Back to School: Triangulating City Entrepreneurship

City entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial attitude and behavior of city authorities, can substantially be promoted by triangulation, i.e. by opening the city-citizen relationship for communities of knowledge such as universities. This paper reports on an experiment in Amsterdam, where civil servants, with their inherent focus on 'feasible' solutions, were co-learning with Master's students and researchers, with an equally inherent focus on the exploration of what is 'thinkable'. The results were 'achievable' outcomes meeting the demands of citizens. Critical success factors appear to be the organized disruption caused by the triangulation, the clear-cut occurrence of a comprehension phase prior to policy making and the combination of bottom-up approach and top-level support.