Do mixed societies innovate more than homogeneous ones? How do new ideas and innovations emerge when people of diverse cultures interact? Comedia has launched an eighteen month project across cities in several countries called The Intercultural City to find out how interractions between cultures might be formed into new products, services, and styles – and how these then spread. The idea is to provide policy makers in city development, business, and innovation management with evidence and a toolkit of techniques with which to encourage greater intercultural innovation. Comedia have a hunch that “there are certain people who make things happen and provide opportunities in cities, and more so for immigrant and minority groups. Such networkers, intermediaries, catalysts have a greater facility to move within and particularly between communities. They have a higher degree of intercultural networking capacity”. That hunch will be tested and results published in a final report, with a conference to discuss it, scheduled for March 2006.
