Best practices Database for Living Labs - ALCOTRA - Innovation

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ENoLL call were officially announced. Thus, it only dealt with the 51 ENoLL members known at the time, which were approached and inspected through a variety of research methods and tools – from online surveys to interview based case studies, from Social Network Analysis to MASAI® and PACE©. Based upon the evidence collected, the most recurring elements of European Living Labs could be listed as follows: - A University played a key role, ensuring a systematic and coherent implementation of underlying methodologies (Open Innovation and the like); - One or more local/global industries were involved as technology providers, being interested in designing, testing or validating their prototype products and services; - The Open Innovation concept was assumed, postulating that there is more value to companies in “sharing and spreading” rather than “storing and protecting” the knowledge created by various internal and external sources, such as employees, customers, suppliers, etc.; - A real-life testing environment was established, supported by the ICT, where users’ feedback on innovation was collected and aggregated as long as it emerged from a seamless and spontaneous interaction between people and technologies; - A user centric approach to innovation was implemented, putting people’s feedback at the core (or as integral part) of the product and service design/development/validation/marketing process, especially in the earlier stages of it; - An external funding entity (typically a public one) made all of the above financially feasible; and - An ‘umbrella’ organisation acted from the background, either a virtual (like an informal network) or a real one, named “XYZ Living Lab” and being a public/private partnership composed of several local and global stakeholders, each of them with some degree of relevance and/or expertise in the areas of e.g. territorial marketing, technology transfer, R&D promotion or business incubation, and the like. Another crucial element of a Living Lab should logically be the establishment of a ‘permanent’ community of users, who are iteratively asked to become integrated in some particular stages of the design/development/validation and marketing process, and whose feedback is collected by means of various socio-ethnographic research methods (from focus groups to surveys, from TV recorded debates to web based interviews and polls). However, very few European Living Labs could at the time rely on such a permanently established (and potentially quite numerous) user community. Notable exceptions were identified in Lulea, Sweden and Oulu, Finland, in which cases the number of involved people reached the order of thousands. In many other cases, if relevant to its policy aims, it was the City or Regional Authority lying behind the ‘umbrella’ organisation of the Living Lab, which took on the commitment to build such a community, starting from the whole constituency, often as a complement of an ongoing strategy towards bridging the digital divide or promoting innovation in the territory. Relevant examples in the latter direction ranged from Spain (e.g. Barcelona or Zaragoza) to the UK (Manchester), from Sweden/Finland (Åboland/the Turku Archipelago) to France (Paris) and Greece (Thessaloniki). In some other cases, it was the University itself, holding responsibility for Living Lab’s methodology deployment, which utilised its students to run particular trials in the area of, say, mobile innovation. Examples of such a kind were reported from Belgium (Brussels), Slovenia (Maribor), and Germany (Bremen). According to the evidence collected during the Study, the 1 st and 2 nd wave ENoLL members were clustered in the 6 profiles described below. As any taxonomy, this also can be questionable in its conception, but it has the advantages of being complete, quite informative, and without overlaps between the features of each different group. Its robustness was also successfully tested with the members of the 3 rd wave ENoLL, which could not be included due to lack of published information at the time the final report was prepared. The next picture shows the frequency of occurrences of each profile in the surveyed universe. The project is co-funded by the ERDF Page 34 of 78
Figure 24: Key Profiles of Living Labs (Source: [13]) Profile #1: Single sector Business Association It was the least represented case (6% of occurrences). The Living Lab was organised and pushed forward by an ‘umbrella’ association which represented the interests of several companies of a same business sector (e.g. automotive). Typically this profile was not very developed in terms of successful trials. However, it has a great potential in two main respects: - as a promoter and aggregator of thematic R&D and innovation initiatives in the territory of reference; - as a vehicle for cross-national, pan-European interoperability of Living Labs trials, platforms and solutions. Profile #2: Open Innovation prone Enterprise 1 out of 10 occurrences belonged to this case, which is similar to the previous one, being another Living Lab that is likely motivated by a vested business interest. However this profile, instead of a corporate association, was based on a single enterprise’s initiative, adopting the User driven, Open Innovation concept and/or creating a network of relations aimed at the cooperative design and validation of novel ideas, products and services. While interesting per se, the presence of individual enterprises within the ENoLL could also be useful in terms of exemplarity and potential transfer of the concepts, methods and tools utilised. Profile #3: Policy-driven Government initiative This was unsurprisingly the most common case (35% of occurrences) within the 1 st and 2 nd wave ENoLL. The Living Lab was clearly backed up by a Regional or City Government – also in those few cases where a nonprofit foundation, or even a cooperative cluster, were practically managing it. The prevalent dimension of this case is akin to local development, also as a complement to more traditional innovation policies and practices (such as territorial marketing, business incubators, technology clusters, industrial parks, etc.). An additional side benefit of this profile was the prompt availability of a permanent user community, obviously emerging from citizens and stakeholders forming the Government’s “constituency”. The project is co-funded by the ERDF Page 35 of 78
Page 1 and 2: Alcotra Innovation project Delivera
Page 3 and 4: Preface For the study and creation
Page 5 and 6: TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 7
Page 7 and 8: 1. Introduction Much has been writt
Page 9 and 10: 2. Living Labs as Territorial Innov
Page 11 and 12: (from a public authority’s viewpo
Page 13 and 14: • People (User) Integration in De
Page 15 and 16: 3.1 The FormIT Process The FormIT p
Page 17 and 18: Figure 7: Sample Living Lab’s tri
Page 19 and 20: 3.4 The Technological Platform Mode
Page 21 and 22: Figure 10: Living Labs as Functiona
Page 23 and 24: Figure 11: The Living Lab Innovatio
Page 25 and 26: • Openness: the innovation proces
Page 27 and 28: Figure 14: Geographical distributio
Page 29 and 30: scanned for the identification of t
Page 31 and 32: Turning now our attention to the e-
Page 33: Figure 23: Relative performance of
Page 37 and 38: Figure 25: Key Profiles of Living L
Page 39 and 40: 6. References [1] Molinari, F. 2011
Page 41 and 42: Annex A: Full Database of ENoLL Mem
Page 43 and 44: France OFF-ROAD MEMORY Living Lab w
Page 45 and 46: Slovenia LENS Living Lab www.einova
Page 47 and 48: The project is co-funded by the ERD
Page 61 and 62: TABLE OF CONTENTS 7. INTRODUCTION 6
Page 63 and 64: 8. Ownership of existing Living Lab
Page 65 and 66: 10. ENoLL evaluation criteria In th
Page 67 and 68: 12. Extension of existing database
Page 69 and 70: 13.4 Organisation and Governance Th
Page 71 and 72: Figure 28: spider-web diagram The t
Page 73 and 74: SME Innovation Support Figure 35: S
Page 75 and 76: As it can be seen the new database
Page 77 and 78: In order to search for specific rec

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