Best practices Database for Living Labs - ALCOTRA - Innovation

Preface
For the study and creation of a best practices Database for Living Labs, a two folded approach was chosen
by the Alcotra Innovation project consortium. On the one hand it became clear in the beginning of the
project that a general overview about the Living Lab activities in Europe would be desirable to provide a
general understanding about Living Labs and their characterization. This part was particular helpful in
demonstrating, on the basis of different case studies, how Living Labs are operated and maintained in
different settings.
Thus part A describes the findings of a study conducted on the bases of Living Labs belonging to the
European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL 1 ). The description shows how Living Labs are deployed in different
international and particular local settings. The insights of this study were used to support the deployment
and development of the Alcotra Innovation Living Labs based on the one hand on the general findings of
the study and further on by direct coaching and consultancy of the appointed European experts. As such
the first part of the Living Lab study was used to generally outline the possibilities of living labs and
investigating preferred settings to successful deploy Living Labs, while afterwards providing case based
feedback for the deployment of the cross-border Living Labs in Alcotra Innovation project.
The second part of this Deliverable deals with the deployment of a Living Lab database in order to allow
interested industrial as well as governmental organizations a structured approach to the Living Labs of
Alcotra. Part B thus describes the structure of the database to be deployed to describe the Living Labs of
Alcotra (with the help of ERM and Rational Database Models). The work here strongly adherence to the
description of Living Labs identified in the CO-LLABS project, which has also been used as the description
template for the European Network of Living Labs. This approach has been approved e.g. by the European
Commission DG INFSO. However in order to support even further the idea of the Living Lab Benchmarking
the structure of the Living Lab Database has been enhanced to allow for the storage of further
benchmarking parameters. These parameters are based on the Living Lab harmonization cube that allows
the analysis of Living Labs according to their fulfilment of some basic principles governing Living Labs and
their maturity grade. This approach was presented and further discussed in the Alcotra Innovation project
Genoa meeting hold on 7 th July 2011 2 .
1 http://www.openlivinglabs.eu/
2 http://www.alcotra-innovazione.eu/progetto/attivita2.shtml
The project is co-funded by the ERDF
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