The future center as an urban innovation engine

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to describe a future center as an urban innovation engine for the knowledge city, to understand the success factors of a future center and how this success can be replicated systematically in the implementation and development of future centers in the future. Design/methodology/approach – Nine future centers were visited and a longitudinal action research‐based case study was conducted at the regional Be'er Sheva PISGA Future Center in Israel, within the educational domain. Findings – There are 13 conceptual building‐blocks for a future center and the unifying principle is conversations. The PISGA future center put the concept of a future center into action and was guided by six operating principles: values, experiment and learning, organizational structure, partnerships, physical space, and virtual space. They were able to initiate ten new educational projects within the first two years of operation. A conceptual model of a regional future center was developed and tested on the PISGA case, defining the five key ingredients as community conversations, future images, an innovation lab, a knowledge and intelligence center and implementation projects. Research limitations/implications – After two years of testing the findings, only intermediate results are available. Further research is needed to develop and test the concepts and model further. Practical implications – This paper provides building‐blocks and a generic model that can be used by the creators of next generation future centers. Originality/value – This paper provides the first generic building‐blocks and the first generic implementation and operational model for a future center.