The project UPSIDE aims at delivering economic and societal benefits by fostering the emergence and development of User-driven Participatory Solutions for Innovation in Digitally-centered Ecosystems.The project aims at promoting the development of cooperation frameworks and synergy linkages between research, innovation activities within the companies, urban development policies and open user-driven innovation ecosystems “which are close to the interests and needs of cities and their stakeholders, including citizens and businesses, and which may bridge the gap between short-term city development priorities and longer term technological research and experimentation.”Building on the priorities of the cities involved in the project and the market potential, the UPSIDE partners will focus on the following areas:• health, including ambient assisted living,• intelligent transport systems / mobility• public services (e- and m-Government),• energy,with a common viewpoint of developing user-driven participatory solutions that use the ICT specializations within each of the partner regions. The cities shall contribute to the faster development of technologies and markets not only through policy support but also by providing the right scale for test beds, which are needed in order to optimize different applications and scale up pilot projects to ensure real-life deployment.The test beds in each partner region shall contribute to the emergence of shared innovation platforms and a faster development of single European markets for innovative digital services. The mid to long-term objective is to ensure global market leadership for the UPSIDE clusters.Societal benefits will be generated by fostering the uptake of ICT-based technologies but also by implementing in the partner regions platforms for the development of user-driven participatory solutions that take into account the multiple stakeholder perspective within the framework of larger regional digital agendas.