You are here: Citizens' Observatories Toolbox » Methods » Exploitation

What is exploitation?

R&D&I projects generate knowledge and intellectual property (IP)

EC wants to see how such knowledge and IP are exploited by the Consortium

  • Key aspect: maximize the project impacts afterthe end of the project

  • In line with FP7 co-funding principles: You put money, so you should have plans to have a return on investment

  • Dimensions: science, technology, economy and society

    Figure 1. Exploitation quadrant.

How to do exploitation in CITI-SENSE?

Exploitation plan

To define a strategy for the exploitation of knowledge and intellectual property (IP) generated within the framework of the CITI-SENSE project

  • Supporting partners in their own exploitation activities
  • Coordinating (project-wise) partner-level strategies

Exploitable knowledge qualification (‘ranking’)

  • 26 items initially identified - Set of cards with details available here

  • 16 items selected, find it here, and mapping to quadrant as following


  • Filter - we focus only on those with potential impact on commercial activities (8, find it here): Right hand side of the quadrant

  • Scoring and ranking approach as follows: 1) High-level approach: BDFL (benevolent-dictator-for-life); 2) 7 dimensions identified, each one with a weight; 3) Score 1-5 for each dimension; 4) Ranking based on weighted sum

  • Scoring and ranking criteria, find it here

  • Scoring and ranking results as following

Business Models: What/Who/How/When

The following innovations are candidates for development of a business model

1) Personal sensor pack (Ateknea – Leonardo)

2) CityAirapp (NILU – Mirjam)

3) Spatial and environmental data services platform (Snowflake – Richards/Rosie)

Business model canvas

1) Describe how your innovation creates value, for whom and how this is delivered

2) And how it is monetized

CITI-SENSE PoPs

  • Sustaining COs across a number of use cases

  • Flexible enough to accommodate different contexts

  • Ready to be used by other smart cities across Europe and beyond

Long-term sustainability of COs


1) What will happen to CITI-SENSE Citizens’ observatories/Empowerment initiatives after the end of the project?

2) How can they be sustained?

3) More in general, how can a CO/EI sustain its operations?

Financing COs, the following three potential models identified

  • Public administration/local government support

  • Charity

  • Crowdfunding

SMEs in the project

We have a large number of SMEs in the Consortium, and they benefitted from the project in various means

  • Technology maturation: from TRL-x to TRL-y

  • Technology experimentation: validating a product with end users

  • Innovation opportunity scouting: found new avenues (vertical, use case) for usage of existing product/service

Collect such data for the development of business model for CITI-SENSE products & services

  • CITI-SENSE is not just about single-partners innovation. We shall have a ‘product of products’ (PoPs), for