IÉSEG, a major partner of Curious Lab, the laboratory of ideas dedicated to modernizing local public services
03/10/2022
©CD92 / Olivier Ravoire
Launched in March 2019, the Curious Lab, a laboratory for innovative ideas and collective thinking, reflects the desire of the Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines departments to support and accompany their municipalities to make their territory more innovative and collaborative. It, therefore, aims to enhance local public action, and in particular communal action, through the contribution of future workers and future generations, in a logic of proximity, and therefore involves future generations, in particular students from Grandes Écoles and universities, in the development and implementation of local public projects and the improvement of local public services. By mobilizing collective intelligence, cities take advantage of the expertise and approach of the younger generations to find solutions for the reflection and development of local strategy projects.
©CD92 / Olivier Ravoire
IÉSEG has chosen to support the Curious Lab over the long term. Thus, for the third consecutive year, more than 50 students from the Paris-La Défense campus will reflect, as part of the CSR Challenge, on 4 challenges proposed by 4 municipalities in the Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines regions (Antony, Chaville, Issy-les-Moulineaux, and Suresnes).
The challenges are very varied: they range from thinking about the organization of waste sorting within the town hall, to identifying innovative experiments in participative democracy, to engaging citizens in a low-carbon city, to greening the urban space.
In September 2021, for the launch of the new Curious Lab class, the cities came to present the new challenges to the students and answer the first questions. For several months, about fifty students divided into groups met several times to develop their response to the cities, before presenting their proposals to the municipalities. They will then choose the ideas to be implemented concretely.
©CD92 / Olivier Ravoire
Maria Castillo, professor of CSR and CSR Manager of the School concludes: “By participating in the Curious Lab, our students discover that cities, and public administration in general, have the same management issues as companies. They have to take into account CSR and sustainable development elements in all their decisions and in the day-to-day management of their territory. This discovery broadens our students’ vision of management, as well as their field of job search. Moreover, they are not always used to working with cities and local authorities. Participating in the Curious Lab is a great opportunity for them. Because they are not just imagining things, proposing ideas: they are participating in real projects, with an immediate local impact, and the municipalities have released substantial budgets – around €20,000 – if the project is selected for concrete implementation. We are thus at the heart of IÉSEG’s vision of training changemakers for a better society: they contribute in a very direct, practical way to improving the daily lives of thousands of inhabitants of the municipalities concerned.”
