles” for design thinking methodology. This is our presentation of the whole project.
https://prezi.com/view/usnL5KfuLqlJBkCNpHxd/
We think that the most important jobs that citizens want to be done are related to safety, transportation and cultural events, as they want to move around quickly in any direction and to have many options for entertainment. Also, they want live in a clean city, to have more environmentally friendly choices and more up-to-date solutions concerning city’s problems. Based on the research we did about the jobs that need to be done, we came to the conclusion that the pains which arise are criminality, lack of lighting and sings in many spots of the city, car accidents, traffic jam and violation of the driving code. Furthermore, pains that annoy Athens’s inhabitants are garbage and graffiti, the difficulty in finding all of the events and bureaucracy. On the contrary, there are some things that make life easier for the Athenians such as the airport, the port and some regional municipalities that are in a good condition, OASA Telematics and OASA Card that are really useful for public transportation users and a wide road network through the city and the suburbs. Moreover, despite the economic crisis from which Athens is suffering, there are plenty of events and upgrades of certain spots (e.g. Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center).
In order to create value for the citizens, we develop and improve certain services. These are police and traffic police, better operation of OASA Telematics and OASA Card and municipality services for installation of lights, signs and traffic radars. Also, it is important to have many ticket distribution spots so as to fulfill people’s necessities, automate garbage bins and products for removing graffiti, recycling system and green spaces for a cleaner city and a uniform platform with all the events for people’s information. Applications are used to solve many problems both for transportation and traffic as well as for informing citizens and visitors about the events. If these services are developed and work well, they will be pain relievers for the citizen’s pains which we described before. As for the high rate of criminality, we suggest a broken windows strategy following the example of New York and rooting small criminals out. In the same time, gain creators could be a free WiFi access all around the city, as well as the creation of a uniform identity as long as it concerns to the events. Moreover, it is crucial to update more places in the city, to have better road conservation and bigger arterial roads, better accessibility to the airport and the port as well as advice from the regional municipalities to the municipality of Athens.
Value proposition canvas helped us form a plan that will have value for the residents and the visitors. Business model canvas is the tool for organizing all the aspects of this plan. The key partners who will help to the realization of the plan are Athens International Airport and Piraeus Port and OASA, Subway and other transportation services as for transportation. The Municipality of Athens and other Athenian Municipalities, municipal services and companies concerning recycling and garbage crop will be crucial for activities about cleaning, lighting and generally infrastructure conservation. Police and traffic police will be present in the city to care about the city’s safety, while telecommunication companies will support everything that has to do with mobile internet and WiFi that applications need. Last but not least, Athenian stakeholders such as Onassis Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Impact Hub, etc will support the whole plan with context, information and promotion. Furthermore, it is important to find out some basic resources and suppliers and contact them. Municipal services and police will offer human resources. Public Utility Organizations will offer energy and infrastructure services, OASA, subway, ELVO the necessary transportation services and vehicles and recyclable material suppliers, bin, lighting bulbs and sign suppliers will offer the required materials. Finally, application creators will be in charge for creating and maintaining all applications.
The next step concerns the key activities that reassure the plan’s success. The plan is based on the engagement of citizens. When citizens can talk about their problems and see that their opinion is taken into consideration then they are more willing to be an active part of the city. Frequent and different events are important to citizens’ engagement. For example, there can be events every weekend where citizens and municipal services will clean up the unwanted graffiti. This event helps both in citizens’ engagement and in city’s cleaning. Open calls for feedback and open discussions can take place in different spots in the center of the city, as well as meetings with representatives from the Municipality of Athens, other municipalities, public and private sectors in order to promote cooperation. What will we succeed with all these activities? Citizens will be engaged to city’s goals, open and constant discussion among society, residents and stakeholders, understanding and solution to people’s needs, sustainable processes, co-creation and cooperation will be a reality. Now there is need for coordinated actions and a united identity both in the public and private sector and not just dispersed initiatives and need for process and service development. Citizens need something to dream on and see real changes in the city in order to be part of anything.
The plan for Athens’ identity has to be communicated to citizens. For that purpose, we will use different communication channels to address all the different target groups. Social media (facebook, twitter, instagram) and “This is Athens!” platform will be used for young people, traditional media will be used for older people and people with no access to internet. Municipal services will also be a communication channel for all the residents. The cost of the plan cannot be measured yet, but we know that the most expensive solutions are places upgrade, application creation and conservation and vertical garden creation. The final step of the design is to write down the revenue streams of these activities, so as to have a sustainable plan. A part from municipal fees can be used as a funding source, a small fee for using the “This is Athens!” platform from stakeholders and sponsorships both in money and in external sources can be other sources. We need to note that sponsorships must be used only as a start for an upgrade or a change and then this change have to find its own revenue streams.
Every plan has to be adapted to people’s needs. Our plan uses culture (with a wide sense of the word) and innovation to create a new, up-to-date and real identity of Athens. Time will show if that identity is the right one…
This research and article are part of Athens Co creation City Banding Project in the context of MA in Cultural Management in Panteion University under the lead of Mrs Betty Tsakarestou as professor and project initiator.
