Mission
Urban Opus accelerates organizations and ventures in the realization of transformative opportunities involving people, data and future of cities.
How We Work
Urban Opus is a nonprofit accelerator with a unique, globally-competitive smart city vision. We work by partnering with urban stakeholders, startups and global innovators to accelerate smart city opportunities. Check out our portfolio to see what we do.
Why are we needed? Cities are communities of communities, and the vast majority of community organizations, and cities themselves, have limited capacity to imagine how data might serve their publics better, and to build applications that might do so. Urban Opus brings such capacity to the table, including technology, engineering, development and project management, enabling our community partners, their public, and their mission to serve as fertile ground for valuable innovation.
Additionally, large organizations typically have data and technical capacity, but limited experience with the art and science of public engagement. Urban Opus specializes in this human interface, and can blend existing open and proprietary data sources with interaction design to achieve the ‘alchemy’ of meaningful engagement.
Urban Opus is expert at collaborative, city-scaled innovation and accelerating startup ventures. We understand how to bring corporate and community stakeholders together to pioneer new forms of digital public engagement, thereby creating ‘lead customers’ and market validation opportunities for startups. We can work anywhere in the world, but we also offer Metro Vancouver as a unique ‘living lab’ for local and immigrant entrepreneurs. It is a fabulous place for proving new ideas.
Cities everywhere have global innovators, so Urban Opus is convening a network of entrepreneurs, solutions and cities to collectively catalyze urban evolution. Wherever you live, you can be part of our mission.
Experience
The collaborative innovation processes and expertise of Urban Opus were honed for more than a decade within the community and economic development achievements of the Mobile Muse Network, which similarly employed Metro Vancouver as a living lab for pioneering new forms of mobile media for public engagement.
Origin
Urban Opus is an outgrowth of innovation initiatives of the Human Communication Technologies (HCT) Lab and the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC) Lab at the University of British Columbia.
Contact us today if you can help shape and fulfill our mission.