French innovation consultancy specialising in urban co-creation, participatory design, and open innovation methodology for social and territorial challenges.
ITEMS International is a French innovation consultancy that designs and facilitates multi-actor co-creation processes, primarily at the intersection of urban planning, social innovation, and open innovation methodology. Their work ranges from structuring regional innovation ecosystems using quintuple helix frameworks (engaging public, private, academic, civil society, and environmental actors) to co-designing healthy urban corridors in social housing neighbourhoods. In practice, this means they help cities, communities, and consortia turn participatory design principles into concrete urban renewal outcomes — from spatial interventions to new business models for the social and solidarity economy. They contribute methodological expertise and process facilitation rather than technical hardware or infrastructure.
In URBiNAT (2018–2024), ITEMS contributed to co-designing healthy corridors in social housing neighbourhoods, integrating active citizenship, democratic innovation, and wellbeing into urban planning processes.
In 5TOI_4EWAS (2016–2019), ITEMS applied quintuple helix and NEXUS frameworks to build balanced innovation ecosystems across energy, water, and agriculture sectors in the South Mediterranean.
URBiNAT included business model innovation for social economy organisations as a core workstream, a contribution area consistent with ITEMS's consultancy profile.
5TOI_4EWAS addressed regional smart specialisation and common knowledge and innovation spaces, placing ITEMS in policy-facing innovation strategy work.
In their early H2020 work (2016–2019), ITEMS focused on macro-level innovation architecture: quintuple helix frameworks, regional smart specialisation strategies, and building open innovation ecosystems in the South Mediterranean — policy and methodology at regional scale. By their second project (2018–2024), the focus shifted decisively toward the neighbourhood and community level: urban public space, healthy corridors, social housing, active citizenship, and democratic innovation. The trajectory is from abstract innovation governance to tangible, place-based social transformation — from designing systems to designing streets and communities.
ITEMS is moving toward applied urban social innovation — particularly participatory processes that embed wellbeing, human rights, and citizen agency into physical urban renewal — making them a relevant partner for future projects at the city-society interface.
ITEMS participates exclusively as a consortium partner, never as coordinator, suggesting they are brought in for specific methodological or process expertise rather than project leadership. With 58 unique partners across just 2 projects, they clearly operate inside large, diverse consortia — URBiNAT in particular is a major multi-country Innovation Action. This profile is consistent with a niche consultancy that adds value through specialised facilitation and methodology, integrated into broader implementation teams led by universities, municipalities, or research institutes.
Despite only two projects, ITEMS has built a notably wide network of 58 unique consortium partners spanning 22 countries — reflecting the large, pan-European consortia typical of Innovation Actions. Their reach is genuinely European, with no apparent geographic concentration within that breadth.
ITEMS sits at a niche intersection that few SMEs occupy: they combine innovation policy methodology (quintuple helix, open innovation strategy) with on-the-ground urban co-creation and social economy expertise. This dual profile makes them useful both in early-stage ecosystem design and in later-stage implementation projects where community engagement and social business models are required. For a consortium builder, ITEMS brings process credibility and a French private-sector perspective to topics that are often dominated by universities and public authorities.
