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1. November 2010 – 15:46 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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Living Labs Live Chat
Today saw another PEP-NET Live Chat, this time on the topic “Living Labs”. Experts from across Europe, all of whom are partners in the PARTERRE project, discussed their experiences. (For details, see my previous post.)
We aimed to give people who aren’t so familiar with the Living Labs approach a deeper understanding of what the concept is. After all, you often hear the term when conversation turns to European projects.
What is a “Living Lab”?
It’s a way of involving users in the design process for new products and services — and when I asked whether the concept is user-centric, the answer was a resounding “yes”. It is not simply a test-bed, i.e. taking a finished product and testing it on a group of users; it’s much more about empowering a community of users to solve a problem that affects them. The theory is that because they are the people who will be using the product or service, they know best what they need. They will need help from developers to know what technology is capable of, but the Living Lab environment should allow users to retain as much control as possible. This is a reversal of what happens when people develop something that they think solves other people’s problems. (This isn’t just technology developers — I’m sure we have all done that in one way or another.) Even the term “user” was viewed with scepticism by some: the LL approach is all about creating a community that transcends the usual barriers between users and product developers.
How to set one up?
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Posted in Events, Projects, Trends | 5 Comments »
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26. October 2010 – 14:23 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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Photo by mythoto on Flickr
Hands up if you’ve heard the term “Living Lab” and wondered what it means. Now is your chance to find out: PEP-NET has invited some living lab experts from across the continent to take questions on the topic.
On 1st November at 11.00 CET, there will be a one-hour live chat with representatives of Turku University in Finland, Ulster University, Northern Ireland, and Jesse Marsh, special advisor to the President of the Council of the European Living Labs Network.
All panel members (see the list below) are partners in the European Commission-financed PARTERRE project, which is assessing the viability of existing spatial planning consultation services in several European countries outside their countries of origin, and which is adopting a living lab approach to integrate them into one spatial planning consultation service.
So we are lucky to have our Living Lab aficionados in the project, and I have been kind enough to share them with the rest of PEP-NET!
When the chat starts, you will see a box on the “live chats” page (see the tab at the top of the PEP-NET blog). You will be able to participate by entering your questions there. Please note that your questions and comments will not appear immediately, as they are all approved before being published. This enables us to structure the conversation a little bit, ensuring that similar topics are discussed together.
- Tiina Ferm, Senior Lecturer (software engineeering),Turku University of Applies Sciences (TUAS). Tiina is coordinator of TWICT living lab within TUAS and founding member of Turku Innovation Corner (TICo) that coordinates living lab activities in Southwest Finland, founded by Turku University, TUAS, Åbo Akademi (Swedish speaking university) and Novia (Swedish speaking university of applied sciences) and local Science Park.
- Brendan Galbraith, Lecturer, Department of Management, University of Ulster
- Patrizia Hongisto, Senior Researcher, Aalto University School of Economics, Helsinki
- Jesse Marsh, Atelier Studio Association, Italy. Jesse is founder and co-ordinator of the Territorial Living Lab in Sicily, and Special Advisor to the President of the Council of the European Network of Living Labs. He has also published several papers on the topic of regional living labs and territorial innovation.
- Suzanne Martin, Reader, School of Health Sciences, University of Ulster, Belfast
- Maurice Mulvenna, Professor of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing and Engineering, University of Ulster, Belfast
- Olli Ojala, Lecturer, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Turku. Olli has participated in the TWICT living lab and living lab networks in Turku.
- Johnny Wallace, Director of Knowledge and Technology Transfer, Faculty of Computing and Engineering, University of Ulster, Belfast
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
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4. July 2008 – 09:34 by Francesco Molinari
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On 1st July 2008 the European Commission, DG INFSO, Unit F4, hosted a workshop by invitation entitled “Living Labs for User-driven Open Innovation”. Aim of the workshop was to present and discuss the state of the art of European Living Labs under the operational, networking, and policy perspectives.
The establishment of a European Network of Living Labs is a policy initiative launched by the EU Finnish Presidency in November 2006 as a first step towards a new European Innovation System, entailing a major paradigm shift for the whole innovation process. “Typical” Living Labs are Public Private Partnerships where firms, public authorities and people work together in creating, prototyping, validating and testing new services, businesses, markets and technologies in real-life contexts, such as cities, city regions, rural areas and collaborative virtual networks between public and private players. The real-life and everyday contexts both stimulate and challenge research and development, as do public authorities and citizens not only participate in, but also contribute to an open innovation process.
One of the afternoon sessions of the EC workshop was entitled “The use of Living Labs in e-democracy: Citizen-driven Governance”. The keynote speech and the following discussion focused on the possible implementation of the Living Labs methodological approach in the (broadly defined) contexts of eParticipation, eGovernment and eDemocracy. From the debate it clearly emerged that several experiences are now ongoing in Europe that try to incorporate the “added value” of open innovation into the various pathways of interaction between citizens and decision makers. In particular, the benefits were highlighted from a careful preparation of the participatory trials, by means of the Living Labs methodology, to avoid the most common pitfalls of current eDemocracy experiences, such as: lack of active involvement from citizens and/or stakeholders, mistrust from the people, skepticism from the politicians, and ultimately a low reusability of upcoming results within the public decision making process.
To increase the opportunities for cross fertilisation, a few suggestions were made by the audience, including a possible role for the PEP-NET community itself: as a practitioners network in the area of eParticipation, with some of its members holding a first hand experience in both Living Labs and eDemocracy, there can be certainly room for clustering and a reciprocal contamination with the most relevant, “citizen-driven” trials of the European Network of Living Labs.
Posted in good practice, Trends, TuTech, Visions | 1 Comment »
