Living Labs and eParticipation: a marriage of interest?

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.

Tags: ENoLL, eParticipation, EU, Living Labs